Blogs » What Makes a Great Enterprise Mobile App?
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Having access to an enterprise application from your mobile phone is each and every field worker’s dream. Having a mobile enterprise application at your disposal can be beneficial for all stakeholders, including business owners, employees, and customers.
If you can create a successful enterprise mobile app, you can have workflow automation, increased staff efficiency, and even a chance to get the jump on your competitors.
What is Enterprise Mobile App Development?
To put it simply, enterprise mobile app development is when you create mobile applications that can serve an enterprise’s needs. The users that you’d find on these enterprise apps are mainly employees of an organization and the purpose of the app is to streamline business operations.
However, since enterprise applications are different from consumer mobile applications, the development involved also differs.
Like other corporate systems, enterprise apps deal with corporate databases and data transfers. That’s why they need to be designed with security and scalability in mind.
Additionally, mobile apps for an enterprise need to be consistent on all devices and platforms, even more so compared to consumer apps as any error can cost the company quite a bit.
This application platform should help grow your business to fully benefit from enterprise mobile.
5 Things to Look for in an Enterprise Mobile Development Platform
1. Intuitive Development Is Necessary
The point of picking an enterprise mobile application development platform is to be in the driver’s seat of the development. It will also be good if you can find a platform designed to smoothly carry out your objectives.
You can try finding one from an existing vendor who already succeeded in your field, so you would be more likely to find a better solution that won’t result in endless headaches and delays.
2. Real-Time Updates
Another feature to look for is real-time updates. A disadvantage with hiring mobile app developers is not seeing what you’re paying for until it’s all done. After that might be when you find the mistakes from the developers.
To avoid this same problem, you need to find a solution that will clearly show the current status of the application while you’re building it.
3. Integration With Your Company’s Business Systems
Your company probably depends on many applications and systems to carry out its daily business process. You should take this dependency into consideration before finding a solution and before you build the app.
It is crucial to have a custom-built mobile app that syncs up with the enterprise’s digital anatomy. This includes having a flexible API entry point that allows easy sharing between the app and the host systems that your company runs on.
4. Security at Every Level
Security is always an important, must-have feature because any time you go online, you have to be certain that you’re safe from any malicious attacks.
This is an even bigger concern if you’re going online with a mobile app linked to your enterprise’s internal systems. The application backend is an attractive target for hackers as it contains valuable corporate data. Therefore, data security is integral to all business apps.
However, since security is a common demand these days, software vendors pay much more attention to it.
Only choose a solution that ensures all types of messages sent through the app are completely encrypted. It’s very important to ensure this feature is included.
Additionally, security means thinking about the users who use the company mobile app. Whether it’s your own employees, customers, or even partners, it’s always good to look for a solution that gives you the option to keep track of your users.
Basically, it is a digital equivalent of a logbook so that you know when people use your app and what they did. If something happens or goes wrong, you’ll know exactly who is responsible.
Even if the problems are caused by an accident, it’s great to be able to trace such incidents so as to help employees learn where they went wrong.
There might be a moment where you have to revoke an employee’s access to the enterprise mobile app. You need to make sure to erase their credentials and all application data on their mobile devices.
5. Application Management
Once the development of the mobile enterprise application is complete, you need to be able to manage it to control people’s access.
You need to be able to pull reports on the app so you can assess how well it is being used and if there are any problems occurring. The quicker you track, the sooner you douse the fire.
Application management is like the reporting and analytics that you use to track a website’s performance. You want people to use your app and make sure they’re doing so in the best way. Otherwise, you’re basically wasting money to build an app that only a few people want.
The data that you track will come in handy when you have to update your program because you’ll know exactly what needs to be done.
Now that you know how important it is to have a mobile app that integrates your company’s requirements, you can check out the factors of a good enterprise application.
10 Factors That Make an Enterprise App Great
1. Clarity of Goals and Objectives
You need to have a clear vision of the goal you want to achieve. Keeping in mind your objective, you can begin thinking about the platform where you want your app to be done. Your idea needs to be concrete if you want to justify the investment. Some goals you can consider:
- Improve customer’s perception of brand experience
- Project growth of the organization
- Increase the business force (partners and employees)
- Attract new customers
- Enhance revenue opportunities
2. Keep Target Audience in Mind When Building Apps
You need to understand the behavior of your mobile users and the way they use their devices. You can optimize the user experience by steering app development efforts to satisfy user expectations.
3. Selecting a Platform for Your Enterprise Mobile App
When you’re building your app, you need to decide which platform meets your requirements best. While no platform has a clear dominance over another, you still need to develop your app for all the platforms on both smartphones and tablets. It’s really important to choose a development method that meets your cross-platform goals.
- Native apps: These are built for specific platforms using the SDK platform, languages, tools, and operating system (iOS, Android) that are usually provided by the platform vendor.
- HTML5-based apps: This is a recent approach used by many organizations with HTML5-based development. It helps them reduce custom development costs for all platforms. Even though HTML-5 based applications are a cost-saver, you don’t get the advantage of using the native APIs and device capabilities.
- Native + HTML5 (Hybrid apps): By including both HTML5 and native development, you can adapt the core functionality of all platforms.
It’s up to you to choose the right platform depending on your business requirements.
It’s important to remember to choose the framework that is capable enough to meet the ever-changing technology and user requirements.
4. Maintain a Policy to Manage the App
As mobile apps become more common, enterprises need to make sure their IT departments can manage what employees install and remove from their devices. You also need to ensure configurations and standard applications are there to help employees derive the most benefit from their mobile devices.
The system of mobile application management (MAM) is about managing apps that are installed on a user’s device. You can already find this type of technology used in desktops, the same has been done for mobile phones now.
5. Security Checks for the Application
This can be the most challenging part of building an app. As mentioned earlier, security is one of the most important aspects of your mobile app, especially for highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare. From password enforcement and data encryption to virus protection, you need strong mobile app security measures to increase data protection and avoid data theft and loss.
6. Regular Data Analytics
It’s essential to know who all use your application and how they’re being used. By keeping a continuous analysis of these things, you can improve your company’s app environment. Some things you should keep your eye out for are the number of downloads, the number of versions, and of course, the number of active users.
7. Keep the User Expectations in Mind
Enterprise apps are used regularly, so the users expect a functional design, favorable loading times, attractive appearance, etc. Your employees are the most valuable resource for your company, so it is essential to consult them and understand their experiences with those mobile app features.
8. Estimate Costs
To make and test an app is expensive and needs up-to-date calculations. When you have an enterprise app, you can actually optimize the processing of the company, which leads to increased efficiency and reduced costs. So before you go and decide to make an enterprise app, you need to study and calculate the purpose and effectiveness of the app. You need to consider the development costs and also assess the capability of the enterprise application developers.
9. Accessing App Functionality
After you’ve tested the final version of the developed app, you need to check out its loading time and functionality. It’s important to sweep for any bugs and other issues. You don’t want a slow and dysfunctional app that irritates users and harms the company’s reputation.
10. Compatibility With All Devices
Every device has its own variations and should be well-tested to work on all devices. This also makes sure that the maximum number of devices including iOS, Android, and Windows are used to confirm the smooth usage of the enterprise mobile application over all platforms.
To Sum it Up
Regardless of the size of your enterprise, the strategy to have a mobile application that integrates your company’s processes is very crucial to stay ahead of your competitors. You can’t escape enterprise mobility, and why would you? Technology has pushed companies to their greatest heights. Technology has also helped schools and colleges in many ways.
If you’re a student who isn’t too sure about college or doesn’t have the support for it, you can get a student support application that can advise you, through data science and behavioral science, on onboarding. The only question is, how soon can you make this transformation for your business?
Technology Rivers has the expertise in helping you create a great enterprise mobile app. If you have an app idea in mind that you want to start developing, Feel free to reach out to us.
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