The iPhone as a Business tool – Sometimes is seems as though the Apple iPhone is the must have fashion accessory of the season, with people using it as a name brand to show off to their friends. But whilst it is obviously a stylish phone that can grace anyones accessory list it is also a very powerful and complex piece of equipment, something that often gets left out in the hype surrounding it.
It’s strengths as a tool for business users are often something that fails to get a mention in the magazine and newspaper articles about the phone, which is a shame as the iPhone can be the perfect accompaniment to anyone who is looking for a mobile business tool.
iPhone as A Business Tool
The reason for this is many fold. First of all it is a very high specification tool built by Apple, one of the world leaders in computer development. They have used this knowledge and expertise to create a phone that will act as a very versatile piece of equipment in the same way a Apple MacBook would – it is how you use it, not what is under the hood that decides its use – because it has the technology to do what you want with it.
As ever the strength of the iPhone lays in its applications. The technological aspect is so strong it is simply what you put onto the phone that decides its use to you, and that is where the applications come in. They increase the functionality to the point that you are able to get what you want to out of the iPhone.
Business iPhone Applications
Despite the lack of hype about using the iPhone as a business tool many companies have seen the value of developing business applications for use with it, and so there is a huge amount of benefits to be gained from the downloading of business applications from the Apple ‘Apps store’.
These iPhone apps and iPhone technology fulfill a variety of uses for the average business person including
+ Emails: The iPhone can access the Microsoft exchange server, as well as many other servers or online web applications, meaning that you can have constant access to your emails, no matter where you are.
+ Full 3G internet. The iPhone doesn’t offer a basic WAP service with limited functionality, instead you get access to the full internet at 3G speeds – perfect for research, emailing or document downloading.
+ CRM (contact resource management) databases are available, including from some of the biggest database companies such as Oracle. This allows your sales team, or anyone in a customer facing role, access to all the information contained about the customer – whilst on the move.
+ Document reader. The huge screen of the iPhone makes it perfect for reading documents whilst on the move, allowing you to do work whilst on the train, bus, pretty much anywhere.
There are plenty of other applications such as money management software, expenses tracker, goal tracker and much more, all designed to help you use the iPhone as one of the ultimate business tools.
Whilst it may not get the hype it deserves as a business tool, the iPhone certainly makes sure that you can add as much functionality as you could possibly hope for from a mobile phone.
I disagree, I think the iPhone is ideal for business. In fact I am the president of a company that is betting its future on it. After forty years of success, it can be a challenge to see your business change. We realized the future of any company boils down to innovation and differentiation…In our case that meant imploding on purpose.
We took a good, hard look at what the iPhone and Salesforce.com mean to business and we set out to offer the next generation of lead retrieval. The result was the development of a first-of-its-kind iPhone App for tradeshow lead retrieval.
As an app, iLeads allows businesses to confront a huge problem they face each time they exhibit : lead follow up. iLeads lets you do it instantly.
By using the iPhone and iPod Touch in conjunction with cloud computing, iLeads also eliminates the friction (shipping costs, staffing, capital investment, maintenance and availability) generated by dedicated lead retrieval terminals – the core of our business for nearly two decades.
Why did we choose the iPhone? We looked for a readily available, consumer-friendly handheld device to serve as the hardware platform. Just one device stood out: Apple’s iPhone. It meets the criteria established by our focus groups and more. Unlike some other popular handheld devices, the iPhone’s two operating systems are very stable and are compatible with one another. Blackberry, in contrast, has seven operating systems; there are compatibility issues, making it challenging to provide a system that will run without problems on every Blackberry model. Another big plus is that iLeads can run on Apple’s iPod Touch, a $200 device, which does not require the user to subscribe to a wireless plan. Another factor in the choice of iPhone/iPod Touch is the huge number of applications that are available already, including those that do the following: record expenses; book hotel, restaurant, car rental and airline reservations; trace shipments; take dictation, integrate with salesforce.com, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google and more.
We are anticipating integrating iLeads with Salesforce.com. This project is under way using a Salesforce-recommended third-party developer. The combination of Salesforce.com and iLeads is compelling for exhibitors and the reaction to iLeads introduction has been enthusiastic.
The iPhone is ideal for business. For ours, it is the necessity we’ve been waiting for.