Bluewolf’s Jesse Endo calls on his vast consultancy experience to help companies build quality mobile enterprise apps.
While mobile working may not be a new concept, the explosion of the mobile app is posing new challenges for enterprises considering how to make their workforce more productive on the go. The days of simply trying to replicate your entire business (email, custom applications etc) on a mobile device are long gone. Instead, companies are realising that high-impact enterprise apps start with the behaviours and processes of the user.
Less can be more. Unlike consumer apps, cramming every piece of functionality into an enterprise app isn’t the right approach. Mobile working is about helping users to easily complete the key tasks they need to do their job, on the move.
Based on his experience consulting to companies globally, here are the top five tips from Jesse Endo – director of Innovation at Bluewolf – for a high-impact enterprise mobile deployment:
1. Know your environment
With a multitude of technologies, platforms and flavours of platforms available, how well do you know your mobile environment before embarking on designing your mobile strategy? Do you have a corporate device policy at your organisation? Is there an existing reference point in the native versus hybrid architecture debate? Will your organisation support iOS, Android, Blackberry or Windows?
2. Ease of workflow is key
When it comes to mobile app functionality, simplicity is key and less can be more. Concentrate on a set of common actions that enable or enhance a specific business-level goal or workflow. If the app makes a user’s job more difficult or changes their workflow, they won’t use it.