We are witnessing rapid advancements and proliferation of new technologies in the field of mobility. Businesses are realizing that harnessing these technologies to address their business problems is paramount to their success. Further, CIOs and CTOs are keen to exploit such emerging mobile technologies to transform their business workflows—this paradigm shift is propelling a significant increase in adoption for enterprise mobile apps.

A U.S.-based market research, analysis and advisory firm IDC predicts that by 2020 the population of mobile workers in the U.S. will cross 105.3 million, which reinforces the fact that enterprise mobility is here to stay. Keeping these growth statistics into consideration, enterprises are widely embracing mobile-centric technologies to propel digital business transformation and improve business processes.

Enterprise Mobile App Development Drivers

Mobile technologies are enabling business executives to be highly productive regardless of their workplace or location, which is further fueling growth in mobility. Mobile app development companies are treating this as a great opportunity and swiftly launching enterprise mobile apps to boost employee productivity. While, it is great to see the influx of enterprise apps in various app stores, enough care should be taken to ensure the end-user experience is not compromised. There are a few critical success drivers that should be considered during mobile app development. Let’s explore these drivers:

1) Configurations

Enterprise mobile app configurations can be as simple as providing options to choose a theme, change avatar, re-organize menu items or form fields. So why are such customizations important? Business executives in various industry verticals operate in dynamic business environments, where changes are inevitable. Hence, they must be provided with the flexibility to modify their screens, forms, and workflows as per changing business scenarios. Successful businesses effortlessly adapt to changing business dynamics, hence the same agility must be passed on to their mobile apps. Furthermore, features that allow executives to customize their mobile apps empower them to easily adapt to changes. Delighted with the user experience they would not consider abandoning the mobile app.

2) Security

The security of an enterprise mobile app is more critical than ever because customer data, process details, critical information, reports, etc., are stored in the mobile app. Enterprises do take their mobile app security seriously, as data from the endpoint device is added to their database and vice versa. While developing mobile apps, developers should keep these security concerns into consideration. A mobile app with robust encryption, authentication and secure data management features is always preferred by enterprises over an app that lacks these. There are certain essential security architectures for mobile apps which must be in place before releasing the application on the app store.

3) Updates

Over the air (OTA) updates or app store update channels should be handled coherently with backward compatibility for all types of users. On multiple occasions, mobile apps collect user feedback, sentiment/behavior analytics, etc. Developers should use these insights to improvise and rollout improved versions of the app. Further, all app updates must be clear-cut without disrupting the user experience, irrespective of the platform or device. Additionally, providing mobile app updates routinely assures the consumer and enhances their user experience. In today’s world, outsmarting competition using innovation in mobile space can have a far reaching impact on business growth. Without a proper app update strategy, mobile apps might just become an outdated entity on the app store.

4) Availability

While most of the mobile apps today rely extensively on data or Wi-Fi connectivity to function smoothly, it is a good practice to provide basic functionality without relying heavily on the internet. Irrespective of internet availability, mobile apps should be able to function in a limited way. Moreover, when a user downloads and installs a mobile app, it is the responsibility of the app developer to meet certain basic expectations of the user. Correspondingly, provisions should be provided so that the mobile app can function even in an offline or airplane mode, which helps in retaining users. Mobile app developers should take enough care to ensure that in spite of being offline, mobile app’s performance is consistent and it is able to fetch recent search data using cache. Interestingly, mobile apps that do not depend on data connectivity end up saving precious battery life of a phone.

Summing-up

To summarize users can accomplish complex and time-consuming business processes in a few simple clicks if the mobile app they are using follows these four cornerstone concepts. An enterprise mobile app must provide consistent, simple and enhance the trust of your brand and services.

At Evoke, we care for enterprise consumer’s expectations and offer mobile solutions that accelerate time-to-market and improve quality.

Author

Kankana Choudhury heads the Mobile App Development Practice at Evoke. She is passionate about emerging technologies and its intersection with mobile, cloud and analytics. Kankana worked on some complex business and technology problems and provided effective solutions during her stint at Wipro, PwC and Huawei.