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Dynamics Partner Releases iPad App for Salespeople

One of Microsoft's highest-profile Dynamics CRM partners is looking to expand its business with an Apple iPad app to assist road warriors.

Sonoma Partners on Thursday unveiled the Mobile Sales Kit, which is billed as an "enterprise-grade application for the Apple iPad" that will "replace the stacks of collateral a salesperson would carry on a typical visit."

The Mobile Sales Kit, which sports a "Metro"-style interface on the iPad, synchronizes with Microsoft SharePoint to provide a salesperson with access to documents and collateral while offline.

The app includes intellectual property from Sonoma Partners, a Chicago-based company that is a two-time winner of worldwide Microsoft CRM Partner of the Year awards. (Redmond Channel Partner magazine also named Sonoma Partners Principal Mike Snyder one of the Top 10 Microsoft Partner MVPs in 2011.)

The Mobile Sales Kit also employs Google Analytics to allow users' marketing departments to determine which parts of the app are getting the heaviest use from the field.

According to a statement about the app, Sonoma's plans for monetizing the kit include deployment, customization and training.

Sonoma Partners' swing to bring its Microsoft expertise to the iPad shouldn't be read as an abandonment of the Windows platform, either. The company is already building expertise in bringing the as-yet-unreleased Windows 8 tablet into its solutions.

Last month, Sonoma Partners announced it had developed the "Ultimate Beer Ranger," a Windows 8 tablet app for the New Belgium Brewing Co. -- the Colorado-based maker of Fat Tire beer. The Ultimate Beer Ranger is designed to bring Dynamics CRM information and capabilities to New Belgium's tablet-using representatives.

Posted by Scott Bekker on April 06, 2012


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