Empowering your field sales teams with mobile apps is a great way to make them more productive and efficient. Your sales operations team plays a key role in giving your field sales teams the things they need to thrive. Since mobile devices are one of the defining concepts of our current business culture, it is only logical that deploying mobile apps should be an important part of Sales Operations.
In an ideal world, your sales ops team would work together with your IT team to deploy these apps, in a manner that capitalizes on the strong points of both teams. However, the statistics seem to indicate this rarely happens: according to a recent survey by Gartner, 76 percent of enterprises outsource their mobile app development, while only 26 percent develop these apps entirely in house. In this post, we’ll discuss a few of the factors that lead to the breakdown between sales ops and IT, and what you can do about them.
Five reasons sales ops and IT don’t work well together
1. IT slows down the app development process
When you get to the heart of the issue, IT teams and sales ops teams have conflicting priorities: sales ops cares most about getting apps out the door quickly so that the sales team can begin using them, while IT cares most about making sure the apps are built properly, and are capable of supporting the organization’s strategic direction. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking the time to get things right, but many sales ops teams don’t appreciate the delays.
2. IT has a backlog of requests to work through
The reality is that sales ops teams aren’t the only department in most enterprises trying to drive mobile enablement. With so many different groups trying to move to mobile at once, it’s no wonder that IT team often find themselves overwhelmed, and unable to respond to sales ops requests quickly. When this happens, sales ops may find it easier to bypass IT in favor of an external team.
3. There’s too much red tape involved
IT teams are usually beholden to high standards to make sure that all business units are treated fairly and development happens according to organizational guidelines. While this ideal is certainly admirable, most sales ops organizations can’t justify the time it takes for their app development requests to move through the bureaucratic process. They are often the ones with the most to lose when new apps are delayed, so they’re usually also the ones who are least comfortable with waiting.
4. There are competitors to think about
Sales ops teams usually feel the pressure of passing time more, because they are the ones who have to worry about staying ahead of competitors. IT teams, on the other hand, are free to focus solely on building a great app, and see nothing wrong with taking a little bit longer to do so.
5. Sales ops has less control if they work through IT
Sales ops teams often find themselves facing rapidly changing business priorities. As a result, they favor an app development process that is dynamic: as the needs of sellers change, they like to be able to change the app accordingly.
However, this is simply not the way that IT teams work. They feel the need for concrete plans and goals that are set at the beginning of a project, and stay the same throughout the development process. As a result, sales ops teams that work with IT often find it harder to get the level of control they are looking for.
Final thoughts
Although there are many good reasons why sales ops and IT teams don’t work together, the fact remains that they are on the same team. If they can work together to support the needs of the business, they should. Modern technologies such as model-driven development and codeless app development tools can help make this possible. Using a tool like appsFreedom, sales ops can deliver apps quickly that meet business needs, while IT can focus on important issues like security and governance. This means that the company will be getting the best out of both teams.