Dr. Lakshman Watawala, CTO of Mobitor, a Microsoft mobility partner which develops applications for multiple industries, said that mobile computing can help insurance companies cut their sales costs and improve the ratio of sales to appointments. The ratio of sold life insurance policies to customer meetings has declined from 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 from 1990 to 2000, while the sales expense ratios have increased significantly over the last 5 years, he said. For many insurers, the ratio is up from 3 percent to 6 percent.

Many agents don’t like carrying a notebook computer, considering it too heavy and intrusive for client calls, he noted.

“But without some sort of computer in the field, the agent winds up working on paper at the client site, and then doing data entry back at the office,” Watawala said. “That's inefficient and error-prone. If there's more than one trip back and forth to the office, for example to look up premiums for various plans, it's a real impediment to closing the sale.”

To support agents with a lightweight, powerful device Mobitor turned to the Microsoft Pocket PC which can hold enough of a database to support the sales cycle even when disconnected. It can later connect to a server over a variety of wired and wireless protocols, and run an attractive, smart client application.

"At Mobitor we built a comprehensive mobile sales force automation/customer relationship management system called Mobile Business Manager (MBM). Sales processes are dynamically assembled by MBM based on customer information triggered from corporate systems.

MBM allows the sales professional to enter customer information and initiate a transaction remotely, thereby reducing the downstream administrative burden and minimizing order errors.  The result is a shorter sales cycle plus a dramatic improvement in order value, customer retention and revenue.