There is seemingly no limit to the positive benefits custom mobile applications can have on a company’s workforce. One great example is MeadWestvaco (MWV), a global packaging solutions company with more than 16-thousand employees. Among them are those whose roles are greatly enhanced by being able to communicate in real-time, no matter where they are.

David B. Johnson is the Director of Commercial Information and Technology at MWV and translates the needs of the business side into language the company’s developers can understand. “The Salesforce1 Mobile App helps us standardize key sales business processes, while offering customization as we need it. This enables our sales teams to maximize communications and coordination across our company,” says Johnson.

Here are three examples of those customizations:

1. Weekly Highlights

Every commercial team member at MWV reports significant highlights to the manager. “Our sales teams are out on the road.  Everyday, every week they're traveling, and aren’t in front of their laptops,” says Johnson. In the past, sales representatives would often sit down the night before a report was due, trying to recreate and capture what happened the previous seven days.

Using Force.com, MWV built a custom “Weekly Highlights” object and enabled it as a publisher action within the Salesforce1 Mobile App. Reps can now record happenings anywhere from their smartphones. The consistency in reporting means managers simply go into the app to create a summary, instead of wading through emails and voicemails.

2. Daily Logs

MWV has a technical sales service (TSS) team from their paper mill that supports commercial reps and customers. This group fills out daily logs of where they are and who they are meeting with. The company was able to replace the previous process, which involved a legacy database, with a simple publisher action created in Force.com.

Now, instead of powering up their computer, TSS reps just go into the Salesforce1 Mobile App, choose from a list of ten activities, and hit save. Commercial reps then have visibility into when and how often their customers need TSS support, and can follow up with them appropriately.

3. Idea Sharing

Because field reps work closely with customers, they often have a great information to share that helps with customer engagement. MWV is now developing a custom object within the Salesforce1 Mobile App to enable better reporting for customer innovation ideas. The new tool will include required fields so all the information needed to move their idea through the approval process is captured.



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