The Next Generation of Enterprise Mobile Apps

The next generation of enterprise mobile apps are being developed to solve unique fundamental challenges inherent in a particular business. And deploying a suite of apps customised for a specific business that overcome these challenges can eliminate bottle-necks, improve productivity and reduce costs giving businesses a strategic competitive advantage.

Many larger companies create a business process flowchart to identify areas where the process can be streamlined. But even small companies can benefit from creating flowcharts for different employee workgroups. In the case of a restaurant, servers greet the guest, take their order, deliver the meals, present the check, take the form of payment, and finally provide either the credit card receipt or change. While these six steps may not seem to take up much time, when you multiply it by the number of covers served minutes can quickly turn into hours by the end of a day. To streamline the process and improve customer service some restaurants are using mobile apps to process credit card payments to close out the check at the table. This reduces the time guests spend waiting for their check, reduces table wait time when the restaurant is busy and lets owners serve more customers.

There is also a growing need for employees to access corporate data on mobile devices. The burden of responding to this demand often falls on the shoulders of IT staff already stretched with managing the enterprise network. As a result, many apps remain on the drawing board as something that would be nice to have rather than a must-have application. The development of mobile apps can be outsourced and managed in the cloud without over-burdening IT resources. For instance, through their partnership, Apple and IBM created an enterprise mobile app for a U.S. utility company which provides line workers in the field with access to a variety of pertinent information such as maps and weather that will help them perform more efficiently in the field.

Since enterprise mobile apps can be a critical component to improving productivity and gaining a competitive advantage, it is important for business owners and managers to prioritise their development.