The future of the Enterprise Mobile Apps

Right now, companies are after making more enterprise mobile apps for their employees than before. They are trying to bring their all apps under one umbrella, as some companies have more than one mobile app. These apps are made to access the company’s files, organization of the files and collaboration between the employees.

But, as Gartner predicts in its report, the top types of apps companies are making is either a calendar app or email app or contacts app and that’s up to 91% of the times. Basically, enterprises are making apps of basic functionalities.

It could be that they don’t want to rely on a third party app or maybe they have security concerns. And thus are getting custom made apps or off-the-shelf third party apps with customizations.

It also means that there is a whole range of apps that is pending for the enterprises to adopt in their mobile strategies. And that much business and possibilities are still standing. Enterprises are just going to make even more apps or may consolidate all the features to a single app. Whatever the case, enterprises and their employees are going to rely on the mobile apps even more heavily and the market will have to suffice the need with rapid yet qualitative development.

Though, there stands a little problem. Some enterprises have also chosen a way of BYOA (Bring Your Own App) model or are simply adopting existing apps in the market instead of developing a new one. Gartner predicts that as much as 70% of enterprise mobile apps could be developed or adopted without IT involvement by 2020. Another assumption in Gartner’s report is that one out of three business-to-employee app will fail within six months of its launch. In such scenarios, the enterprises would simply want to rely on the existing third party mobile apps which could suffice their requirements well enough. That’s also cost and time saving. Also, the third party app chosen could be already familiar to majority of its employees. For example, it is highly probable that due to its quality both on Android and iOS platforms the familiarity of Google Calendar is high among the employees as they might be using the app to organize their personal lives as well. Adopting that app for enterprise level could be a very good deal for the enterprise as it saves time and money on custom development as well as on employee training. Unless the Enterprise has no issues with relying on a third party and security of information isn’t a big concern, adopting such a reliable third party app is a much more sensible choice to make.

Mobile app vendors that are looking for a wide-spread adaptation will see greater success. With every enterprise adopting their app, they will get a large set of consistent, enterprise user base which isn’t reluctant to pay higher price for better services. Financial backup from the company will make the deal even more attractive them. Thus, it will become a game of a few trusted apps which every enterprise uses according to their requirements.

This way, app vendors should focus more on developing a quality enterprise app and aim for a widespread acceptance. They begin targeting to enter into people’s everyday life and then, into their professional life. First, make them hooked to your app and then progress.

Mobile brings the maximum convenience and freedom of work from any place when coupled with cloud technology. There is no denial that mobile technology will take even more prominent stance in enterprise. The future of enterprise mobile apps is to be ingrained in the business processes and that is the way forward.

Sahil Patel is an engineer and project manager at Elegant MicroWeb, involved with project management and services delivery. An excellent problem solver with architectural and hands on programming skills on Microsoft platforms, Linux, PHP frameworks,