A field sales app is rarely chosen well in a meeting room. It is judged on a 1,200-dirham Android phone, in a warehouse with no signal, by a salesperson with forty shops to visit before 5 pm. Here are the criteria that really count.
Key point
- Criterion 1: it works without a network
- Criterion 2: it runs on the phones your teams already have
- Criterion 3: the order becomes an invoice without retyping
- Criterion 4: it collects money and proves delivery
Criterion 1: it works without a network
Between Marrakech and the surrounding villages, 4G coverage is patchy. In a basement warehouse it is non-existent. An app that shows a loading spinner when the signal drops is an app the salesperson works around with a notebook. Offline mode is not an option: catalogue, prices, stock, customer history and order taking must all be available without a connection, and sync on their own when it comes back.
Criterion 2: it runs on the phones your teams already have
Equipping fifteen salespeople with new phones costs more than the software. A good app runs on Android 8 and up, is small, and is light on data and battery. Ask the vendor for the list of tested devices, and test it yourself on the oldest phone in the team.
Criterion 3: the order becomes an invoice without retyping
The time saved does not come from typing on a phone, but from removing the evening retyping. The order taken at 10 am must exist at 10.05 in your order system, with the right price and the stock decremented, ready to flow into your invoicing software. If the field app and your tools do not talk to each other, you have moved the problem, not solved it.
Criterion 4: it collects money and proves delivery
- Collection by card through a partner terminal, by mobile money, or in cash with a receipt, automatically matched to the invoice.
- Proof of delivery: signature on screen, photo, geolocation and timestamp. That is what settles the “I never received those three boxes” disputes.
- Outstanding balances visible before the visit: the salesperson knows a cheque has to be collected before taking a new order.
Criterion 5: management sees it that evening, not at noon the next day
Sales by salesperson, by product, by area; visits made and missed; the day's collections. The dashboard has to be available on desktop and phone, and up to date as soon as the sync runs. A drinks distributor covering 900 shops around Marrakech with 14 salespeople saw its figures move from “noon the next day, after retyping” to “6 pm the same evening”. That gap is what changes decisions.
What matters less than you would think
How beautiful the screens look in a demo, how many reports are available, how much artificial intelligence is put forward. All of that comes afterwards. An AI assistant that writes the visit report for the salesperson is useful, but only once the order can be placed with no network. Start with the field, add the rest later.
How to test before buying
- 1Take two salespeople, one enthusiast and one sceptic, and give them the app for two weeks.
- 2Cut the network deliberately during a round and watch what happens.
- 3In the evening, compare the orders in the app with those in your system: they must be identical.
Where Cosensible fits in
Conseilor
is the sales assistant for online shops: it answers your buyers from your real catalogue, in English, French and Darija alike, fills the basket and hands you the order. It cannot invent a price.
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