Gedeon Richter Vietnam (Gedeon Richter) is a representative office of the multinational pharmaceutical company Gedeon Richter PLC. The sales team of Gedeon Richter is already quite mobile, using motorcycles as their primary mode of transportation to meet with clients and navigate the traffic of Vietnam. As with any sales force, the team needed easy access to information and communication, but with maximum convenience and low bulk.

BlackBerry® smartphones were used to further mobilize their on-the-go sales force, allowing them to travel light without compromising the access to company data. With the abundance of Wi-Fi® hotspots available in the cities, they were able to cut data costs, further increasing the return on investment of the mobile equipment.

You may not live in Vietnam and ride a motorcycle as part of your work, but mobilizing a sales force with the proper equipment and keeping them connected to your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution is still a crucial parallel that can be drawn. BlackBerry® Enterprise Express allowed Gedeon Richter to manage the devices and plug into their existing CRM tools and Microsoft® Exchange mail server, rounding out the solution and representing cost efficiency. Check out the PDF below to read the full case study:

If you’ve got a customer success story, don’t hesitate to let us know at success@rim.com. Does your sales force use BlackBerry smartphones? How have they benefited from the mobility and connectivity? Share in the comments below.

As part of our redesign of BlackBerry® Beta Zone, we are pleased to announce the launch of a brand new sub-site, BlackBerry Beta Zone for Business, focusing on beta programs for business software and services.

Hosted at www.blackberry.com/businessbeta, BlackBerry Beta Zone for Business offers a tailored experience for small, medium, and large businesses who want to experience and test the latest BlackBerry software and services prior to their market release.

BlackBerry Beta Zone for Business features a more user-friendly interface, more opportunities to participate, and an improved mobile experience. BlackBerry Beta Zone for Business also features news to keep you up-to-date on new beta programs and events as they become available.

While logged into BlackBerry Beta Zone for Business, you will be able to access all of your business beta programs on behalf of your organization, if your company has enrolled in one or more of the available programs. Your BlackBerry Beta Zone account is valid for consumer or personal beta programs as well. Once logged in, switching between your business and consumer accounts is simple, seamless, and will not require separate login credentials.

We look forward to your continued participation in BlackBerry beta programs.

Have feedback or a question about BlackBerry Beta Zone? Feel free to let us know in the comments below!

The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet browser is far more than a simple application for viewing web pages. It has been carefully designed to provide an enhanced tablet experience, complete with options for customizing the browsing experience, private browsing, bookmarks management, HTML 5.0, Adobe® Flash® and JavaScript® capabilities, location-aware features, and so much more. Consider this powerful tool to be a window into not only viewing and interacting with a variety of web sites, but to also access powerful enterprise web applications.

There are a number of complete and secure web app solutions that you and your business can take advantage of – apps that are designed to offer new ways to collaborate in real time. Access to your internal enterprise network may also be possible from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet through supported VPN suppliers.

Research In Motion® (RIM®) has a large number of enterprise software partners in the mobile industry, and we are constantly working with them to deliver apps and access to web-based hosted solutions optimized for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. This means that employees will be able to use existing tools while on the go.

I’m sure at this point you’re looking for examples. Well, here are seven of our favorite enterprise apps that are BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser-ready!

IBM® Connections (IBM®)

IBM Connections is social software for business that is designed to allow you to “access everyone in your professional network, including your colleagues, customers, and partners” (via IBM Connections overview). IBM Connections was designed to be supported on a wide variety of platforms, including the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser. Through this interface, you can engage with communities, files, wikis, profiles, bookmarks, forums, and much more. It’s as good as it sounds, especially through the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet experience.

BusinessObjects Dashboard (SAP®)

SAP offers a web tool called BusinessObjects Dashboard, which is designed to allow you to create interactive analytics and dashboards with connections to SAP backend data sources among others. These interactive dashboards can be shared via Microsoft® Office, Adobe® PDF, web sharing, and SAP sharing solutions. You can then create, view, and share these dashboards using the the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser with Adobe Flash support.

Chatter® (Salesforce®)

Salesforce.com offers a private, and secure social network for your business called Chatter. This service allows you to increase collaboration within your organization as well as assist with planning and project management. Not only did I test this service using my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, I actually completed the entire registration process using my BlackBerry® 7 OS smartphone.

Basecamp®, Highrise®, Backpack®, and Campfire® (37signals®, LLC)

Back when I was running my own small business, the 37signals services were a huge relief to find. This suite of HTML5 web apps allows you to manage projects, contacts, communications, and collaboration – all through extremely user-friendly web apps. While testing this one on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet this morning, it was hard to put it down. Check out an overview of the suite on the 37signals web site.

Zoho®

On-demand CRM software is available from Zoho, among other services, and is widely used by businesses large and small. The entire Zoho Suite, interacted with via the dashboard, is available as a mobile web application designed for tablet use and is easily accessible using the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser.

Confluence® (Atlassian®)

The tagline for Atlassian’s flagship product is “More Than Just a Wiki”. This statement is true, as I’ve had personal experience working with the Confluence product, which allows for contribution, discussion, collaboration, and indexing of a wide variety of content within an organization (among other great features). Want an efficient workforce? Pool the knowledge and make it accessible. Speaking of accessibility, this one is also available via web interface using the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser. Have Confluence set up on internal corporate servers? No problem – use the BlackBerry® Bridge™ browser.

So as you explore all that the BlackBerry App World™ storefront has to offer, don’t forget to take advantage of the wonderful world of web apps. As you can see, the sky’s the limit with the award-winning BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and its unique browsing experience, which opens up a whole world of possibility for engaging in enterprise apps online.

Are you using enterprise apps, either native or web-based, on your BlackBerry PlayBook? What apps do you find particularly useful?

Salesforce.com, Chatter and all associated logos are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. Other names and logos used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.