Mobile-First CRM: How intelligentfood Runs Field Sales on SAP BTP

intelligentfood distributes food products across Switzerland. Their sales reps visit restaurants, hotels, and retailers daily. They take orders, check stock, document shelf placements, and plan routes — all from the road.

Their old system was a patchwork: a desktop CRM that nobody opened on the road, a paper-based order form, and phone calls to the back office. It worked, barely. But it meant orders were delayed, pipeline data was outdated, and management had no real-time visibility into field activity.

They didn’t need a better desktop CRM. They needed a mobile-first system built for how their reps actually work.

Why standard CRM wasn’t enough

We evaluated SAP Sales Cloud V2 as the core CRM — and it was the right choice for account management, pipeline tracking, and reporting. But V2’s standard mobile experience didn’t cover everything intelligentfood needed:

Offline capability. Reps visit locations with poor or no connectivity — basement kitchens, rural areas, underground storage. The app needed to work offline and sync when back online.

Photo documentation. Reps photograph product placements, competitor displays, and delivery conditions. These photos need to be attached to visit reports automatically.

Route planning. With 15-20 visits per day, route optimisation isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between 12 and 18 customer touches per day.

Custom order entry. intelligentfood’s product catalogue and pricing logic is specific to their business. Standard CRM order entry didn’t match their workflow.

The answer: custom BTP applications that extend Sales Cloud V2.

The architecture

The system has three layers:

SAP Sales Cloud V2 — the core CRM. Accounts, contacts, opportunities, pipeline. All standard V2 functionality. This is the single source of truth for customer data.

SAP BTP applications — custom mobile apps built on Cloud Foundry. These handle the field-specific workflows: visit management, offline data capture, photo documentation, route planning, and order entry.

Integration layer — BTP apps communicate with Sales Cloud V2 through its REST APIs. Visit reports, orders, and activity data sync back to V2. The integration runs on SAP Integration Suite for reliability and monitoring.

Offline architecture

The mobile apps use a local data store on the device. When a rep starts their day, the app syncs their daily route, customer data, product catalogue, and pricing. Everything they need for the day is cached locally.

During visits, all data entry happens against the local store. No network dependency. Photos are stored locally with metadata.

When connectivity returns — usually between visits or at end of day — the app syncs changes back to Sales Cloud V2 via the integration layer. Conflict resolution follows a “last write wins” model with field-level granularity, which works well for this use case because reps rarely edit the same records simultaneously.

Photo documentation

Reps tap a button, take a photo, and it’s automatically attached to the current visit report. Metadata includes timestamp, GPS coordinates, and the customer account. Photos sync to an S3-compatible object store on BTP and link back to the Sales Cloud V2 activity record.

Management uses these photos for compliance checks, merchandising audits, and dispute resolution. What used to require a separate visit now happens automatically.

Route planning

The app calculates optimised routes based on the day’s planned visits, GPS position, and traffic data. Reps see their route on a map and can reorder stops. When a visit is completed, the route updates automatically.

This replaced a manual process where reps planned routes the night before using Google Maps. The time savings: roughly 30 minutes per rep per day, which translates to 1-2 additional customer visits.

What Sales Cloud V2 brings to the table

The BTP apps handle field operations. Sales Cloud V2 handles everything else:

Pipeline management. Opportunities created during field visits appear in V2 immediately after sync. Management sees the full pipeline without waiting for reps to “update the CRM.”

Reporting and analytics. Visit frequency, order volumes, pipeline by territory — all available in V2’s analytics. No separate reporting tool needed.

Account 360. Every customer interaction — visits, orders, calls, emails — appears on the V2 account timeline. When a rep visits a customer, they see the full history.

AI insights. V2’s AI flags accounts that haven’t been visited recently, opportunities at risk, and revenue trends. This feeds directly into territory management decisions.

Results after 6 months

Order processing time dropped by 60%. Orders entered in the field hit the ERP system the same day. Previously, the paper-to-system lag was 2-3 days.

Visit frequency increased by 25%. Route optimisation plus faster data entry means more customer touches per day.

Pipeline accuracy improved. Management reports went from “best guess” to real-time data. Quarterly forecasting accuracy improved from roughly 65% to 85%.

Rep satisfaction. The mobile app replaced three separate tools. Reps carry one device, use one app, enter data once. Adoption was 100% within the first month — because the app actually makes their job easier.

Technical takeaways

If you’re considering a similar approach, here’s what we learned:

• BTP is the extension platform. Don’t try to force complex field workflows into standard CRM. Build what you need on BTP and integrate through APIs.
• Offline-first is a design choice, not an afterthought. You can’t retrofit offline capability. Design for it from the start.
• Sales Cloud V2’s APIs make this possible. V2’s REST APIs are comprehensive and well-documented. The integration was straightforward — no workarounds needed.
• Keep the core clean. All custom logic lives on BTP. Sales Cloud V2 stays standard. Upgrades don’t break anything.

Need a mobile CRM that works the way your field team actually works? We build custom BTP solutions on top of SAP Sales Cloud V2. Get in touch.