Many of our clients have been asking about the pending release and roadmap for the Mobility client and the GP connector. We are being told that the mobility client is being worked on and will be released soon. No word on the connectors.
I was in a briefing on CRM 4.0 last summer at the Partner Conference and they stated that the mobility access is a "cornerstone" of 4.0 so I expect them to enhance the express/thin client a bunch and release that in the coming months. I have used mobility and you really don't need it for too much but it is nice to have. It is definitely a feature that is required to compete in the market. It comes free with MS CRM which is a great price for the value. Most competitors charge for extending your data to mobile devices.
The reason it is not as vital as some people believe is that MS CRM works through your outlook and specifically unifies your individual and corporate CONTACTs Data. MS CRM Connects and Unifies investments in Outlook, Exchange, and Active Directory. So if you set it up normally you or another person in your organization can update a contact in CRM and that flows through to the Outlook contacts and that flows through to your mobile contacts on your active synch enabled phone/PDA. I am sure you are using Windows Mobile instead of Blackberry....If not you really should try cause it is a lot better value.
It doesn't really matter what you use because when you update an Outlook record in outlook or in CRM is synchs the records which also synchs through EXCHANGE to your mobile device. So you have "One Truth" on the contact information. That is the beauty of MS CRM embedded in the Outlook and Exchange stack applications. Embedded not integrated. They are designed to work together as one business enabling platform/system.
So people have access to the contact info on the go. This is mostly what people need it for. It also supports custom entities/extensions which is great. PDAs do not really lend themselves to massive data input/reports/interactions. So I doubt you are going to do 1000 or 100 words of typing on the mobile client or run your daily business. I have mostly seen field service and sales people use it for a quick check of account address info and then also maybe reviewing the funnel and opportunities.
I have yet to seen a cold call rep go mobile to smile and dial 50 calls. If you have let me know. That does not seem optimal utilization of time and resources
So MOBILE is really for quick looks and quick entry. The thin client is really optimal for that.
Regards, Jon Petrucelli
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