5 Mobile Strategy Secrets that Your Competitors Don’t Want You to Know
With projections of the smartphone market growing more than 10% every year for the next few years or more, and enterprise use of tablets soaring, it is imperative to any business today to ensure a strong mobile strategy. Here are some great thought provoking ways to get ahead of the competition and bring your mobile strategy to the next level.
- Empower in house development teams
With the average cost of outsourcing the development of a mobile app ranging from a few thousand dollars up to tens of thousands of dollars, why not explore the possibility of keeping the development in house, pay a fraction of the cost, and have your app up and running in days instead of months? There are solutions on the market today that allow you to cut the development time of an app by employing a visual drag and drop interface for designing the UI. That said, not all drag-and-drop app development tools are created equal. Make sure that the product you choose also provides developers complete flexibility to also apply custom programming for rich, dynamic functionality for data selection and manipulation alongside the visual UI design. - Capitalize on the benefits of BYOD
Many companies have adopted BYOD policies to provide end users with choice and flexibility. However, BYOD scenarios present significant challenges to enterprise mobile app developers, who now must build apps for multiple OSes and screen sizes. Using a cross-platform mobile app development platform will address this challenge head on, letting you mobilize essential business processes via a single design that is simultaneously available on all devices, changing BYOD from a challenge to an advantage.
- Mobilize internal business processes
It is obvious most companies prioritize creating a mobile solution for their customers. While that is important, it isn’t the whole picture. It is also important to think about how you can streamline internal business processes to increase efficiencies. For instance, it would really help productivity by taking all of your human resources forms and having them accessible via mobile apps, so your employees can request vacation days or submit expense reports on the fly. Wouldn’t that be nice? This idea can be taken to any department in your organization to streamline processes and create happier (read: more productive) employees. Take this mobile strategy to the next level and mobilize your up-to-the-minute sales reports or marketing analytics dashboards so employees have anytime, anywhere access. Suddenly, you’re a hero and your colleagues are accomplishing more than they knew was possible.
- Choose native apps vs. HTML5
Everyone can agree that native apps are inherently better because of the added functionality and features a native app can utilize on each device vs. a generic, one-size-fits-all HTML5 app. Traditionally however, native apps take longer because it is assumed you have to develop 3+ native apps instead of one for them to be accessed on any device platform. There are several products on the market today that do make it possible to design and develop a sophisticated mobile application one time and deploy it cross-platform natively. Cross platform development products tend to vary in expense in a way that’s not always proportionate to functionality provided. Be sure that whichever solution you choose, it fits your need for development speed and sophistication, and the constraints of your budget.
- Rethink your definition of “mobile”
A successful mobile-first approach in the enterprise must take into account that it is the user who is mobile, and the device is secondary. While employees require native smartphone or tablet access to enterprise app solutions, they also spend significant time on a laptop or desktop computer each day, making it imperative that a solution can be accessible on any device, at any time for ultimate flexibility and functionality. Make sure whatever solution you choose doesn’t neglect desktop users, or users who vacillate between phone, tablet, and laptop throughout the day, which, let’s face it, is pretty much all of us.
At Altova, we believe enterprise mobility should be fast, easy, and open doors to functionality beyond that available in desktop-only apps. If you need a mobile development platform that addresses all these issues, then we invite you to learn more about Altova MobileTogether.