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.