Always-On and Connected
In our always-on, mobile world, a field worker with a smartphone must be as connected as a colleague at an office desk. Enterprise mobile apps make this possible while optimizing business processes and meeting the organization’s security and reliability requirements. By the numbers:
5.2 - The average number of mobile business apps employees use daily
240 - The hours of work companies gain per year from the employees using enterprise mobile apps
71% - the percentage of employees spending more than two hours a week accessing company information on mobile devices
The above statistics indicate the growing power of enterprise mobile apps. Usage only accelerated during the pandemic.
What is Enterprise Mobile App Development?
RedHat defines enterprise mobile development as the practice of creating and deploying portable, scalable, and trusted mobile applications to help large organizations engage with customers, partners, and employees. Simply put, its main purpose is streamlining business operations.
Through this seamless practice model, enterprises are now making applications available to employees on their mobile devices without incurring a longer development time. And for many of them, a services-based development strategy with integrated mobile capabilities is becoming the standard norm.
It offers advantages such as increased productivity, lower costs, improved security, and greater visibility and control. With a mobile app, users come to the app rather than the app coming to them, resulting in a better business model for the organization to reach internal and external users and create new revenue streams.
Critical Factors for Getting Enterprise Mobile App Development Right
If organizations deploy enterprise mobile apps without any strategic framework or thinking, they risk disruptions to business operations and reduce ROI. The key factors for an effective enterprise mobile app are performance and usability. Here are some fundamental guidelines to consider:
You need to understand the requirements of your employees and assess whether they actually wish to use an app for their needs.
If your employees use multiple platforms and devices regularly, you must build a web-based application as it can be used across devices.
Security is the most critical aspect of any app, and the app’s built-in security features won’t be sufficient; you must add additional security features and multi-level authentication.
You must gauge if your app has to access real-time information or share data between users, and access the existing data or systems.
If data transfer happens regularly, you’ll want the best encryption methods to ensure that transmitted data is protected consistently and limit data crashing vulnerabilities.
Depending on how well they are engineered, mobile apps can benefit or harm organizations and their users. A poor design can make it longer for a user to take action on the app, while a strong design with ease-of-use can meet the need in much less time, resulting in a high ROI. This is especially true for mobile apps that serve business needs on the go.
Approaches to Enterprise Mobile App Development
There must be a well-thought-out approach to enterprise mobile app development, which can boost employees’ productivity and offer a business edge over competitors. However, the most effective approach is the one that can accommodate all your requirements and optimize development time and the production cost of the app you wish to build.
Let’s examine each approach.
Native app development
Native app development is the preferable approach among mobile app developers. It involves using platform-specific programming languages, software development kits, and development environments offered by several OS providers. So, if you wish to develop an app for both iOS and Android, you must develop them separately for each platform using completely different technology stacks.
A few advantages of apps built with this approach are the ability to support all available features of the desired platform and compatible devices and creating unique user experiences. Such apps also have higher performance, security, and responsiveness.
Cross-platform app development
As the name suggests, an app built using cross-platform development can run on different platforms and negates the need for creating a separate application for each mobile platform. Developers can use cross-platform frameworks and tools based on JavaScript or .NET/C#.
Using this approach means that you can release all your apps at the same time within budget. Such apps are also easier to implement with a faster time to market and reusable code.
Hybrid app development
Hybrid application development can be classified as a mix of native and cross-platform approaches. The application core is developed using standard web technologies and tools like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 and then executed within a native shell.
Apps built using the hybrid development approach offer a regular web application speed and the user experience like any native mobile app. And with a single code base, you can deploy the app across all platforms, lowering the cost compared to native apps. Hybrid apps also have the advantage of hardware-dependent features with access to device hardware components and native platform libraries.
Rapid mobile app development
This approach uses specific code-free or low-code development tools to program simple apps for various business solutions. It’s mostly used in situations where cross-platform applications need to be developed in a very short time.
A major advantage of using this approach, besides faster time to market, is eliminating database coding. Such apps also offer a reusable code base, can fit multiple project types, and is less complex in the development process.
Progressive web app development
This approach predominantly involves using HTML and is specially developed with an adaptable and user-friendly interface for mobile users. Apps built with this approach are easy to use and implement.
A major advantage is that you don’t need an app store to host or download such apps as they can function without a regular browser and can be installed on the home screen of any mobile or desktop device.
Enterprise Mobile Apps in a COVID World and Beyond
As the work-from-home model becomes more mainstream in the pandemic-accelerated digital era, enterprise apps that support intranet and workday management tools, not to mention social networking, are growing in prevalence.
Employees are empowered on the go in remote settings with effective mobile apps, which grant them the flexibility to perform field operations easily, pull information, collaborate, get remote support, and perform routine tasks without being tied to a computer or location.
Predictive of these growing needs, Trianz developed a new web and mobile platform, Pulse, for its employees to pull all of the above together into one seamless platform. As a next-generation digital workplace, it’s designed as part of our focus on the future workplace, which is intelligent and location-independent.
Pulse enables employees to:
Plan, view, and manage tasks and projects and set priorities in real-time
View their calendars and access call directly
Centralize and share documents
Get alerts
Set, track, and hit goals
Access all apps, email, key links, and contacts from a single location
Manage meetings and stay in the know with the latest news and blogs
Socialize and share social posts
Collaborate with cross-functional teams in real-time
The true test of effective enterprise apps will depend on its ease of use, seamless integration with other internal systems, real-time updates, application management, and, most important – security.
