Alpha Software Blog

Filter by Category
show all


#MobileBiz: Successful Mobile App Development Requires Including LOB

Amy Groden-Morrison

Each Thursday at 1pm Eastern Time, mobile tech experts Brian Katz of Sanofi and Benjamin Robbins of Palador co-host a weekly twitter chat about mobility trends.  Entitled #MobileBiz, the weekly chat covers topics involving the adoption of mobile technology in business.  On December 4th, the topic focused on "Mobile Mistakes" businesses are making as they rush to adopt mobile devices and mobile apps to better serve employees, partners and customers. (A related article about mobile mistakes by Benjamin Robbins.)

Demand for mobile business apps is on the rise. Businesses are scrambling to develop the apps they need to get ahead of the competition. In the race to mobilize enterprise employees, corners may be cut and compromises made in custom apps that lead to the downfall rather than success of mobile business applications. Not understanding the full set of requirements an enterprise-quality mobile app demands can lead to more problems than solutions for businesses as well.

Mobile App Mistakes

On the December 4th #MobileBiz chat, Katz and Robbins asked a range of questions, from "What counts a mistake in enterprise mobile?" to "Do you think adoption is a key metric to determine if mistakes have been made?"  Tweeters following the hashtag chimed in with what they viewed as top mobile mistakes, including:

    • Bad UX, apps with too many features, or apps that hinder versus improve productivity
    • Poor security, IP data loss or failure to enforce BYOD policy
    • Low user adoption
    • Trying to quickly spin desktop apps into effective mobile apps
    • Focusing on the device versus listening to the needs or wants of the users
    • Forgetting back-end integration before building an app
    • Not having a measurement mechanism to measure if you've succeeded
But aside from technical, UX and security issues, chat participants landed on a key theme that undermines the success of mobile apps: not engaging the right line of business (LOB) groups or users to ensure the value and productivity of an app.  Participants called out problems including:

What makes a Successful Mobile Application?

As the chat continued and more agreed with these sentiments, participants drew on this theme:

It's clear that end-user involvement and iterative feedback is critical to developing a successful mobile app that is productive and widely adopted.  In addition, ongoing feedback from LOB users must be sought so developers can continually improve, evolve and update the app to keep pace with the business and users' needs.

As co-host Palador summarized: "Old thinking is IT knows best. Not true in "mobile" times."

View the full #MobileBiz chat history and twitter feed.

Read about a related Guaridan article that Robbins recently penned on this topic.
Web/Mobile Development, Security, Twitter, Mobile, News, mobile app development
Prev Post Image
The Guardian Highlights Costly Development Mistakes-Mobile Apps
Next Post Image
Gartner: The Future for Developing Mobile Apps is Codeless

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
How No-Code/Low-Code Can Solve Info Management Woes
How No-Code/Low-Code Can Solve Info Management Woes

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