Enterprise Mobile Apps: Are You Ready To Enter The Ring?

TABLE OF CONTENTS: GOING TOE-TO-TOE 3 ROUND 1: ARE YOU READY TO COME OUT SWINGING?

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ROUND 2: REMEMBER WHO YOU’RE FIGHTING FOR

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ROUND 3: WHAT’S YOUR STYLE - EAGLE OR OWL?

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ROUND 4: GET IN SHAPE BEFORE THE BELL RINGS

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ROUND 5: STICK WITH THE JABS AND FORGET THE HAYMAKERS

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ROUND 6: WATCH YOUR BACK 6 ROUND 7: STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT

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ROUND 8: IF YOU DON’T ADAPT, YOU’LL TAKE IT ON THE CHIN

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ROUND 9: KEEP YOUR GUARD UP WITH ENTERPRISE-GRADE SECURITY

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ROUND 10: YOU’VE FINISHED THE DEVELOPMENT … NOW WHAT?

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IT’S A UNANIMOUS DECISION 8 SELF-EVALUATION: ARE YOU READY TO ENTER THE RING?

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GOING TOE-TO-TOE When it comes to mobile applications for the enterprise, the stakes couldn’t be higher as companies scramble to deliver applications to internal stakeholders and external customers. What are the keys to winning the battle in delivering mobile apps? In almost all cases, it comes down to how quickly, flexibly and cost-effectively you can deliver innovative functionality that makes a difference for your business. But these aren’t merely 99 cent one-size-fits-all apps, they’re competitive differentiators. But despite the business need, most big companies are bogged down in technology debates, including existing investment in gated “app stores” and incompatible tools. As a result, we have a loud - but ultimately unimportant - battle raging. In response, we believe it’s time to stop the bickering and focus on the business problems enterprises need to solve immediately. When the bell rings, will you be ready? Different approaches to mobile app development present varying strengths and weaknesses. It’s not a simple choice between tools – it’s about identifying and embracing the right strategy for your enterprise. You need to understand your business needs and make the right choices that give your enterprise the best opportunity to make the most of its mobile app initiatives. That means a focus on user needs, engineering/design simplicity, adaptability, costeffectiveness, and speed.

Before you step into the ring – and fend off conflicting opinions and tech hype, get the unadulterated facts. Here’s what you need to know to get it right the first time. Round 1: Are You Ready To Come Out Swinging? The mobile space is white-hot and everyone wants to get in on the action. But savvy executives know that there’s more to a mobile strategy than riding the coattails of a hot trend. Unless you put the business first, your mobile-applications strategy will be down for the count before you even get started. Some of the key areas to consider: mm Are you solving an immediate business need? mm Where will you be adding business value? How will you measure that value? mm Do you understand how data will flow in and out of the app? Remember, enterprise mobile apps tie into back-end systems and databases. mm Do you have mobile development and deployment expertise and resources? mm What mobile devices will be used? Will you need a native user experience per device type? mm Have you identified key users and business experts who can help build and validate the mobile app?

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GOING TOE-TO-TOE Round 2: Remember Who You’re Fighting For Remember, you’re battling for your users. Always focus on what they need to get their jobs done and the value and return you can provide to them. Make sure you have a clear picture of what your users do each day. Recognize that mobile apps cannot merely replace existing applications. Instead, make sure your new apps enhance the user’s workflows by streamlining processes, cutting steps, and accelerating cycles. If you understand and respond to their pain points, you will see faster adoption and happier users. However, it is important to not over-analyze requirements. Instead, work iteratively, get prototypes and early versions out to users quickly, and expect requirements to change and evolve over time. Round 3: What’s Your Style - Eagle or Owl? It can be tempting to dive in head-first and iterate/ refine your mobile app through rapid updates. Or maybe you’re the type who likes to proceed more cautiously, waiting for mobile-development technologies to mature before taking the plunge. Either way, it’s essential to ensure you have the right resources aligned with your strategy to build the mobile apps your enterprise users need.

mm What’s the pace of innovation in your industry? Are your competitors early adopters? mm Is your goal to evaluate, build and maintain a mobile technology stack – or to deliver rapid business value. Build the best app possible within your schedule and budget constraints to solve a business problem in the best way possible. mm When time-to-market is a key criteria, you need cost-effective development strategies – not rare or esoteric IT skills. With a more pragmatic approach and a good productivity platform, you can develop, modify, and publish faster. And faster development means faster value. Beware that even if your company is more owl than eagle, enterprise mobile opportunities can change your perspective. One Fortune 100 insurance company saw an opportunity to be a first-mover by offering a mobile app for employee benefits. By moving quickly, focusing tightly on business value, and leveraging a rapid application development platform, the insurer beat competitors to market and created a new marketing differentiator. That’s just one example of a company building a new system of engagement - not worrying about technology stacks.

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GOING TOE-TO-TOE Round 4: Get In Shape Before The Bell Rings Every insider knows that success depends heavily on all of the behind-the-scenes work. The fact is, mobile applications aren’t self-contained pockets of functionality. They’re part of a wider and broader IT ecosystem.

Round 5: Stick With The Jabs And Forget The Haymakers Unlike massive monolithic applications like ERP or CRM, with mobile apps, it’s all about simplicity. Don’t lose sight of the goal: bringing information and services to your users around the world.

To be effective, your on-the-go users need to seamlessly plug into your IT infrastructure, tap the underlying foundation, and fully participate in your workflows and business processes – wherever and whenever they want.

Don’t attack the user with millions of features and options. Instead, shield your users from underlying complexities that hinder adoption and use. It’s far better to avoid the temptation to over-engineer the mobile app than to lard it down with countless bells and whistles that are unlikely to be used and difficult to learn.

To achieve this, you need to consider:

What’s more, this focus on simplicity will create faster development cycles. Users don’t want to wait for months and months for a bloated mobile app, 90 percent of which will never get used.

mm With what system do you need to integrate? mm How does your mobile app strategy tie into your overall application portfolio? mm Are you building a customer facing app? mm How prepared is your existing infrastructure for mobile-enablement? mm What kind of processes are being extended or replaced (e.g. fax, phone, mail, e-mail) or are they entirely new processes? mm How are those processes integrated in the “heavy lifting” that happens behind the scenes?

mm Carefully analyze the user experience. What is the primary function of the app? mm Limit the functionality and keep the user experience simple and focused. mm Be cautious about adding incremental features unless they are unobtrusive and respond to high demand from your users. mm Don’t forget that mobile users have higher expectations towards usability and general aesthetics.

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GOING TOE-TO-TOE Round 6: Watch Your Back

Round 7: Strike While The Iron Is Hot

With all of the fanfare surrounding mobile apps, it is easy to overlook the basic practicalities of day-to-day app use across an organization. Not only will you have to monitor and report on the use of the mobile app, most often you’ll need to complete processes on the back end that are initiated on the mobile device.

When it comes to mobile application development, there’s no substitute for speed. Companies no longer have the luxury of lengthy development cycles. Instead, they need to pounce – and that isn’t possible unless you can create the apps – that drive the business in the right direction.

That means things like granting approvals, reviewing inquiries, processing data, and more. Furthermore, not all potential users will have mobile devices - they may want to perform the exact same tasks that the mobile app provides through a standard Web browser on a desktop/laptop computer.

Unlike typical enterprise Web applications, mobile applications have been preceded by a massive app economy that serves consumers. This reversal of innovation has created expectations for enterprise mobile apps that were conceived in the consumer mobile app economy. For this reason, even enterprise users expect fast time-to-market and consistent updates and improvements.

mm Do you have front-to-back processes mapped out? mm Do you have the tools to manage and report on the data that is generated by mobile app users? mm Is there interaction needed between mobile users and back-office staff?

mm Ensure a proper match/fit between functionality needs and time-to-market constraints. mm Identify current resources for mobile application development, as well as the gaps to be filled.

mm Do you have appropriate applications for the back-office users?

mm Don’t waste time looking for expensive and scarce Objective C talent when your app could have already deployed.

mm Will there be users who need the functionality of the mobile app on their desktop computer?

mm Focus on experts who know the business and can identify and map out the winning apps.

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GOING TOE-TO-TOE Round 8: If You Don’t Adapt, You’ll Take It On The Chin

Round 9: Keep Your Guard Up

It’s understandable; your launch date can feel like the finish line. But experts know: it’s not the finish line – it’s more like the starting line. That’s because, once your mobile app is up and running, your users will only be too happy to tell you everything they’d like you to fix and change. Be ready to listen and act accordingly. Only the adaptable survive!

When you’re creating enterprise mobile applications, IT governance and risk-management issues should be top-of-mind. Except for specific use-cases, most companies strongly prefer to store data on a centrally managed, secure data center (in either a public or private cloud) – not on an employee’s mobile device.

The new mantra is: build it fast and change it fast (yet another reason not to over-engineer a mobile app). As you think about your “mobility agility,” consider the following: mm What’s your feedback mechanism? What’s the systemic strategy for gathering, consolidating, and analyzing feedback to ensure responsiveness? mm Choose wisely. The emphasis on nimble, rapid development means that the technology decisions you make today will determine how quickly you can fix those bugs, add those features, and tweak that interface tomorrow. mm How adaptable is your technology to new needs? Can you accommodate innovation to extend the life and utility of your mobile apps? mm Last – but not least – the often unexpected hit: What does it take to change an app after it has been deployed?

The cloud not only gives you fast deployment and pushes updates to users immediately, it also gives you full control of your organization’s data. Other security issues to consider: mm How do you define and enforce user access rights and password policies? mm Do you have a mechanism to provision and deprovision users remotely and quickly? mm Can you ensure all users are on the most current version? mm What’s your strategy to ensure critical fixes are available to all users immediately? mm Where is your data being stored? mm Will you have sensitive data on a mobile device and if so, how will you manage any lost or stolen devices? mm How is your app documented and maintained?

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GOING TOE-TO-TOE Round 10: You’ve Finished Development...Now What? Your development is complete (well, for the moment, anyway). But what happens next can be just as important as your development cycle. In fact, your work has really just begun. Because, without user training, adoption, distribution channels, and more – all of your hard work can be for naught. You want your mobile app team to remain focused on their expertise – understanding user needs and business challenges, structuring business processes, understanding and improving user experiences, integrating with existing systems, and building great enterprise apps for mobile devices. So, should you take on the infrastructure investments and resource commitments required to deploy mobile apps – or take advantage of ready-made environments in the cloud? With its speed, security, and enterprise-class service levels, the public cloud has become a much more appealing and acceptable alternative for enterprises deploying mobile apps. mm Do you have a ready-to-go deployment environment?

mm How will your users access the application – downloading from an internal or external app store, dynamically through a mobile website, or a combination? mm What are your plans to train users and maintain the app? It’s A Unanimous Decision When you’re creating enterprise mobile applications, it’s essential to keep both strategic perspectives in mind – enterprise and mobile – and save the tactical debates over tools for others. Concentrate on the business needs. Don’t forget the integration. Focus on simplicity of design and development. Keep the user’s experience in mind and always deliver value to that user. Take advantage of ready-to-go Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) to minimize opportunity cost maximize business value. Most importantly, adopt a discipline and perspective that emphasizes speed, agility, and cost-effectiveness. And when you’re ready to go mobile, you’ll be ready to get it right the first time and achieve decisive success.

mm How scalable is the deployment environment and how quickly can you respond to unexpected increases in demand?

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SELF-EVALUATION: ARE YOU READY TO ENTER THE RING? Ask Yourself...

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1. Does your proposed mobile app solve a clear, identifiable pain? 2. Is your team ready with enough cross-trained developers? 3. Will you need to train new members for specific mobile technologies? 4. Do you have expertise in mobile-user experience? 5. Are you using an agile methodology to keep up with changing requirements? 6. Is your mobile strategy part of your existing app delivery processes? 7. Will existing systems be changed or migrated? 8. Will existing business processes be modified? 9. Do you have business unit and end-user stakeholders in place? 10. Are you working to foster business collaboration and open feedback? 11. Do you have back-office functionality for your mobile apps so that back-end users can access the app from standard computers and browsers? 12. Does your mobile app comply with appropriate security standards? 13. Do you have a scalable deployment environment in place? 14. Can you easily and cost-effectively change and enhance the app after deployment?

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