Based on the latest Gartner survey, enterprises are frustrated with developing enterprise mobile apps and are instead refocusing on responsive websites to deal with their mobile needs.
Even among the present enterprise apps, over 806 will most likely to fail due to insufficient data, problem insights, end-user involvement or failure to innovate and grow their mobile apps to meet up customer’s needs. With the odds of success being high, enterprises must take the best steps to create mobile apps for business the best way.
Pitfalls to Avoid while Building Enterprise Mobile Apps
Building and deploying enterprise mobile apps isn’t any easy task and seen more as a high-risk, high-reward situation by most companies. If done well, enterprise mobile apps help business operations run more efficiently throughout the organizations and drive ROI. However, organizations focus on the wrong method of enterprise apps. More frequently, the lack of clear knowledge of what the app needs to accomplish and who the users are, the processes that the app will support, the technology/ platform for execution and its management are the major reasons why enterprise mobile applications fail. So, what’s the proper way to building the enterprise apps? Although the best approach is dependent upon the problem and strategy, here are some general guidelines to create mobile apps for business the best way.
No Clear Scope
The demand for enterprise apps and their scope are just centered on a couple of people’s opinions and skewed knowledge. acmarket In spite of investing a large number of time and money to create a business app, enterprise mobile app development teams work in the vacuum and on assumptions without even asking what their customers (internal or external) want or need. This in many cases can cause a project being scrapped or a failed enterprise app.
The Right Way:
Enterprise apps are mission-critical and supposed to fulfill a specific highly focused task. Therefore, to be successful, companies need to begin by defining the problem to be solved dealing with the end-users and other stakeholders. You have to be clear
whether the app will appeal to employees, customers, vendors or them all?
Will the mobile make use of the latest technology or replace existing technology?
More insights and data points generally mean a better possibility of success. Once you’ve prepared a listing of business processes and roadmap is set up around those processes, it’s time for you to shift the focus to understanding the end-user.
Lack of End User Involvement
60% of workers use apps for work activities yet more often enterprise apps are developed in isolation without talking to individuals who uses it. Therefore, it’s not surprising that among the varied reasons for the failure of enterprise apps, the single biggest pitfall is failing woefully to appeal to the user. The features and functions of an enterprise app don’t mean much, and it won’t succeed unless users begin using it.
The Right Way:
Foremost, companies must avoid the assumption they know what’s needed.
Successful enterprise mobile apps focus on solving one or possibly two problems for the end-user and business. Enterprises should therefore always include feedback from end-users right from the first prototype itself and continuously collect feedback to improvise the app right until the ultimate release launch to be successful.
Employees/ Vendors/ Channel Partner facing apps: Create focus groups for all of them to find out the business issues they face and how enterprise apps can solve them.
Customer-facing apps: A great way is to utilize surveys and focus-groups of current and prospective customers to understand what services/ products they’d want to access through mobile apps, as also the app functionality they’d love to possess within the app.
A comprehensive knowledge of their pain-points, problems accessible and thus a clear vision of app’s goals. Moreover, active collaboration and participation of users can further drive interactive UX throughout the development cycle to ensure a sustainable engaging and ongoing experience.
Poor User Experience
A Forrester estimates that 64% employees rarely use enterprise apps owing to poor design and user-experience. This doesn’t come as surprise considering that many app developers, already having to deal with many pressing issues, don’t give user experience the importance it deserves.
Further, business users, designers and developers don’t see eye-to-eye when it comes to user-experience and UI design often becomes a way to obtain frustration and eventually UI fails to deal with more than one functional requirements. It is typical for companies to want to create a swiss army knife of features, when all they need is just a single purpose enterprise app.
The Right Way:
Keeping things simple is the key! Enterprise apps should really be easy with clean interfaces for usability. App developers must aim to create an application that serves a clear purpose and meets your company goals, rather than wanting to bombard the app with multiple features. An application needs to be user-friendly and intuitive to ensure that anyone can figure out easily and this will only happen when enterprise app developers put themselves inside their end-users’shoes in-order to avoid worst pitfalls of enterprise apps.
Obsolete Technology
Aside from poor UX, obsolete technology and insufficient robust backend integration with backend resources and public APIs in view expanding technology is usually is among the major reasons for enterprise app failures. Many enterprises continue to use legacy systems not compatible with mobile services and thus unable to meet up user expectations for more additions and changes with arrival of new technologies. Enterprise apps also likely to fail and only enhance a company’s pile of’waste of money’projects when you have an inefficient API strategy or your BYOD and MDM policies not implemented and managed efficiently managed
The Right Way:
Robust and secure back-end integration capabilities, right API strategy ensure sustainability and relevancy of the app. Given the challenges of device fragmentation, you need to make efforts to optimize enterprise mobile apps across many different platforms. One solution is choosing the platform and technology stack for your company app with an understanding why your enterprise needs mobile apps which is why business processes, the users’needs and wants.
It could also rely on the option of one’s core audience. While at one-time BlackBerry was the typical for enterprise apps until Android and Apple’s iOS dominated the scene. Both of which may have their very own unique software and interface features. Further beyond the OS and types of devices, there is also an industry or market preference for certain devices that tend to be more popular choice. Thus, as an example in the entertainment industry and retail industry, Apple devices like iPad, iPad Pro are preferred while many major retail and industries prefer popular Samsung or Nexus devices for Android OS.
Poor Post-Launch Management and Analytics
An often-overlooked aspect of successful mobile app is enterprise app analytics and management. While app analytics refers to how the app is used and the way the app is performing and being leveraged by people and helps to offer valuable insights in regards to the app. These records will help you to understand how your app is performing and what your users assert in order to consistently boost your app and its overall performance.
Read More