Mobile email was once a tool just out of reach for
small and midsized businesses (SMBs). They knew the
capabilities existed, but they were hard pressed to find viable
solutions that didn't come with massive expense and management
headaches.
In its stead, some companies were forced to rely on
unsophisticated systems that were thrown together out of necessity
instead of having a truly viable solution that could be deployed
throughout the entire company.
"I was using a Treo," said Ed Warren, vice president of sales and
marketing for Creative Marketing Solutions (CMS), a marketing
fulfillment provider. "I had patched together a shoestring of
capabilities, but it was difficult to manage and not consistent."
But a recent partnership between
mobile email provider Visto and Sotto Wireless, a hosted
communications service that combines the mobility of devices with
the functionality of office phone systems, helped Warren and his
salesforce see the true benefits of a legitimate mobile email
deployment.
Going through Sotto to roll out Visto to the company's fleet of
Nokia E61 and E70 devices showed instant improvement, Warren said,
giving sales teams the benefit of on-the-go communications.
"Immediately, the sales reps were more productive," he said,
adding that he has seen a faster response time from sales reps and
their customers since the system was rolled out in late January and
early February.
Warren said he hasn't yet crunched the hard numbers, but he
noted that "there is a tangible improvement." The improvement was
noticeable enough for Warren to promise that every sales rep within
CMS would be using the Sotto/Visto solution in a short time.
Under the old "shoestring" approach, Warren's mobile email
wasn't real-time and it was much more time consuming, he said. Now,
being able to send documents, edit them, reattach them into an
email and forward them along is a process measured in seconds
rather than minutes.
"As a manager, I am more responsive to the needs of my reps and
their customers when they need me to review or approve a written
document," Warren said.
 | | | | | A recent Forrester Research
survey found 71% of enterprises in North America have adopted
mobile email, while just 28% of SMBs have
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Also, he said, Sotto handles much of the management, which eases
his burden. He and his team have access to a Web portal where they
can add users, phone numbers, passwords and the like.
Under their partnership, Visto is made available as part of
Sotto's hosted service, filling a void in the SMB area where mobile
email has not yet truly caught on.
According to a recent Forrester Research survey, 71% of
enterprises in North America have adopted mobile email, while just
28% of SMBs have. One of the major stumbling blocks for SMBs has
been the complexity of managing and administering a wireless email
infrastructure.
Mike Houston, Sotto Wireless' director of marketing, said the
goal of partnering with Visto is to make a unified service for the
end users without having the hassle of managing all of the back-end
systems typically required with a mobile email solution. He said
many smaller companies, in the past, had looked at a wireless email
solution, only to come away frustrated with the cost and
complexity. Adding Visto to their hosted services option makes a
mobile email deployment more realistic and doesn't require
additional management resources.
Joyce Kim, vice president of marketing for Visto, agreed. She
said the prevalence of mobile email today has prompted many
companies to look into a solution, only to abandon the prospect.
Offering a hosted mobile email service changes that, she said.
And, according to Warren, CMS is embracing the technology and
hoping to continually add new sales reps and new mobile email
accounts.
"We're going to put this into all of our sales reps' hands," he
said.