We are living in the age of mobile, and in this fast-changing technological environment, it wouldn’t be odd to say that our lives are tangled deeply in a mesh of mobile and web applications. Mobile technology has quickly evolved from being an everyday task simplifier into a major business utility. Mobile applications, today, have practically become an integral part of most businesses around the globe. We’ll be discussing the several benefits of enterprise apps and how they provide opportunities to app developers and businesses, along with highlighting the importance of adopting enterprise app development and what it has in store for the future.
According to a research by VisionMobile, mobile application development targets the enterprise market for the most part because business apps are useful and have the potential to generate immense revenue. Business experts look upon enterprise mobile app development as being a whole new ball-game, carrying major pay-offs for both developers and businesses in the longer run. Knowing that this is the easiest way to open new revenue channels, developers need to react quickly to the demands of the customer and deliver efficiently.
According to research by Gartner and Forrester, the enterprise mobile app market will soon see an explosion because it holds immense unutilized potential, and developers need to quickly take advantage of what could be a gold rush.
Following are 5 reasons for why enterprise mobile apps will dominate the future of the business world.
1. Business processes are adopting a mobile-first strategy. Gartner believes that over half of all business process require real-time responses, which can be handled through mobile business apps. As a matter of fact, by 2018, the enterprise app market is expected to almost double. Notable examples from the Fortune 500 companies who adopted a mobile-first strategy are Walmart, McDonald’s, General Motors and AT&T.
2. Tablets are the most popular task managers. There’s an annual shipping of approximately 320 million tablets in the market that are increasingly being deployed for carrying out business tasks. According to Gartner, 70% of mobile workers will be using tablets by 2017. Forrester estimates a mammoth 900 million figure for tablets being used in daily business activities by 2017.
3. Mobile apps are being increasingly deployed for business processes. Businesses are quickly deploying mobile applications to allow their employees to stay connected to their clients while they work, at the same time collaborating on tasks with their team members. Applications like SharePoint, Salesforce and Chatter are popular examples of such software being used extensively.
4. The app security market is on the rise and improving. Security is one of the major concerns in enterprise app development, but over time, this domain has seen significant improvements, and thus, the process of securing enterprise mobile has been simplified. The ease of adopting the latest security with real-time support has smoothed the increasing demand for enterprise mobile apps.
5. Mobile Device Management, file sync services and repository solutions are in demand. Enterprises are increasingly requesting these features, as they have become a necessity in the enterprise ecosystem. Developers are being asked more and more to incorporate all of these features in a single feature-pack, which of course multiplies the value and profits earned by app developers.
Companies, in recent years, have sought to ease their customers’ lives by developing several applications.
Mobility is being used for both B2C and internal applications. B2C applications emerged as particular solutions to boost revenue while also improving long-term customer relationships. Enterprises today have immense opportunities to use B2C apps to engage customers and attracting future prospects. Also, clients are able to reach customer services with much more ease, and get in touch with enterprises through email, direct messaging and one-touch applications.
Some benefits of employing B2C applications are:
• Improved visibility among users
• Maintaining long-term client relationships
• Serving clients better
• Making it easier for clients to connect to enterprises
• Better customer service
• Boosting revenue
• Surviving competition
However, internal applications are the new emerging trend. Companies are looking to deploy applications that are convenient to both the company and its employees. These enterprise apps help regulate the internal affairs of a company and utilize Big Data, while also having self-learning abilities to optimize mechanisms according to work patterns and trends.
Some of the benefits of integrating internal applications are:
• Increased operational efficiency and productivity
• Automated billing systems
• Transaction processing
• Cost planning
• Enterprise mobility management
• Resource planning
There are a myriad of benefits in store for both the companies adopting enterprise apps and for the enterprise app developers. Significant increase in enterprise-wide efficiency, productivity and field mobility is seen in companies that integrate enterprise apps, along with visibly reduced operational costs. Enterprise apps utilize Big Data and optimize information they gather to assist companies in many ways, by using either cloud services or internal software platforms.
The benefits of business-to-consumer apps are many, but greater benefits are being reaped by businesses by deploying internal applications.
Developing enterprise apps provides unique and great opportunities to developers. Considered to be of a complex nature, and being hard to manage, enterprise apps are not as easily developed in-house as consumer apps are. Thus, not only the development but the management of enterprise apps is also more than often outsourced, creating a new window of opportunity for developers.
The market for enterprise app development is booming. Businesses are frantically mobilizing their workforce to adapt to the latest technologies by leveraging their in-house IT departments. As more businesses begin to rely on optimized machine learning and data to increase operational efficiency, more companies will readily deploy such apps. This requires companies to shift their data onto clouds.
There’s a strong realization among enterprise app developers that both maintaining and developing enterprise apps has become much easier than ever before. So, the need for real-time data along with a maturation of the diverse user experience, creates new business opportunities. It is important for app developers to seize their moment and value every second as an opportunity, because, there is increasing competition in a market that itself is evolving at a rapid rate, making it hard to keep up.
To sum up, adopting a mobile-first strategy is helping companies gain the competitive advantage they need to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Not only do enterprise applications help businesses carry out daily affairs more efficiently and quickly, but they open new revenue channels and help companies excel at a faster rate.
Although there are a few challenges, such as security and cost concerns, they can be overcome. The risks posed by enterprise mobile apps are outweighed by the huge benefits mobility has to offer.