Alpha Software Blog



Better Enterprise Mobile Apps In Three Steps


Users demand better enterprise apps

Users demand better enterprise mobile apps


Businesses users demand better enterprise mobile apps, but writing a great enterprise mobile app takes a lot more than just the technical aspect of building it. If you don’t consider the app’s primary purpose and how it will actually be used, you’re courting disaster --- an app that no one uses.

Robert Sheldon of Search Mobile Computing has some very good advice for enterprise developers who want to build the best mobile apps. As a start, he warns, “Even an internal app that serves only a small group of employees requires careful planning and attention to the many factors that go into application development. If an app doesn't make workers' jobs easier and enhance their productivity, chances are that app will fail.”

Here’s three steps to writing apps he recommends in his blog “What developers need to know about building mobile apps for business.”

Step 1: Learn what users really need

It’s easy to make assumptions about what users are looking for in a mobile app --- and frequently, those assumptions are wrong. Sheldon says, “Development teams often ignore what their users want or need, failing to take into account their perspectives until it's too late.” So he recommends that developers conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups, or use other ways to understand the culture that an app will be used in, as well as what users want in apps. He concludes: “If they [developers] don't take the time to understand users, they are much more likely to develop an app that fails.”

Step 2: Identify tasks and workflows

Developers need to do more than just understand users’ overall needs to deliver better enterprise mobile apps— they must intimately understand the problems users need solved, and the features they need to solve those problems. And they must also “take into account the different roles users play and how those roles translate to the tasks they perform each day,” in Sheldon’s words.

Understanding that is part of developer outreach to users. Based on what developers find out from users, they need to clearly define the app’s purpose, and then map out the required workflows for it.

Step 3: Choose platforms, devices and app types

Before writing an app, make sure you clearly know what platforms it will be written for: iOS, Android, Windows or others. Global audiences favor Android; enterprises tend to skew towards iOS. Decide which OS versions to support, only the latest, or earlier ones as well. How about device type? Will it be for smartphones or tablets --- or both?

Finally, decide how to write the app. Will it be native, web-based, or hybrid? At Alpha Software, we recommend a write-once and deploy-everywhere solution for this, by building the mobile app and deploying it to any mobile platform.

Alpha Anywhere is the ideal tool for building better enterprise mobile apps. Find out how Alpha Anywhere lets you build building native-quality, cross platform web and mobile business applications.
Prev Post Image
Low-Code Development: The Best Recipe for Mobile and Web App Development
Next Post Image
Design Data-Driven Mobile Applications With Great User Experience

About Author

Amy Groden-Morrison
Amy Groden-Morrison

Amy Groden-Morrison has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security and Ziff-Davis. Most recently she was responsible for developing marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth rate for analytics products at a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration Software Company. Her past accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, launching an events company on the NYSE, rebranding a NASDAQ-listed company amid a crisis, and positioning and marketing a Boston-area startup for successful acquisition. Amy currently serves as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Launch Smart Clinics, and on the organizing team for Boston TechJam. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

Related Posts
Top Security Concerns for Low-code and No-code Development
Top Security Concerns for Low-code and No-code Development
What Are Super Apps? Get the Facts
What Are Super Apps? Get the Facts
Mobile’s Role in Customer & Employee Experiences
Mobile’s Role in Customer & Employee Experiences

The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

Comment