Antenna claims coup with AT&T alliance

A BREAKTHROUGH in the promotion of mobile CRM is being claimed by specialist software house, Antenna.

It's landed a major co-marketing deal with US carrier AT&T (formerly Cingular).

While Antenna's software has been installed by major companies like Pitney Bowes and Heineken Ireland, AT&T will be actively promoting Antenna's products to its existing base of business customers.

Antenna's client software currently runs on a wide range of smartphones and wireless PDA including those using the Windows Mobile, Palm and RIM Blackberry OS. According to Jim Hemmer, Antenna Software's CEO, support for Symbian will appear shortly.

Hemmer claims that his company's software operates with as many as 40 to 50 different flavours of CRM including all the big names such as Oracle Siebel, SAP and Siebel CRM.

One of the key advantages to the deal is that AT&T will be offering AMP Studio which is Antenna's development tool. This will enable third parties to piggyback on the AT&T/Antenna alliance.

Asked why he thought that mobile CRM solutions -which have been available for many years - had been slow to take off, Hemmer blamed end user installations.

He argued that "the dogs won't eat the dog food." Or, in other words, businesses had tried rolling out mobile CRM solutions without proper consultation with their workforces. Consequently, employees rebel and don't take advantage of the software.

Two things have changed recently. A new job title is rapidly merging - the Chief Mobility Officer. In recent months Antenna has seen 15K-20K of such people emerging.

Hemmer argues this trend has been forced on companies by the success of email solutions such as the RIM Blackberry. It's not unusual for Banks to need to support around 2,000 such users.

The second factor is that companies have learnt how to make mobile CRM work. This involves identifying key workers who will have to utilise the software and then using them to seed the acceptance of such systems among co-workers.

It's also been possible to prove the benefits of mobile CRM in terms of 'hard dollars'. Hemmer claims that his software provides tangible benefits such as increasing cash flow as clients can frequently invoice on the spot.

In the case of field service engineers, mobile CRM can reduce stock purchasing as engineers have to carry less inventory to a particular job.

The best motivation for installing mobile CRM is that competitors have started to implement it. "You can't put the genie back into the bottle," says Hemmer. It's too late now. µ