Two well-known players in the mobile information sector Monday announced an alliance to tap into the growing mobile customer relationship management (mCRM).
The hope is that professionals can review contact information, update sales opportunities and be notified of urgent service requests even while they are away from the office
San Mateo-based AvantGo (Nasdaq: AVGO) and Onyx Software Corp (Nasdaq: ONXS) out of Bellevue, Washington say they are working together on a solution to assist large, field-based sales and services teams get wireless access to customer information.
The alliance brings AvantGo’s mobile infrastructure software and services with Onyx’s XML-based platform, which supports both handheld and wireless devices.
The CRM sector has been on the rise of late, but non so much as the mobile sector. According to Goldman Sachs’ Mobile Internet study is estimated to be $13 billion by 2005.
“We (Onyx and AvantGo) are delivering what we believe will be the dominant mobile CRM solution for large organizations seeking to run their enterprise data and applications from a handheld device,” says AvantGo vice president Michael Kritzman. “The market demand is real and we think we’ve got a silver-bullet solution.”
The Onyx platform synchronizes customer information from Microsoft Outlook on a laptop or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), such as a Palm OS or Windows CE device. The company’s wireless CRM solution lets sales teams access information over any Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled device.
As a result of the alliance with Onyx, AvantGo says it will expand mCRM capabilities delivered within its existing product line and AvantGo says it also plans to use this new mobile solution internally with its own sales staff.