Considering how an enterprise app costs $250,000 – $500,000 on average, failure should be out of the question. Unfortunately, 78% of apps are abandoned after their first use. This drives 50% of enterprises to completely rewrite or replace these apps within two years. This, however, doesn’t need to be the case with you. You can easily ensure that the process of mobilizing your business applications doesn’t end up error-laden and resource-rich by avoiding the following five mistakes.
#1) Low User Penetration
A study of 1,000 employees revealed 43% of smartphone users and 41% of tablet users aren’t impressed by the apps they’re expected to use. This, in turn, drives 64% of employees to go rouge, downloading apps from public app stores and putting the organization’s security at risk. In order to prevent this issue and deliver a greater enterprise app experience, follow these three tips;
- Ask Your Employees for their Opinions – Find out what your employees expect from your enterprise app. Ask them about the pain-points in their daily workflows. Also, have them list the functions they believe improve efficiency and effectiveness.
- Consider All Screens and Devices – You can easily get caught in the Native vs. Hybrid debate. However, you need to focus on delivering the right mobile experience for the right employees at the right time. By investing in user experience, you can efficiently work faster and exceed most expectation.
- Focus on Holistic Engagement – In order to deliver a memorable user experience, the app should anticipate user needs, simplify discovery, and re-engage with notifications. You’ll need a long-term content optimization strategy to pull this off. Therefore, you may want to avoid hiring busy developers.
#2) Very Little or Too Much Creativity
Even large enterprises that can afford custom enterprise apps can make the mistake of creating a boring app that lacks creativity. This reduces the app’s adoption as well as ROI. One of the simplest ways of adding the creativity factor to your app is incorporating popular enterprise mobility trends.
On the other hand, too much creativity can prevent you from doing too much with your enterprise app. While everything may look good during the planning stage, the execution phase can become too complex. This will result in lost time and resources. So, find the right balance between creativity and complexity.
#3) Infrequent App Updates
For consumer apps, frequent updates are a must. Business Insider Intelligence’s 2015 report showed frequent updates can result in higher ratings. Unfortunately, enterprise mobile apps are yet to follow suit. As a result, employees tend to abandon the more secure apps to download risky third-party ones.
While this doesn’t mean you should be updating your enterprise app five times a year. You need to ensure fresh content on regular intervals. Here are two easy ways to pull this off;
- Bug Fixes – No app is perfect; there will be bugs affecting its performance at some point. Fortunately, fixing bugs won’t change the structure or feature set of your enterprise app. Instead, this step will prove your efforts to update your app and ensure it’s working as designed.
- UI Updates – A more significant update is adding and removing features from the app to improve its UI. To include a feature, check user feedback for ideas. If many users are requesting a feature, assess the feasibility of adding it. Similarly, remove functions users don’t like or use.
Always plan updates before rolling out the first version of the app. This will save time and resources. You’ll also be able to schedule updates regularly and notify users about them beforehand.
#4) System Readiness
An enterprise app isn’t supposed to be a standalone solution. You need to ensure it integrates seamlessly with your organization’s IT infrastructure. This can be a challenge for larger organizations as they usually have legacy systems installed. Employees who have grown accustomed to using them may also face trouble adjusting to newer systems. This may reduce both employee satisfaction and overall productivity.
While auditing your systems’ readiness, you should analyze their scalability. Systems should be ready for the strain resulting from retrieving real-time information or rapid expansion of the app’s user base. Another aspect to assess is cross-system integration, i.e. systems’ ability to communicate with each other.
If you forgo ensuring system readiness, your enterprise app will fail. In fact, it’ll cost you even more due to missed deadlines and extra expenses. You can talk to your enterprise app developer or vendor to find out how you can perform this step. Rest assured they’ll guide you to ensure that you get your money’s worth.
#5) Substandard Mobile Strategy
At times, the app itself may not be at fault. Your enterprise mobility strategy may be too poor to ensure the success of your app. If your current strategy doesn’t enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your business operations, you need to improve it with the following tips;
- Assess whether your current strategy meets your growth goals. For instance, if you aim to enhance employee productivity, make sure your app includes everything that can help you achieve it.
- Ensure the scalability of your strategy. That way you can allow and easily plan for rapid growth.
- Focus on information security while creating your enterprise app. You need to ensure the safety of stakeholders and employees sensitive data at all times.
- Include training in your mobile strategy. You or the developer/vendor should offer thorough training sessions, user guides, and every type of material necessary to ensure that users reap the app’s benefits.
You should also consult with the developer or vendor to further improve your strategy. Their input and experience will be very valuable in this regard.
The Bottom Line
Ensuring the success of your enterprise app isn’t difficult as long as you avoid these five issues. Just remember to invest time and resources to drive the app’s adoption at your organization. Only then can you get a return on your investment.
