As most of you have no doubt already found, for the serious salesperson on the go, a Palm device is the obvious choice. It's compact enough to slip into a pocket or briefcase, it can be easily carried at tradeshows, it takes up little space on a plane, and it can be easily hidden from the stewardess as she makes her pre-flight rounds to badger everyone into switching off their electronic equipment.

What's more, the valuable information sales people collect can be synchronized with information in corporation servers. That means the organization has access to critical information about customers and the sales staff has access to information that helps them sell more easily. Try that with your paper-based planner! Throw in wireless modem enhancements, and all this information access, including email, can be accomplished in real-time.

The net of this is, the Palm device serves as an excellent sales force automation tool for you or your mobile sales people. As you'll see in the article, "Easy Palm device add-ons that will help boost sales," elsewhere in this issue, there are already a large number of applications available to enhance your Palm device as a sales force automation tool. However, as I learned, Palm wants to go further to make their devices even more effective for sales people, sales managers, and sales organizations.

Palm's Mobile Workforce solutions initiative
I spoke with Palm's Julie Pederson, Manager, Strategic Marketing Programs, to learn more about the sales force automation phase of the company's Mobile Workforce solutions initiative. To quote her:

Our solutions center around the sales department and integration of information between other data repositories within the company. Sales force automation is about more than just the sales individual.

She informed me that Palm views mobilizing your company's e-business as a strategic imperative because the Internet has shifted power to the customer, increasing demand for choice and personalization. The only way to satisfy these demands, according to Palm, is for sales workers to become increasingly mobile and to give those workers key customer and product information at all times.

For personalized service to work, it'll probably be necessary for sales people to go out and meet clients one-on-one. If they have to leave their PC-based sales automation tools behind to do that, then they're not going to be as efficient and productive as they could be. As Julie Pederson said to me, "Palm devices allow you to access the critical information at the point of contact." I think that's pretty exciting.

Palm expands its solutions
Palm already dominates the enterprise mobile e-business market, with 80% of all Palm devices being synchronized at work and 40% of Palm units paid for by companies. In fact, about two-thirds of Palm's over 100,000 developers focus on the enterprise. Even with these impressive figures, Palm is seeking to expand its solutions, especially in the realm of mobile field sales solutions. Towards these ends, they've recently established some interesting new partnerships with key sales automation companies.