Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) giant Salesforce.com is announcing new features for its Chatter social network’s Android and iOS native apps, as part of a larger effort to enhance its mobile offerings.
Inside the Chatter app for smartphones and tablets, users will be able to view and edit the status of deals in progress, share and view files, assign tasks, start polls and see updates in real time. Some of those abilities are available now, and others will come in the second half of the year. Until this week, though, users have been limited to viewing and posting status updates and browsing through user profiles.
The new functions let salespeople and other employees do more of their work and keep track of projects on the go, whether during the morning commute or outside the door of a potential client. The most talented salespeople might not want to be tethered to a desk to use legacy customer-relationship management software; they want to work with the mobile devices they know, said Anna Rosenman, senior manager of product marketing for Salesforce Chatter.
The rollout follows a Salesforce announcement last month about new live chat and co-browsing capabilities for mobile users of the company’s Service Cloud product.
Stay tuned for other mobile announcements from Salesforce later this year, a spokesman said. How will the company execute on its mobile strategy? Look for it to make acquisitions, as it did for the co-browsing technology. As my colleague Barb Darrow reported last month, Salesforce will “be aggressive and look at everything” in terms of acquisition prospects, CEO Marc Benioff told analysts.
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