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GUEST BLOG: ENTERPRISE APP STORES THAT ROCK

Amy Groden
Republished with permission from Apperian blogApperian Logo

Written by Olivia Holmes, Apperian


When it comes to building an enterprise app store or choosing one to deploy, user experience is the #1 thing to keep in mind.

You’ve got a mobile app, but it’s not meant for anyone or everyone, so the public app store is not the place to distribute it. An enterprise or private app store is a the perfect alternative — it’s the mechanism that gets that app into the hands of those specific people, whether they are employees, contracted workers, app testers, students, etc.

The problem is there are a lot of vendors who offer enterprise app stores that were not built with UX in mind, and their poor design just leaves users confused. Chris McLean, Customer Success Manager at Apperian, has worked with many app owners who are putting their app store in place, and along the way he’s become an expert on what makes a good enterprise app store, one that actually gets used.

So whether your building your own or looking for one deploy, tune in to this episode of the “Life in the Mobile Enterprise (LiME)” Apperian podcast to learn what design aspects and capabilities make a great enterprise app store.

4 Qualities of a Great Enterprise App Store:

    1. Great UX – It has a feel that’s familiar. Users know what the iTunes and GooglePlay app stores look like and how to use them. Model your enterprise in a similar fashion, so they are intuitive and easy-to-use to cut down on help desk tickets.
    2. Contains only the apps that are relevant to the user. Your enterprise app store administrator should be able to assign users different roles based on their position and use those roles to determine which apps should be available to each type of user.
    3. Creates a “trusted experience.” Employees should feel comfortable downloading and using the apps for work purposes, knowing that they have been approved by IT. The company deploying the app store should also trust that their mobile data is not at risk. The app store should tie into the enterprise’s corporate authentication, and apps should be wrapped with policies to ensure security.
    4. Customized branding options. The enterprise app store should be branded with the company’s logo and colors, not that of the EMM or MDM provider which would be confusing for the end-user. Make sure to be tasteful with the use of the logo because while it’s important that it’s there, you don’t want to plaster it everywhere, as it can be distracting, and the apps themselves should really be in the spotlight.
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About Author

Amy Groden
Amy Groden

Amy Groden has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security, and Ziff-Davis. An expert in enterprise software strategy and data analytics, she developed marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth for Spotfire analytics products and for a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration company. Her accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, a communication strategy for launching a public company on the NYSE, and leading digital transformation branding for NASDAQ-listed firms. Amy is a dedicated mentor to future industry leaders, serving as a Guest Instructor for the Sales Practicum at Babson College. She’s also served as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, a Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge and on the inaugural planning team for Boston TechJam. Amy currently serves on the Board of Directors for Hearts and Paws Comfort Dogs, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

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.

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