Tag: Enterprise mobile applications
Mobile application development is the #1 priority for businesses and enterprises in 2022. Are you well-equipped to plan your requirements and develop a robust business mobile app?
Mobile app development in 2024: Practices you should follow
As consumer behavior continues to evolve, more and more businesses adapt their strategy to earn customer satisfaction. With the increased public usage of smartphones, e-commerce and mobile backing experience a significant boom. A mobile app is essential for running a business successfully, and its significance has been more than ever before.
A mobile app is not just a mobile version of your website but is a crucial engagement and experience-driven environment needed for a cohesive customer journey. A mobile app can help build a strong mobile presence and attract a large audience towards your services or products.
According to a survey, by 2022, there will be around 7 billion mobile users worldwide, and by 2022, it is estimated that the annual mobile app downloads will reach 258 billion.
According to the ContractIQ survey, roughly 62% of businesses already have an app or are in the process of developing one. 50% of these businesses use their apps for support and engagement, 30% for revenue generation, and 20% for branding. Many companies are investing in mobile apps as they help generate new or expand an existing business.
With many countries still under lockdown and others following social distancing, the demand for apps such as digital payments, groceries, and entertainment has increased tremendously. Many enterprises and businesses have resorted to digital platforms and are reaping their benefits.
Here, we have discussed the importance of investing in mobile apps for your business and how it can boost your business growth even during a pandemic.
Why invest in mobile apps?
With more people turning to mobile apps to interact with brands, businesses’ mobile presence has become necessary.
In general, mobile apps help boost sales, provide a better customer experience and become more competitive.
According to a research by Clutch, two main reasons by which mobile apps facilitate business growth are:
- Improving customer service
- Providing a return on investment
Read more: Mobile App Development: 4 Tips To Consider
Five ways mobile apps benefit your business
1. Adds value to your customers
Customer engagement is the most significant aspect of customer relations, interactions, and transactions. When someone looks for your product or service, it’s essential to keep the person engaged.
You will have to increase your interaction with the customers for better promotion of sales.
So how does a mobile app fit in here? Starbucks’ mobile app is the best example of successful digital engagement that’s both innovative and inviting. Its user-friendly mobile experience, engaging loyalty program, mobile pay and ordering, and integration with other platforms and services make the coffee chain a customer experience leader.
To put it simply, a mobile app like Starbucks can offer an outstanding and engaging digital experience to customers.
2. Boosts brand building
In the past, brands used to advertise their services through posters, calendars, refrigerator magnets, billboards, and hoardings. Companies imprint their brand logos on such mementos to increase their visibility.
Today, a mobile app is capable of replacing all these. A mobile application can promote brand awareness and recognition among customers and be an effective communication channel. By regularly interacting with your target audience through the mobile app, you can earn customer trust.
Customized mobile apps help educate your customers about your brand and engage them effectively. The more they listen to you and your sales pitches, the more they will commit to your brand.
Read more: Top Technologies Used to Develop Mobile Apps
3. Increases sales
You can incorporate different loyalty programs into your mobile app. It will make your customers revisit your store (digital/ physical) and spend more time. Offering rewards in tiered layers allow customers to earn better incentives as they move from one level to another. It will help boost brand recognition.
Gamification is another way by which you can reward winning customers and provide discounts and prices to pre-defined activities such as sharing pictures or a notification. Scratch-and-win is another feature that can help raise engagement among users. It can work well for both customers and vendors.
4. Improves efficiency
Integrated shopping carts with food ordering and scheduling allow the business to house these functionalities like a digital footprint within the app. For instance, if an eatery incorporates an online food ordering system within its app, it will more likely see a significant increase in online and in-app ordering. Similarly, if a retail business collaborates with an e-commerce system, it will see a productivity improvement and eventually overall sales. With mobile apps, companies can enhance user engagement with inbuilt scheduling software that notifies users about the schedule.
5. Build a loyal customer base
Having a loyal customer base is very critical for any business. A mobile app is one of the best ways to engage with customers and create a loyal customer base. An app allows customers to interact with your business at their convenience. With referral programs, you can encourage your clients to refer your products or services to others.
If you are not convinced with the above points, here are a few more reasons to consider incorporating mobile apps into your business strategy.
- Notify users about your new offers and products
- Reach out to younger audiences
- Sync email and social media accounts of users
- Stay ahead of the competition
View infographic: All you need to know before selecting a mobile app development method
Consider a few things before getting started
Planning your mobile app
Before developing your mobile app, you must plan. You need to outline details like objectives, budget, specifications, and scope. Get a clear picture of your app before sending it to a mobile app developer so that you can be quoted accurately, reasonably, and realistically.
Choose the right developer
We may sound a little biased here. However, we need to say that we’re helping brands worldwide to realize their visions w.r.t. their mobile apps. We provide consistent, high-quality, and cost-effective results with robust, agile teams and dedicated QA practices. Our software development experts can help you identify your requirements precisely, select the technology and framework needed to build your app, customize the app according to your requirements, and update and maintain it regularly.
Watch video: Fingent can help you choose the right mobile app development approach by evaluating your requirements.
If you’re not sure how or where to start with your enterprise or business mobile app, we’re here to help. Fingent’s mobile app development team has curated an app specification template that is simple and straightforward. Please fill out this template and share it with us. Our expert will get back to you with the answers.
Alternatively, you can send us your requirements and queries by clicking here.
An elixir! But with a Pinch of Salt!
This ubiquitous realm of Digital has not only weaved new waves, but has also unlocked potential problems of its own. But then again, it is the problems when addressed in the right way that brings any technology to maturity. The mobile era for enterprises is still relatively young and the right efforts at the early stages can do a lot in shaping the technology to make it the reckoning power it can be. Enterprises need the reassurance that the potential challenges mentioned below can be dealt effectively, having lesser hassles as we move on into a truly mobile landscape.
Security
The influx of mobile device has given businesses the opportunity to expand into new areas and to get equipped with tools that previously did not exist. The scale still tilts in the direction of being cautious even with these possibilities. BYOD strategies have been reluctantly welcomed by organisations due to concerns of security and the possible increase in points of vulnerability. With mobile, a new kind of vulnerability of possible theft also becomes prominent. Such threats can lead to loss of corporate data, giving unauthorized access to the corporate network. Even though the scale tilts more dominantly to the side of being mobile wary, it shouldn’t be the case going forward. There can be protocols and inbuilt security that can stop a lot of security concerns but refraining from and educating the employees about risky interactions can help the corporates have better control.
Data Access
It is highly imperative that an employee working from the field is not limited to the data that he has. With concerns over security, mobile should not be an inferior option to the connected devices in the offices. Having limits on the way mobile can perform, defeats the purpose for which it stands for, rendering the capital spend for mobile strategy irrelevant. With a good mobile application development policy, data can be provided in real time with the IT having a secure control over it.
Enterprise Mobile Applications
Statistics tells us that employee productivity can increase by more than 30% with an enterprise mobile app. But the problem is, most organisations fail to tap into this productivity due to short-sightedness in the development of the app. The multitude of devices and the OS makes it difficult to build native apps for these diverse scenarios, this along with the lack of skilled developers and testing makes it a headache even with the right more profound. Hence it becomes imperative for organisations to take expert help for giving efficient, swift and functional mobile apps.
Supporting Mobile Workforce
Managing a remote workforce should also have a streamlined process through which IT can support them. The workforce irrespective of their location should be able to connect seamlessly in times of need to take required help from IT. This makes a strong network a default requirement make the enterprise mobility a success. The creation of a working environment in which employees can do what they do traditionally in an office space is the final litmus of a truly mobile workforce. They should not feel limited by the network, the device, the application or the security.
The Mobile strategy is here to stay, it becomes imperative for an organization to develop full-fledged, well-rounded apps that can deliver a consistent experience to the user. Granted using mobile has a few concerns, but these would get rectified along the way. There is no shying away from a mobile strategy especially with the exponential adoption of mobile devices all around, it only becomes a natural evolution of the workplace to rest within the hands of the employees in times to come.
Field service is an industry which owes a large margin of its improvements to mobile applications. It has been leveraging mobile applications for a number of its functions and aspects for quite some time now and organizations have already replaced all of their heavy paper based processes with smart mobile applications. Most of them also continue to migrate their software as well as services and storage to the cloud, by which they allow the emails, photos, documents and other important information to be accessed from anywhere in the world.
According to a research by IDC, the world’s mobile workforce is likely to have grown to 1.3 billion this year. And the American region, including the United States, Canada and Latin America are likely to have seen an increase in their mobile workers from 182.5 million in 2010 to 212.1 million in 2015, with North America in the lead for the largest number of mobile workers at 75% of the total mobile workforce in 2010.
Such being the level at which mobile workers are increasing, there is also going to be an increase in the number of mobile devices connected to the internet, which according to Gartner is likely to be more than 30 billion in number by 2020, generating almost $2 trillion as an economic value worldwide.
That said, since mobile connectivity with the internet is rapidly increasing worldwide, it is about time that field service personnel also utilized mobile applications and start becoming a part of the mobile workforce.
As a matter of fact, the field service industry is one which has a million functions and opportunities to make them automated with mobile apps. It is indeed critical now for them to keep up with the changes and embrace mobility. Using a fully integrated field service management software has to be followed up with a mobile app as well. Read this blog to know the advantages
The field service industry actually needs mobile apps more than any industry
Field agents are almost always on the move, traveling from one job site to another. And they always need access to customer information, invoices, work order information, product or tools information and the like, most often in real-time. Since they go from one place of service to the next continuously, they might need information on their next work order and their next customer as well on the go.
A well-designed mobile app can help them simplify these processes and get things done in a more efficient and organized manner. Since it is cloud-based, it allows the field agents to pull up any information instantly from wherever they are. Hence, it avoids redundant phone calls to find the whereabouts of the agents or the job site and also any delay in information exchange.
It also helps to simplify communication between the field service agents, the providers, and the customers. Many a time, field service personnel have faced challenges in communicating with their team, especially when there are several agents traveling to a particular job site simultaneously. The right mobile app helps in effective communication and better coordination among these agents. This is especially true in case of companies that provide round-the-clock maintenance and inspection support. They definitely need a communication system that spans beyond regular telephonic calls, so that they don’t have to go through the ordeal of making a landline office phone call or enter passcodes and numbers every time that have to connect with someone. They need a system with advanced features that allow seamless communication between field service personnel.
It helps to eliminate human errors arising from manual data entry or paper-based data entry processes as well, which again adds to the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization as a whole.
Added benefits
Most field service mobile apps have many added benefits as well for the field agents, such as:
- Ability to access information related to work history and forthcoming jobs so that they can do the necessary preparations
- Ability to capture photos and signatures while they are on site
- Ability to go through and review their assigned tasks and accept or reject them according to their skills and expertise or time schedule
- An in-built navigation tool that will help them find the most efficient and appropriate route to their job site, thereby reducing travel time
- Ability to request for assistance or advice to other nearby co-workers, while they are on site and ensure that they fix the issue properly
Apart from these, there are a number of additional benefits that are designed to address the many problems that can arise in field service.
For example, there could be chances for last-minute plan or schedule changes, as technicians are always moving from one job to the next. Moreover, external factors like weather problems, traffic and power failure can also cause delay and even render the field agents from reaching the assigned location.
Field service mobile apps have advanced features to track the whereabouts of the workers in real-time and even determine the time required for him to complete a job he is currently at. Hence, the service providers can assign tasks based on the location, current job, skills and expertise of the technicians. Being cloud-based, all the team members can have access to the location of the supervisors or technicians or the customers from anywhere.
Enterprise Mobile Applications
According to a study by the Aberdeen group, “best-in-class” mobile apps are capable of completing about 1.5 times as much work on a mobile device as the industry average and also achieving an average of 40% increase in operational efficiency every year. As a matter of fact, the right mobile apps or the “best-in-class”, can do more than just mobilizing already existing enterprise software. A well-developed and a well-enforced mobile app strategy can actually act as a catalyst for improving coordination and effective communication, hastening the decision-making process and increase the overall operational efficiency of the organization as a whole.
On top of all that, as data gets collected from multiple sources and processes through mobile apps, there is also a chance of collating these and extracting greater, more useful information in the future.
Big data
Field service agents, as well as the providers have access to all information related to their jobs at one place. For the same reason, they have the opportunity to analyze and determine new trends and patterns and use it to make significant changes. For example, field agents assigned to follow up routine maintenance works on appliances and the like, can track the data collected from these works with the help of specialized mobile apps and use it to predict the next maintenance requirement. Hence, rather than fixing issues after they occur, field agents can utilize predictive analysis to be proactive in their approach.
On the whole, there are a number of unique features that mobile field service apps can provide to increase productivity and efficiency of the field service industry itself. It is high time that field service organizations (who have not already adopted mobile apps), encouraged mobility and started using feature-rich mobile applications to solve their day-to-day challenges.
Are you looking to adopt the perfect mobile solution for your field service business? Contact us to talk to our mobile application experts.
Guess what the global population is today! It’s 7 billion and is ticking faster than the stopwatch needle. Out of this, there are more than 2.7 billion smartphone subscriptions worldwide and the figure is expected to touch 6.1 billion in 2020, surpassing the number of active fixed line connections, according to the Ericsson mobility report. By the end of 2020, 80% of the global data traffic will be from smartphones. That’s how fast people are getting the mobile mind shift.
Enterprise mobile apps: does it make sense for your business?
“Sometimes the best way to simplify complex business processes and make employees’ jobs easier is with homegrown enterprise mobile applications.”
The increased global demand in mobiles, tablets and other smart devices in the past few years have led to millions of mobile apps. The ripple effect is not just limited to the common consumers, but is also among the technology giants and SMBs, who consider that having a mobile ready team is vital for the modern work environment. 61% of companies have plans to make mobility their top priority in 2016 and will spend more on software, devices and services to accomplish this. Why? Simply because studies prove that mobile application users complete 1.5 times as much work on their smart device, that too with a 40% operational efficiency every year. Both custom mobile applications and off-the shelf business applications are getting popular among companies. Businesses are found to allow six off-the-shelf apps and five custom mobile business apps for employees on an average.
This being the status, enterprise mobile applications for businesses is not a choice anymore, rather it’s a necessity to stay relevant and in the picture. Apart from the above benefits, here are few compelling reasons why your business should start investing in enterprise mobile application development now:
Increased productivity
Enterprise Mobile apps make it convenient for workers to work. The use of enterprise mobile applications in companies are thus getting huge to collect, utilize, share and learn from their enormous amount of data. Industries (for instance, the field service industry) have been seen to embrace mobility exclusively moving from paperwork to the cloud. It has helped them simplify travel and communication, improve processes and reduce human errors. Companies have realized substantial productivity gains, improved sales, better tracking of work and least sway-offs from set goals, using efficient mobile apps. Businesses are thus going to extremes to encourage mobile application development and its adoption to make employee’s important tasks much simpler, flexible, faster and accessible on the go. It helps reduce the need for them to travel, and trims the time taken to complete tasks.
Employers are gradually shifting employees from using desktops to smart devices, because they know the workers will find it easier, faster and helps them to be in loop wherever they are. And this will in turn keep them indulged, and make them productive!
Better ROI from enterprise mobile apps
Organizations save huge amounts converting their manual processes into apps. Mobile applications encourage employee collaboration and facilitate sharing of the best practices across the teams. This helps create a holistic environment that will benefit the employer, employees and the customers. This in turn increases the ROI on a good enterprise mobile application development. . Out of those who have tracked their cost saving from switching to mobile app, 17% saved around $25,000-$100,000 annually and 81% around $1,000-$25,000.
Developing in-house enterprise applications lessens the security and risk concerns
Apps available from the stores might be too detrimental to the security. Certain apps don’t even encrypt the data they transmit/ receive through the network, and thus is prone to interceptions. Employees using such apps to store or exchange sensitive, confidential company data will be silently and unknowingly compromising the company’s security policies. Encouraging enterprise mobile app development in house is probably the right solution here.
Attracting the majority- the youngsters
The largest percentage of employees in companies is the youth, and is the most prominent users of smart devices. The generation rely more on mobile devices than on traditional PC computers. To make this vast audience satisfied and comfortable, enterprise mobility solutions is the way to go.
Greater customer engagement, service and support
Do you think you can benefit from the ability to reach out to your customers, irrespective of the place, 24*7? It’s just wow! Right? That is exactly why you will need Apps, to connect with your customers and employees anytime, anywhere.
Enterprise mobility is becoming an integral part of business. Businesses will start to own their own Enterprise App stores, and that could be the best thing to do for your company. At the same time, there are certain things that you should know before embarking on this plan so that you don’t set unrealistic goals. To ensure that enterprise app development is a strategic asset and not just another technology investment, you must align it with the company’s goals and policies. Contact our mobility experts to know more about these trends and policies, and to learn how an enterprise mobile app can change your business for the better.