4 Content Management Problems Solved by Native Mobile CMS

The discussion of mobile websites vs. native mobile apps comes up frequently with both clients and prospects. While this debate is fodder for a separate post, the vast majority of clients choose to utilize native mobile apps rather than mobile-friendly websites.

Going the native mobile apps route offers a far more rich experience through videos, images, games and more interactive experiences. However, with this rich media come sizable applications that can present several content management challenges.

Fortunately, advances in content management system (CMS) technology are helping marketers address some significant issues to ensure mobile content reaches its destination. It helps marketers achieve their goal of moving toward native apps without the trade-offs. 

Here are four major challenges solved by native mobile CMS solutions:

1. Low upgrade rates

Apps that contain rich media—the kind that perform best in many mobile and sales environments—can be large. A new application may take hours to download, even with the best 3G/4G connection. As a result, mobile workers are less likely to download the new app. This means a field team that is not in step with the latest tools, content, pricing and resources.

Fortunately, native mobile CMS solutions address this problem by upgrading only new or updated content. This means faster downloads and less inconvenience for reps. The result is higher upgrade rates and better alignment with the home office. More advanced solutions will queue content based on file size and bandwidth—holding the largest files until it detects a broadband connection. 

2. Obsolete customer insights

Successful salespeople will tell you to collect a new piece of market intelligence during every call. Mobile apps help formalize this process by reminding reps to log responses when they visit a client.  Unfortunately, without the ability to rotate new questions, you’ll be limited in the amount of marketing insights you can collect—and the ones you’ve already collected may be stale by the time you upgrade the app.

Native mobile CMS enables you to rotate survey questions in the same fashion as content, creating an opportunity to collect real-time marketing insights that represent the pulse of the market. This can mean the different between success and failure in many industries.

3. Poor integration with CRM

CRM solutions (e.g., salesforce.com) are critical for most sales executives. As a result, many companies require apps that integrate with CRMs to ensure that any activities and customer insights are attributed to the correct lead, contact, opportunity or account. However, it often doesn’t make sense to import all insights into the CRM. This means synchronizing contacts between the CRM and the mobile app becomes critical.  Unfortunately, without the ability to dynamically update customer and prospect lists on the device, salespeople are forced to download the entire app (see problem #1) and can quickly fall out of sync. And missing contacts mean missed sales. 

Fortunately, native mobile CMS addresses this issue by continuously updating customer lists and the unique identifiers that link them with the CRM. This gives reps a real-time view of their customer base and access to the most current sales tools—without inconvenience or painful app updates.

4. Integration with existing CMS systems

Mobile apps are still relatively new to most organizations. While companies have invested heavily in traditional web CMS systems, many of these systems don’t extend well to native mobile apps. Worse yet, many companies have also refined processes for versioning, approvals and publishing content to various websites.

So how do you integrate the two? Many native mobile CMS solutions are designed to offer full CMS functionality independently or integrate with their enterprise web counterparts. This means a seamless system that leverages existing process to deliver content to the field.

As mobile apps continue their penetration into the enterprise, these challenges will only get amplified. What are your thoughts? Leave your commends below.