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Did you know – the enterprise mobile application development market’s estimated annual revenues for 2018 were $2.9 billion! Plus, the enterprise ecosystem has opened its doors far and wide to BYOD, IoT, and citizen developers.
What does this mean for you as a software/web application developer? Well, you may be on an enterprise mobile app development project soon.
Now you may be a consumer mobile app ninja, know that developing an app for an enterprise is very different. Such an app will be used to make internal task management easier for end-users, executives, project managers, and leaders.
Filling timesheets, resource planning, and allocation, managing reimbursements for internal expenses – the app could be expected to solve any of the gazillion problems the modern enterprise grapples with, daily.
So, what do you keep in mind as you start participating in design meetings for an enterprise mobile app? Here are 25 pointers. I’ve grouped these together under different heads, to make it more intuitive for readers.
Ask yourself – have you clearly and completely enumerated all the business use cases the app’s expected to serve?
Based on the range of functionalities to be covered, you may need more than one mobile apps.
The next big question – who’s going to use the application? Designing for the enterprises’ internal customers is going to be vastly different from designing an app for its external customers (even the latter is very different from designing a contemporary consumer market app).
While both Google and Apple are bringing complete uniformity over app user experiences across different OS versions, differences do remain.
For instance, WebViews (the rendering component of HTML powered hybrid apps) only got the capability of OS-independent updates from Android 5.0 onwards.
What’s the enterprise’s vision? Does it want to undertake parallel development of the app for all major operating systems, or does it want to make it phase-wise?
Chances are, again, it’s only going to be Apple and Android. After all, the latest iOS is supported by 20+ Apple devices, and the latest Android is supported by thousands of phones.
Consider how your technical choices will be influenced by factors related to the screen sizes of the devices on which the apps will be used.
Phone-sized UI, tablet-sized UI, split-screen UI – whall all do you need to be prepared for? How will you adapt the UI to work on the different screen sizes and resolutions?
Once your device types and operating system types are decided, you’ll need to make this super important decision. Let’s consider our options:
While this may not be a constraint if you’re developing an enterprise app for expense reimbursements, it may be a showstopper/gamechanger if you’re developing the app for end-users who will use it in the field.
Try to understand the details related to the unmodifiable platform features that consume significant battery consumption. That’s because you simply can’t optimize these closed-source parts, and hence, need to make the right choice upfront rather than hope for course corrections later.
Is this a novel app idea; something that’s not been done in the industry earlier? In such a case, it makes a lot of sense to make end-users participate in the UI and UX design phases. Else, for standard enterprise apps such as sales lead management, it’s practical, effective, and inexpensive to go by established UI practices and elements.
Suggested:
Tips For Designing Exclusive UX For Mobile Apps.
You may be surprised to note, but enterprises are very picky about their internal apps’ branding. And it’s easy to understand, because the app is going to create an impression, and enterprises want a consistent and predictable impression. So, as someone leading design discussions, make sure you request your counterparts to showcase the key existing apps deployed by the enterprise.
Internationalization is the deliberate act of developing an application by dividing the code into two elements – one uniform code, and the other that can be tweaked according to geographical/cultural factors.
Localization, then, is the act of altering the latter kind of code to suit the logic requirements resulting because of the end-users bring from a particular geography.
How does the enterprise plan to roll the app out to all its workforce across geographies? What are the cultural and geographical factors at play, which could have a role in the UI, UX, or logic design?
End users perform a thousand different tasks with their devices. Your app may not perform well if you don’t anticipate these tasks, and design the app around these usage patterns. For instance, determine the app response for these events:
Consider whether you need to plan for scenario-based network access. Evaluate all use cases, particularly for apps that will be used by field employees, to ensure you use the right and secure network protocols, ensuring all the use cases are served.
Get your network security team onboard to talk about whether they will use encrypted SSL certificates to secure the data used and transmitted by/to the app.
Based on the nature of the app, you may need to:
Chances are you’re going to be around after the go-live, so for your sake and for everyone else’s, think of maintenance and support right from the first day. Key points to note:
Parting Thoughts This list, of course, is not exhaustive. My purpose has been to make sure you know what all you’ll need to consider before you sign off a design/architecture approach while developing a mobile app for an enterprise.
Suggested:
The 7 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Creating an App for your Business.
Jaspreet Singh has 15 years of experience in the Digital Marketing industry and also running two international companies, SEO Corporation and Hemp Organisation.
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You have shared an informative blog here, thank you. The information about Enterprise Mobile app on your blog is good and valuable to me. Your information is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for the information about Enterprise Mobile App
Very good information. Creating an enterprise app is not a simple and hasty decision to be made, proper research and development team to be employed.
Great article! So well written -This is very helpful article. I wish to read more article from you!Thanks for sharing this valuable information!
Hello Vishal Vivek,
Informative stuff. I like your way in-depth explanation and its very useful. Nowadays mobile app is a very important part of the business because of its way of presenting what actual our business. Thanks for sharing.