A recent survey conducted in the USA by Pyxis Mobile sought to ascertain what C level management are looking for in mobile apps and their development.
Survey respondents included CIOs, CTOs, IT directors/managers, systems and network administrators, programmers and technology support, as well as Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) members and attendees at the Oracle Application User Group Forum – Collaborate 11.
The results of the survey showed that 91% of respondents believe that their department or company could benefit from the use of mobile applications. Of those:
60% view business intelligence apps as providing the greatest value for their business
29% ranked internal operations and resource management apps as the second most valuable
26% ranked Sales/CRM and field service apps of equal importance in third place and
17% of respondents believe consumer facing apps used for marketing and/or mobile commerce purposes would also be beneficial to their company
The survey also revealed that tablets are gaining an increasing level of acceptance in the enterprise. 33% of respondents confirmed that their company currently supports or plans to support the iPad, while 14% say that Android tablets will soon be entering the hands of their workforce.
Finally, 77% of the respondents surveyed agreed that security is an important factor in choosing a mobile application development tool.
Of that, 71% confirmed that a tool’s ability to allow their business to make ongoing changes to applications in real-time was critical when evaluating the different mobile technologies that are available.
Other factors that play a significant role in the IT decision-making process were a tool’s ability to provide rapid app development and deployment, unlimited data integration capabilities enabling apps to connect to any back-end enterprise system, and extensive design features allowing users to build visually appealing apps with a rich UI/UX.
The survey results were similar to a conference I attended last week where Apple was presenting on the iOS platform for business.
They stated that mobility is the sum of many parts: Device, operating system, mobile device management, security and productivity.
Even though this was pitched at the iOS platform, it is true when planning your strategy for rolling out mobile apps in your business.
Let’s break these parts up:
Device: Who are the target markets, are they all using the same type of device? How many devices do I need to support for my app?
Operating System (OS): How many OS platforms do I need to support? How many versions of the OS do I need to support? Will the app I built for a specific version work on the updated version and visa versa (will the app I built for a specific version work on previous versions?)
Mobile Device Management (MDM): If I am rolling out business apps to my staff, how do I support my users? How do I update their apps with new versions? If I’m running a fleet of iPhones and iPads do I really need to install iTunes on every single persons PC? How do I lock down the app stores or create my own private app store to access only the mobile apps that I approve?
Security: If these apps are accessing corporate data and writing data back into my systems live, how do I manage and secure this?
Productivity: How do I measure the success of the mobile app? How do I determine what functionality of the apps is being used and what I need to improve or remove?
These questions and challenges facing businesses with delivering mobile apps are raised time and time again, regardless of the industry, market or country they come from.
To better understand these challenges: click on my previous articles. I hope you find some value in the content.
Device and Productivity: How to deliver a successful mobile app in your business
MDM and Security: Minimise the pain of smartphone/tablet management
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