I have a vision. A vision that one day sales teams of every size can seamlessly share their presentations with each other and every client they meet without restrictions. 

In my work with some of the largest and most powerful sales teams across the country, I’ve found that one of the biggest fears plaguing mobile sales teams is a fear that their devices and presentation applications will fail when they enter a new conference room to pitch a potential client. What if I didn’t download the most recent version of the deck? What if my connection cable isn’t compatible with their projector? What if I can’t access my VPN because of the network firewalls? What if I have an Apple table but they have a Samsung smart TV?

While there are more mobile devices and apps available now than ever before, this influx of brand and application choices causes heightened fragmentation of the mobile market, pushing us further and further away from achieving seamless mobile connections.

In October 2013, Gartner released their annual Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for the upcoming year, which included four key obstacles that face our technology landscape and inhibit true mobility.

Trend 1: Mobile device diversity management

“Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make 'everything everywhere' strategies unachievable.”

The powerhouse technology companies like Apple and Google are creating more and more consumer-facing gadgets and devices, making my vision of a holistic ecosystem of seamless content connections seem like a pipe dream. In the enterprise, we should not be focus on spending budgets on the latest and greatest hardware, especially when employees are expecting BYOD privileges, but rather focus on investing in the software and applications running on these devices.

There will always be a new iPhone, Android, Windows or X brand device that pops up onto the market – that’s not something that your company can control. But what you can control is making sure the sales software and platform your team is using exceeds their expectations and enhances the sales cycle.

Trend 2: Cloud/Client Architecture

“The increasingly complex demands of mobile users will drive apps to demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.”

It’s predicted that by 2017, 90% of enterprise apps will be both desktop and mobile (Gartner Predicts, 2012). Because of this exponential increase in apps demanding both server-side computing and storage capacity, companies need to integrate lightweight applications into their existing storage applications and CRMs to add increased mobility and functionality.

Maintaining one central CRM will reduce employee confusion, version control and security risks, while streamlining your sales team’s process.

Trend 3: Software Defined Anything (SDx)

“While openness will always be a claimed vendor objective, different interpretations of SDx definitions may be anything but open. Vendors of SDN (network), SDDC (data center), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure) technologies are all trying to maintain leadership in their respective domains, while deploying SDx initiatives to aid market adjacency plays.”

First of all, this needs to change. Openness is the key to building successful products and applications designed for an enterprise’s specific needs and needs to be  embraced by all vendors. Until we break down the walls between the major technology giants like Google and Apple, our CIOs and IT teams will always be mandating BYOD restrictions and security walls, sales teams will be forced to use devices and hardware that they are not familiar with, and true mobility and seamless connections across every point of our lives cannot be achieved.

While our devices and smart technology connect us to the Internet and a plethora of information like never before, I believe we need to establish a seamless way of connecting the content and data within those devices to fully achieve true mobility. 

About the Author

Jamie develops strategic business partnerships in the U.S. and oversees integration of Shodogg’s ScreenDirect platform with clients. Prior to Shodogg, Jamie was a media sales executive with Warner Bros. as well as Turner Broadcasting managing a team of planners and reps that generated over $500 million in sales for TBS, TNT and TruTV networks. www.shodogg.com

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