Transcript
Page 1: White Paper:  Six Critical Tips for Great B2B Mobile Apps

Six Critical Questions to Answer Before Your Company Builds a Mobile App

Page 2: White Paper:  Six Critical Tips for Great B2B Mobile Apps

WWW.RUNMOBILE .COM S IX CR IT ICAL QUEST IONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOUR COMPANY BU ILDS A MOBILE APP

Enterprise spending on mobile applications will double by 2015, according to Forrester1. It’s growth driven by companies that seek to empower their mobile workforce, improve service for their clients and enhance the brand experience of their customers.

But many mobile applications built by and for businesses— often at significant cost—go unused or underused by their target audience. Apps developed with the best of intentions may fail if companies don’t fully understand their mobile users, or if app functionality doesn’t match the business goals of the project.

In our experience, there are six critical questions that companies should ask themselves as a starting point for any mobile app initiative. With answers to these questions in hand, your mobile initiative will be focused, cost-effective and successful.

What are the business objectives for creating the application?

This seems like a no-brainer, right? But far too often companies in a rush to create a mobile

app lose sight of its purpose. Are you trying to: Boost mobile worker productivity? Increase

sales? Improve customer satisfaction? Respond to customer demand? Satisfy a corporate

mandate? Match a competitor’s mobile app? There can be—and often are—multiple

objectives for your app project, so document them.

Companies today are using mobile apps to tackle challenges in just about every area of

their business: inventory management, field service management, sales force management,

customer interaction management and logistics management, to name just a few.2 With your

major objectives in mind, take the next step of setting key success metrics for your mobile app.

Trying to boost online sales? Set a percentage goal. Want to reduce time spent on field service

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1 Ted Schadler and John C. McCarthy, “Mobile is the New Face of Engagement,” Forrester, Feb. 13, 20122 Eric Klein and David Krebs, “Proliferation of Mobile Devices = Opportunity for Apps & Developers,” VDC research webcast, Aug. 4, 2010.

Avoid overloading your project with needless features. The most popular apps are intuitive and have a clear payoff for the end user.

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WWW.RUNMOBILE .COM S IX CR IT ICAL QUEST IONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOUR COMPANY BU ILDS A MOBILE APP

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3 Ted Schadler and John C. McCarthy, “Mobile is the New Face of Engagement,” Forrester, Feb. 13, 2012.4 Adam Blair, “Home Depot’s $64 Million Mobile Investment Rolls Out to 1,970 Stores,” Retail Info. Systems News, Dec. 7, 2010.

This multi-platform app for a leading medical recruitment firm meets the company’s objective of reaching doctors through their smartphones.

calls? Specify how much time. By quantifying your objectives, you will help shape functional

decisions that will be made during development.

As an example, we worked with a paper company that relied on printed catalogs distributed

by field sales reps as a way to inform clients about products and pricing. The catalogs were

costly to print and the company’s online product guide wasn’t always accessible at a client site.

We created a smartphone application that allowed sales reps to easily access

the online product guide. The guide provided reps with real-time pricing and

helped the company reduce printing costs. Client service improved, costs were

lowered, and the company’s clear business objectives for its app made the

project a success.

Who are the anticipated users of the application?

Soon nearly everyone will be a potential user of a mobile app because nearly

everyone will have a smartphone. By 2016, 1 billion consumers worldwide will

have smartphones—including 257 million people in the U.S. Those device

owners are using mobile apps more and more to access their social networks,

view the news, listen to music and engage with their favorite brands, according

to Forrester.3

But here’s the tricky part. One size does not fit all when creating a mobile app.

Your organization needs to think about who will use the mobile app once it’s

created. Will it be used by your customers, all or most of your employees or just

a small subset of those groups? If the audience for your new app turns out to be

four regional sales reps, it might not be worth the return on investment. But if that

regional sales force is expected to grow from four to 400 in a short period of time,

then that changes the picture and may justify your app costs.

When thinking about the anticipated audience for your app, keep in mind their level of

technology sophistication. In 2010, Home Depot provided 30,000 app-enabled smartphones to

employees in 1,970 stores nationwide to help them quickly manage inventory, process debit

and credit card transactions, and print receipts.4 Rolling out technology to a broad audience like

this, where associates are being introduced to new apps and new devices, is a much different

challenge than reaching a more defined or app-savvy audience. We recently developed a job

search app targeting US physicians. Our clients’ research showed that doctors are strong

adopters of smartphones at work, especially iPhones—information which helped shape the

app requirements. Defining the size and mobile usage characteristics of your audience is key.

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WWW.RUNMOBILE .COM S IX CR IT ICAL QUEST IONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOUR COMPANY BU ILDS A MOBILE APP

Which mobile platform and devices will the application be built for?

Once you identify the anticipated audience for your new mobile app, you’ll need to think about

the devices and platforms they’ll use to access the app. Many companies choose to limit

employee use to a specific device and platform for a simple reason: it makes it much easier to

ensure the security of the company’s IT assets.

That’s changing fast. Employees are increasingly using their own mobile devices for work.

“BYOD”—Bring Your Own Device—is becoming more than a catchphrase. By 2016, 200

million people around the world will take their own devices to the workplace.5 Particularly

for many younger workers with a strong attachment to their device, permission to use their

own device is a prerequisite for accepting employment. Many companies now offer BYOD as a

recruiting tactic.

It’s important to think about this changing environment before you build your mobile app.

If your app is intended for internal use by employees, which devices and platforms does your

company support? Do you envision that changing in the next three to five years? If the app is

intended for a broader B-to-C audience, which are the dominant platforms your customers

will be using?

Increasingly, companies are building apps that can be supported across all of the major

platforms—iOS (Apple), Android (Google), Blackberry (RIM) and Windows (Microsoft).

Walgreen’s, for example, has enjoyed success with its multi-platform app that lets customers

shop, order prescription refills and find stores to get flu shots. A year after its introduction,

already 40 percent of Walgreen’s online transactions came via the mobile app. If Walgreen’s

had created a ‘native’ app—one exclusive to a single mobile platform—it would have been

less successful.

Beyond the platform, anticipating which devices—tablets, smartphones, rugged handhelds,

or all of the above—your app will be used on is equally important. While smartphones are

the most common device for app use, some companies are developing different apps for

smartphones and tablets. A tablet-optimized app offers the advantage of more screen real

estate, which can be helpful for viewing graphic-rich presentations and larger spreadsheets.

Enterprise software giant SAP has issued iPad tablets to much of its global workforce and

has built a large library of iPad specific apps to enable software demos and other tablet-

oriented sales tools.6

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5 Ted Schadler and John C. McCarthy, “Mobile is the New Face of Engagement,” Forrester, Feb. 13, 2012.6 Eric Lai, “SAP CIO’s Ambitious Mobile Plans for 2012,” Forbes.com, Jan. 9, 2012.

A tablet-optimized app offers the advantage of more screen realestate, which can be helpful for viewing graphic-rich presentations and larger spreadsheets.

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Field service apps, like this one, often connect to internal databases meaning cost and development considerations.

WWW.RUNMOBILE .COM S IX CR IT ICAL QUEST IONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOUR COMPANY BU ILDS A MOBILE APP

What integration will the application require with your existing systems and databases?

No mobile app stands alone. Remember when creating your new mobile app that it will likely

need to synch with existing databases and internal systems. Ask yourself: Are we building

something from scratch that will pull data from an existing cloud application or company

database? Will the new app need to work with Salesforce.com or an internal

ERP system? Your answers to these questions may reveal unintended costs—

for example, you may need middleware or custom development for your existing

systems to communicate with the new app.

A simple example illustrates the point. Think about a mobile app created for the

field technicians who work for a company like Comcast or Verizon. After each

customer appointment, the field tech inputs notes on his smartphone or tablet

and closes the service ticket. This action triggers a workflow in the billing system

that sends an invoice to the customer and files the service report with the rest of

the customer history. The field tech then gets notified of his next appointment,

complete with driving directions (based on his current location and GPS),

customer phone number, and the notes for the last 3 service calls for the same

repair. Without this last critical piece of data, the field tech may not be prepared

to meet with the customer and provide a resolution. If the mobile app couldn’t

talk with these other systems (internal and external), how successful would it be?

An important consideration when building your app is how to integrate the app

with internal systems. For example, limiting the information pulled on the service

tickets in our example to address, phone number and relevant service call notes

enables the field tech to be most efficient.

What is the application’s “must-have” functionality?

It’s tempting when building a mobile application to take the “something for everyone

approach,” cramming the app with features in the hopes that a broader audience will use it.

Bad idea. Whether creating an app for an internal sales team or a broad consumer audience,

building in too many features may slow the development project, increase costs, and possibly

make the app unwieldy to use.

In our experience, it’s better to identify “must-have” functionality for launch and stick to it. One

simple guide to determine critical app features is to refer to the business objectives initially set

out for the project (See Question 1). If your proposed functionality doesn’t strongly support your

stated business goals, then set the feature aside or save it for a future update of the app.

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7 James Kendrick, ”The common error of overloading mobile apps with features,” ZDNet.com, Nov. 25, 2011.8 “How Often Apps are Downloaded & Used Just Once,” Localytics, Jan. 31, 2011.

Mobile application development can be an iterative process. We will deploy a new app to a

small group of beta testers, gather feedback, and then work with customers on refinements to

improve the app for launch to a larger audience.

Post-launch, app updates are common and relatively easy to deploy. Still, it’s important to avoid

“extra features that don’t make the app better at its primary function,” says ZDNet technology

writer James Kendrick. He counsels developers to “write an app that does the main function

simply, enjoyably, and does it well.” 7

How will you get end users to use the application?

Many companies build mobile applications with the best of intentions but they never get used.

One study found that fully 28 percent of mobile apps in the U.S. were used just once after

downloading and never used again.8 Still other apps don’t get downloaded at all—even once

—because people don’t know about them or don’t see any value in downloading them.

Before creating a mobile app for your company, think about how the app will get to people’s

smartphones and tablets. Does your company have the marketing know-how and budget to let

people know they can download this app? If the app is for internal use, will you post it to the

company Intranet and require that employees use it? Will you create a policy where IT puts the

app on everybody’s device at setup?

Even if it reaches your end-users’ devices, the app may not succeed if it’s difficult to use or

if its benefits are unclear. The most popular apps, ones that ‘go viral,’ are typically those that

are fairly intuitive and have a clear payoff for the end user. That’s why focusing on the user

experience during development is critical.

For an app that may have complex functionality or requires some training, consider building

context-sensitive help text into the app. If your app is intended for internal use within your

company, hands-on training, video tutorials or live help-desk support are options to improve

employee adoption. It’s also beneficial to have high-profile champions within your company to

promote regular app use.

Deciding ahead of time on usage metrics you’ll use to evaluate the mobile app—the number

of downloads, for example, or the number of daily or weekly log-ins—will make it easier to

determine after launch whether the app was a success.

6By 2016:

Mobile app spending will be $55.7 billion

1 billion consumers worldwide will have smartphones

350 million employees worldwide will use smartphones

200 million people worldwide will take their own devices to work

Source: “Mobile is the New Face of Engagement,” Forrester, by Ted Schadler and John C. McCarthy, Feb. 13, 2012.

The Move Toward Mobile

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WWW.RUNMOBILE .COM S IX CR IT ICAL QUEST IONS TO ANSWER BEFORE YOUR COMPANY BU ILDS A MOBILE APP

Conclusion Once you’ve thought about and answered these six questions, you’ll be much better

prepared to create a mobile application that supports your company’s strategic goals and

takes advantage of the rapid expansion of the mobile marketplace. It pays to take the time

to get it right the first time. Your company’s mobile strategy is too important not to.

About RunMobileRunMobile helps leading companies build, deploy and manage mobile software solutions to

power the enterprise. We offer full-lifecycle, multi-platform mobile app development as well

as mobile device management (MDM) and mobile strategy consulting services. Customers

include Porsche North America, Ricoh, the City of Memphis, Neenah Paper, Metso, CiCi’s

Pizza, Men’s Warehouse and other mid-sized and large businesses.

For More InformationEmail: [email protected]

Phone: 404.518.4260

Address: 925 North Point Pkwy, Ste. 160

Alpharetta GA 30005

925 NORTH POINT PKWY, STE. 160 ALPHARETTA, GA 30005 EMAIL: [email protected] 7


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