Can the iPhone be used as a business tool?

iPhone4We know that the Apple iPhone has been a huge success.  You only have to look around to see large numbers of young people playing all manner of games, listening to music, texting and calling, all from their iPhone.

But what is less clear is how useful the iPhone can be to a business user.  Can the iPhone really help a business man or woman in their job, can it add value and functionality to your work?

How the iPhone has become a powerful business tool

The answer is an emphatic yes, the iPhone can add a tremendous amount of value and functionality to your work… all it takes is an understanding of what the Apple iPhone can really do for you.  Especially the applications, but other factors such as the ability to use email via the Microsoft Exchange servers are also important.

First of all understand that the latest version of the iPhone, the GS, is a powerful minicomputer.  It used to be that the original versions of the iPhone lacked the raw processing power that many people required of their phones, allowing the Blackberry to gain a reputation as being more important for business users… that has now changed.

Because of this upgrade in processing power the iPhone is able to run numerous applications at once with a massively reduced lag time, making powerful business applications a much more viable option that previously.

This has brought the attention back onto the applications as they become more and more viable and useful.  Each application is a piece of software that can be added to the iPhone to increase functionality, and adding the right applications to suit your needs is important.

  • CRM’s.  Customer Resource Managers are databases many businesses use to keep all the information on their customers and clients up to date.  This sort of information can be vital in a variety of manners, including for such business people as a travelling sales person who will need information on the client they are going to meet.  The iPhone has a number of CRM developers on board, such big players as Oracle, and so can offer a wide range of databases that can help business people keep up to date with their clients whilst on the move.
  • Reports.  Using a combination of email support and easy download/upload of documents it is easy to upload reports onto the iPhone for reading whilst travelling.  This can help save time and stop a commute being a wasted journey – by doing your research and reading straight from your mobile phone.
  • Research.  The iPhone offers full web capabilities, rather than simply WAP technology.  This means you get access to all the web for your research – not just the small samples or basic sites that most phones give you – and since it is all mobile technology it allows you to be more mobile with your research than you would with a laptop.

An iPhone isn’t going to take the place of a computer any time soon, but it does add a lot of power and functionality to a business person’s armour.