Nowadays, accessing an enterprise application from a Smartphone is every employee’s wish. Why do we say that? Well, an enterprise mobile application improves communication within the organization and also keeps employees in touch with the changes in the system or in managing different meeting schedules. Further, having a mobile enterprise application at an individual’s disposal is only going to benefit stakeholders, including employees, business owners, and customers. Hence, there is a chance of getting a huge leap in the market and beating the competition with the help of proper enterprise mobile application development.
So the question remains, what is stopping your existing business from achieving high profits? Think for a sec, the answer must be “management”.
Need for Enterprise Mobile Application
A wonderful business opportunity is lost just because of a minor mistake made by an employee. And as a business owner, you wish you knew more about the proceedings going around in your enterprise. This begs a new question- what if there is frequent mismanagement by the logistics department? Will you ever find out on time?
The solution to this is an enterprise mobile application. You must be thinking, how an enterprise app will solve our entire business problem? Well if you are analyzing your competitors you will find that their internal management system is in perfect sync, and what better way to achieve this than by making an enterprise mobile app.
Well now you know why you need an enterprise mobile application but, if you are willing to know how entrepreneurs manage business via enterprise mobile application, this article will clear all your doubts regarding enterprise mobile application development.
Enterprise Mobile Application Development, Why?
Here are some reasons, why you need enterprise mobile application development:
- Often increasing number of issues, challenges, and multiple work processes result in organizational chaos. This further leads to time-wasting and breaking down the corporate structure. An enterprise mobile app development will be a perfect match for developing a seamless process.
- Today, businesses are switching to digitization. There is a productive growth of enterprise mobile application adoption in the market. Your competitors are adapting to digitization as well.
- Mobile apps allow users to have functional access to products. Moreover, there is no requirement for internet access to use these apps. Even if the internet is unavailable these applications have the ability to perform simple functions.
According to Statista, forecast of enterprise mobility management (EMM) revenues worldwide from 2017-2021 will hit 1.8 billion U.S dollars.
List of Industry-specific Mobile Enterprise Applications
A bunch of industries benefits from enterprise mobile app development. If you think properly, every business needs to implement these applications that bring them higher returns.
Here are some examples of industries that will certainly benefit from enterprise mobile applications development.
- Automotive
- Education
- Entertainment
- Healthcare
- FinTech
- Real-Estate
- Restaurants etc.
How Enterprise Mobile Application Development is Different
Enterprise mobile app development is basically a process of developing a mobile application according to an enterprise’s needs. An enterprise application is mainly built for the employees of the organization and its purpose is quite different from that of normal applications.
The main purpose of an enterprise mobile application is to streamline business operations by simplifying different tasks within the organization. For example, if your employee is working remotely, proper reports must be generated for ensuring a smooth workflow.
As enterprise apps are similar to other corporate systems, it also deals with corporate database and frequent data transfer. So the enterprise has to design the app keeping in mind it’s highly scalable and secure.
Benefits of Enterprise mobile application development
You might think that your organization is functioning smoothly and if so, why do you need such an application? Let’s get to it.
✦ Money control – take all the money power in your hands
Which payments are pending? Which checks have bounced? When is the next stock refill? Etc. These are some common questions that juggle your mind and as the days go by, you get anxious because of the work that is piling up.
So if you make an enterprise mobile application you will be saving both your and employee’s time. The reason is, all the updates regarding your payments will be available at your fingertips. One tap and boom! You get all the data.
✦ Redundancy – Avoid cut, copy and paste
Managers demand monthly reports and so do your colleagues. Employees get frustrated by sending the same reports to other people. Instead of carrying out this repetitive task, let your enterprise mobile application manage the workload for you. In long run, this will come in handy because it brings efficiency to business by focusing on the work that requires your attention.
✦ Supply chain management- A seamless Process
A supply chain management is able to achieve the best when a proper analysis, planning, and most importantly, a proper excursion is done.
Enterprise mobile application development makes everything easy for you i.e. any issues arising during the supply chain management are properly dealt with. Further, taking immediate action saves you from a future major loss.
✦ Customer service
Well, the ultimate goal of any business is to be the best at customer service. And the easiest way to connect with the customers is through a mobile application. Customer feedback sheds some light on the mismanagement happening while delivering the product.
So what are the types of applications you should develop? Let’s see!
Levels of Enterprise Mobile Application
There are three main types of mobile enterprise app development. Let’s check out each one of them:
✦ Employee level:
An employee-level app is built with the purpose of managing internal workflows. Additionally, it also eliminates any error or mismanagement of a particular project so there is no scope for delay in your project.
✦ Department level:
These types of applications differ slightly from the first one. Department-level apps help organizations achieve departmental tasks. An organization’s major departments include finance, production, sales, marketing, and others as per the company’s structure.
This type of app brings proper coordination to the team while working. Regular feedback is taken from customers. In short, when the entire team is on the same page, the process remains smooth and ultimately achieves the company’s objectives.
✦ Enterprise-level:
Once a company successfully connects the employee’s and departmental tasks, next in line comes the Enterprise-level management. It targets the top management in order to access all information about the company.
Enterprise-level apps provide an easy exchange of data amongst different levels of management. Further, they also give a clear understanding of the company’s growth. Also, by analyzing the reports, businesses can plan future policies.
Points to consider before starting Enterprise Mobile Application Development
Before moving on to enterprise application development consider the following points.
✦ Business objectives
It is important to know what kind of product your enterprise needs and how it corresponds to the current business objectives. So before investing in app development, understand your business plans and what are you willing to achieve with a mobile application.
✦ Administration
Enterprise mobile application development is a complex process. Apart from the developer’s team efforts, it requires a lot of administration and legal proceedings from the company’s side. Further, you need to decide who will be in charge of hiring software developers. Remember, the employees will need training on how to use the enterprise mobile app.
✦ Platform
You need to decide which platforms will support your enterprise mobile application and plan the development process accordingly. In fact, you need to go with cross-platform development if your employees will be using the enterprise mobile app on their respective devices.
✦ Third-party integrations
Whether your enterprise mobile app will integrate with other applications is a choice you make upfront. The reason is, you may require CRM systems such as Salesforce or Hubspot for your enterprise application integration with the applications that your employees currently use.
✦ Security
Providing access to an enterprise-level app to employees on their mobile also puts corporate data at risk. So, you have to consider possible scenarios where this data may be compromised and create a secure system i.e. a fortress. Your employees need to have proper login access via their credentials. This will help them transfer data securely without exposing corporate information.
Different approaches for Enterprise Mobile Application Development
You decide to build an application with a mindset of a long-term investment. Here we will show you different approaches from which you can choose the suitable one for your development process.
1. Packaged mobile apps
As a short-term solution, packaged mobile apps may give your mobile app project a head start. But, there will be limitations in its functionalities, and also it may be insufficient while connecting to a complex enterprise system.
Your enterprise will need to develop a custom code to add more functionalities and integration capabilities.
The reason behind custom code – every company is different, so their goals, objectives, mission, and working cultures are also different. So if a particular company is going with packaged mobile apps doesn’t mean you should too, because the same approach can have different end-result for two different enterprises.
2. Integrated mobile developer services
This developer service makes up for the drawbacks found in packaged mobile applications. Here, the app is built on the roots of flexibility.
The mobile developer services approach considers mobile as a part of an integrated cloud-native application development infrastructure. In this approach, developers use reusable mobile services across various apps and platforms. So instead of adding another dev platform, enterprises are able to extend the ones they already possess for mobile use cases.
3. But why develop with an integrated service?
Prepackaged mobile apps are useful for basic consumer use and other situations where data security and scalability remains a secondary concern. But, to deliver an enterprise-level mobile solution, an organization needs a development platform that supports flexibility, consistency, and security.
At times, Modern developers use micro-services to break down apps into small components. Micro-services make it simpler to extend functionalities to mobile applications without having to repeat the same work over again and again. If you integrate micro-services with containers and you will have the foundation of cloud-native development.
A cloud-native development platform with integrated mobile services is capable of the following things,
- Providing a unified approach for mobile, web, and cloud-native app development
- Supporting modern client-and server-side application frameworks
- Ensure proper use of resources
- Deliver consistency in user experience
- Automate operations such as installations, upgrades, and lifecycle management
- Enable workload portability, so that apps work seamlessly across cloud boundaries
- Facilitate horizontal scalability, because it will allow an enterprise to be ready for any changes in the near future
You may be wondering about the cost of the Enterprise mobile application development, don’t worry we will get there but before that, let’s have a peek into Enterprise application architecture.
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Enterprise Application Architecture
Enterprise app architecture is designed based on multiple requirements of an organization. Designers must proceed to create an enterprise’s apps architecture with a bulletproof plan. They should also keep in mind the organization’s growth requirements, goals, market trends, future growth, etc. while designing architectures of business apps.
Let’s see the different layers of Enterprise application architecture:
Layer 1
Known as the presentation layer, includes user interaction and other functionalities.
Layer 2
It’s the service layer that can either be in the present tier or move to a different tier. Layer 2 has message types of communication, service contracts, etc.
Layer 3
This layer is known as the business layer. It includes several components, which highlight the service interfaces that callers use.
Layer 4
This one is the data access layer. It is responsible for retrieving and saving the data in the database by communicating with the database.
Layer 5
The 5th layer contains raw data related to the business.
We have enough information to look at the cost of Enterprise mobile application development.
Enterprise Mobile App Development Cost
Basically, the cost of developing an application depends on the features of the application, company requirements, and the company budget. However, there is a rough estimation of an enterprise mobile app development by region as shown in the below image.
Further, with emerging technologies and future trends, it’s obvious that you will look to integrate features looking at the future trends. And, this will certainly give you an edge over your competitors.
Future trends – Smart office
Well, no one can exactly predict the future of technology trends, but we can understand them by being prepared for the future.
AI and Machine Learning are the future emerging technologies. Now applications integrate features and support the latest technology. It’s said that these two emerging technologies will help enterprises build smart offices.
Also with the increasing popularity of IoT technology, the business world is observing a paradigm shift.
Hence, for the right development of your Enterprise application software using emerging technology, you will need the assistance of experts who have deep knowledge of that technology and are also, aware of technological changes in the market.
Make Your Next Enterprise Application with Webbybutter
We have been in the app development business for a while now, and designing a modern enterprise mobile app is not as easy as it seems. But, our team is up for such challenges.
So, if you are thinking about Enterprise mobile application development, you can contact us. Our enterprise app development team will make sure your enterprise gets a new and efficient way of conducting your business through your enterprise application software.
Enterprise mobile application development- FAQ’s
What is an enterprise application?
An enterprise application is basically a large software system platform built for a corporate environment, businesses, and big enterprises in order to improve their internal management system via enterprise application services for business growth.
What is enterprise application modernization?
Enterprise application modernization refers to a process where companies generate new business value via existing applications by upgrading them.
Are patterns of enterprise applications still relevant?
Patterns of enterprise applications are still relevant, but mostly they apply to enterprise application design.
What is ERP? What are major enterprise applications examples?
ERP– Enterprise Resource planning is now about enterprise applications, they provide automation processes for matching business needs.
Major enterprise applications examples:
- MIS – Management Information System
- CRM– Customer Relationship Management
- EDSS– Decision Support System
- KMS– Knowledge Management System
- CMS– Content Management System
- BIS– Business Intelligence System