Enterprise mobility is the shift towards a more flexible and productive work behavior that is achieved through telecommuting and the growing adoption of mobile and cloud technologies. In 2016, 42% of companies surveyed by Gartner have increased mobile app spending by 31%. What are the benefits of building mobile apps for business?
4 reasons to build a mobile app for enterprise usage
· Higher productivity. The US federal government employees who use mobile apps in the workplace reportedly increase[1] their weekly productivity by 9 hours (which equals to $ 284 billion in annual savings). Field and construction workers, mechanics and even farmers access important data (including instructions, estimates and business emails) on smartphones and tablets. Using mobile apps like Editorial and Contractor Estimate & Invoice, employees can write reports and craft business proposals while commuting. As more companies realize that flexible work schedules reduce burnout and increase job satisfaction, employers tend to focus in outputs rather than inputs. It’s no longer important how and when an employee gets a task done – and that’s why the number of apps used by the average US/Western Europe company has reached 26 (30% of these are custom-made). According to Harvard Business Review, mobile apps increase[2] employee productivity by 40%; · Lower operating costs. There are three ways you can reduce operating costs using enterprise mobile applications. First, you can embrace the Bring Your Own Device trend and even stop providing devices to your employees (in fact, that’s what 38% of companies have done through 2016). After all, the average worker spends up to 2 hours a day on a smartphone; why not let him use a mobile phone, tablet or smartwatch for work purposes? Provided you address a reliable offshore mobile application development company, you can build a high-performance business app for $ 10-30 thousand. Second, you can create educational mobile apps (or use the existing ones) to replace expensive coaches and encourage knowledge sharing. Training apps often incorporate interactive charts, podcasts and videos and are built with gamification in mind (quiz functions). Finally, there are multiple apps enabling companies to go paperless. With Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and Scanbot up your sleeve, you can significantly reduce spending on paper, printing equipment, document storage and distribution. 84% of companies that use “paperless office” applications and systems see ROI in just 18 months; · Smart work environment. There are 6.4 billion connected gadgets worldwide – and the number will grow threefold in the nearest future. The Internet of Things is here to stay, and it’s mobile apps that capture sensor data and orchestrate smart devices. What does it have to do with the enterprise mobility benefits? The Edge, the world’s greenest and smartest building which is mostly occupied by Deloitte employees, uses[3] 70% less energy that the average office building of this size, flushes toilets with rainwater and manages its air conditioning system depending on whether a room is occupied or not. The whole Edge building management system is operated through mobile apps. Using the apps, Deloitte employees can also unlock doors, book meeting rooms and check in to their desks. Thanks to the digital check-in system, Deloitte manages to locate 2.5 thousand employees at just 1 thousand desks (the hot desking concept). Logistics and transportation companies turn to GPS trackers and complementary mobile applications to monitor driver behavior, prevent fuel theft and optimize routes. Some enterprises go so far as to plant GPS trackers on employees’ personal vehicles and work wear to make sure they do go on business trips and increase workplace safety; · Sales growth and increased customer engagement. Currently 50% of companies fail to keep product knowledge up-to-date – and that’s the key reason why sales teams do not meet their KPI. With training apps and constant access to marketing materials, your sales managers can take customer communication to the next level. 55% of companies that participated in the recent Clutch.co survey admitted the primary reason they’d built a mobile app was to boost sales. Prominent retail chains including Target and Macy’s install beacons in stores to deliver digital coupons and personal shopping advice to their customers through brand applications. Last year 50% of Macy’s $ 1 billion e-commerce revenue came from mobile users. There are NFC payments, too. 70% of US smartphone owners will make[4] at least 1 mobile payment throughout 2017– and that’s $ 60 billion worth of sales. You surely don’t want to miss the opportunity, do you?
Enterprise mobile app development trends for 2017 & beyond
· Citizen developer initiative. As we said previously, the demand for enterprise mobile applications will soon outstrip the available dev capacity by 500%. As a result, more companies will turn to low-code and no-code mobile app development tools and build simple apps to facilitate business processes. By 2018, 50% of all mobile applications will be created by non-developers. Mind that mobile apps connect to a company’s server and can potentially expose confidential information to hackers. According to Gartner, next year 75% of mobile app security breaches will be rooted[5] in misconfigurations. If you consider taking the citizen developer approach, make sure to address a reliable vendor to conduct security testing and seamlessly merge low-code applications into your software environment; · Microservices. Microservices are lightweight task-oriented applications that handle every process (email automation, CRM management, etc.) separately. By adopting the microservices architecture, you can easily roll out security updates, build apps using different tech stack and enable your employees to access specific enterprise software functions on a small screen. In this case, however, you need a stable (and highly scalable!) infrastructure to support multiple apps and secure their communication; · Chatbots. 2016 has been all about chatbots. Inspired by the success of WeChat, Facebook and Kik launched bot development platforms enabling third-party companies to interact with their target audience through messengers. Using the Artificial Intelligence technology, chatbots can answer your customers’ questions the way sales managers do, guide them through your catalog and even provide personal shopping tips! Among the 30+ thousand companies that have built Facebook chatbots so far are prominent retailers (H&M, Sephora and 1-800 Flowers), content providers (CNN, TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal) and tech tycoons (HP and their printing bot). Some experts even think bots will replace mobile apps in the near future! We wouldn’t jump at conclusions though. If you’re not sure you should develop a fully functional mobile app for your business, you can test the waters with an AI chatbot and to see the initial customer response. Crafting enterprise mobile apps is not about software as such – it is about the increased mobility of corporate data. Thanks to mobile applications, you can create a good-looking presentation on your PC, upload it to the Cloud, edit the file and revise your speech on the train and showcase your product to a customer on a tablet during a 5-minute coffee break. Provided you address an experienced software developer, your app won’t be abandoned after the first use (like 80% of all enterprise applications!); instead, it will add value to your business.
[1]http://blog.present.ca/4-ways-in-which-enterprise-mobility-can-increase-productivity
[2]https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-productivity-payoff-of-mobile-apps-at-work [3]http://hubpages.com/technology/Internet-of-Things-in-the-Workplace [4]https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/17/the-evolution-of-the-mobile-payment/ [5]http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2753017
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