5 Ways to Build Enterprise Mobile Apps The Right Way

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5 Ways to Build Enterprise Mobile Apps "The Right
Way"
78 enterprise apps are abandoned after their
first use According to latest Gartner survey,
enterprises are frustrated with developing
enterprise mobile apps and are instead
refocusing on responsive websites to address
their mobile needs. Even among the existing
enterprise apps, more than 80 will most likely
to fail because of lack of data, problem
insights, end user involvement or failure to
innovate and grow their mobile apps to meet
customers needs. With the odds of success being
high, enterprises must take the right steps to
build mobile apps for business the right way.
Pitfalls to Avoid while Building Enterprise
Mobile Apps
Building and deploying enterprise mobile apps is
no 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 wrong approach to
enterprise apps. More often, the lack of clear
understanding of what the app needs to do and who
the users are, the processes that the app
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• will support, the technology/ platform for
  execution and its management are often the major
  reasons why enterprise mobile applications fail.
  So, what is the right way to building the
  enterprise apps? Although the right approach
  depends on the situation and strategy, here are
  some general guidelines to build mobile apps for
  business the right way.
• No Clear Scope
• Often the demand for enterprise apps and their
  scope are simply based on a few peoples
• opinion and skewed knowledge. In-spite of
  investing huge amount of time and money to create
  a business app, enterprise mobile app
  development teams work in vacuum and on
  assumptions without even asking what their
  customers (internal or external) want or need.
  This in many cases can lead to project being
  scrapped or a failed enterprise app.
• The Right Way
• Enterprise apps are mission-critical and meant to
  fulfil a specific highly focused task. Therefore,
  to be successful, companies need to start by
  defining the problem to be solved working with
  the end users and other stakeholders. You must
  be clear
• whether the app will cater to employees,
  customers, vendors or all of them?
• Will the mobile utilize latest technology or
  replace existing technology?
• More insights and data points generally mean
  greater chance of success. Once youve prepared
  a list of business processes and roadmap is
  established around those processes, its time 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 people who will use
  it. Therefore, its not surprising that among the
  varied reasons for failure of enterprise apps,
  the single biggest pitfall is failing to cater to
  the user. The features and functions of an
  enterprise app dont mean much, and it wont
  succeed unless users start using it.
• The Right Way
• Foremost, companies must avoid the assumption
  that they know what is needed.

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• Customer-facing apps A great way is to use
  surveys and focus-groups of current and
  prospective customers to understand what
  services/ products they would want to access
  through mobile apps, as also the app
  functionality they would love to have within the
  app.
• A thorough understanding of their pain-points,
  problems at hand and thus a clear vision of apps
  goals. Moreover, active collaboration and
  participation of users can further drive
  interactive UX during 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 doesnt come as surprise
  considering that many app developers,
• already having to deal with many pressing issues,
  do not give user experience the importance it
• deserves.
• Further, business users, designers and developers
  do not see eye-to-eye when it comes to user-
• experience and UI design often becomes a source
  of frustration and eventually UI fails to
  address one or more functional requirements. It
  is typical for companies to want to build a Swiss
  army knife of features, when all they need is a
  single purpose enterprise app.
• The Right Way
• Keeping things simple is the key! Enterprise apps
  should be easy with clean interfaces for
• usability. App developers must aim to build an
  app that serves a clear purpose and meets your
  business goals, rather than trying to bombard the
  app with multiple features. An app has to be
  user-friendly and intuitive so that anyone can
  figure out easily and this can only happen when
  enterprise app developers put themselves in their
  end-users shoes in-order to avoid worst
  pitfalls of enterprise apps.
• Obsolete Technology
• Apart from poor UX, obsolete technology and lack
  of robust backend integration with backend
  resources and public APIs in view expanding
  technology is often 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
  user expectations for more additions and changes
  with arrival of new technologies. Enterprise
  apps also likely to fail and only add to a
  companys pile of waste of money projects if
  you have an inefficient API strategy or your BYOD
  and MDM policies not implemented and managed
  efficiently managed

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It may also depend on the choice of your core
audience. While at one-time BlackBerry was the
standard for enterprise apps until Android and
Apples iOS dominated the scene. Both of which
have their 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, for instance 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 often the app
is used and how the app is performing and being
leveraged by people and helps to give valuable
insights about the app. This information will
help you to understand how your app is performing
and what your users are saying so you can
consistently improve your app and its overall
performance. The Right Way An app isnt
successful unless it drives engagement. App
developers must therefore build analytics into
the app to help the company understand the mobile
app user experience. By regularly testing the
app to improve performance and using the
analytics tool to measure adoption and
engagement helps companies identify problem and
usability issues. Key metrics to track mobile
app analytics include App Users, Crash Reporting,
Session Lengths, Performance Analytics,
Monetization Metrics. By continuously monitoring,
analysing and managing your business app to
adapt to the changing demands of your app users
and constantly changing technologies will make a
dramatic difference in the popularity, lifecycle
and eventually success of your business
app. Make enterprise mobile apps work for you by
partnering with Cygnet today. Our expert team of
enterprise mobile app developers translate
business logic to engaging app experiences.