Enterprise Mobile Application Development: Guide to Build A Robust App

In today’s fast-paced, digital world, businesses must keep up with the latest technological advancements to remain relevant. By investing in enterprise mobile app development, companies can streamline their operations, increase productivity, and provide a seamless user experience to their customers and employees alike.

At its core, the mobile app for enterprise is tailored to your organization’s unique workflows, processes, and goals. Whether you want to streamline your internal operations or enhance customer engagement, enterprise mobile application development are the way to go!

This guide will give you a clear understanding of the importance of enterprise mobile apps, how they can benefit your business, and how to develop one. So, let’s dive in!

Table of Contents           

• Global Market Overview Of Mobile Enterprise Applications
• What Is Enterprise Mobile App Development?
• Why Does Your Business Need A Modern Enterprise Mobile Application?
• Types Of Enterprise Mobile Applications
• Benefits Of Enterprise Mobile Application Development
• Must-Have Features For Your Enterprise Mobile App
• How To Adopt A Modern Approach To Develop Enterprise Mobile App
• How Rishabh Can Help You Develop A Mobile App For Your Enterprise

Enterprise mobile application development in 2023 is a profitable approach to digitizing processes, automating workflows, and offering a seamless user experience. From inventory management to sales, marketing, and customer service, enterprise mobile apps have the power to transform the way businesses interact with their investors, employees, and customers. Here’s how:

Statista suggests that the market for global enterprise applications software will be 334 billion U.S. dollars by 2025^[1].

Enterprise mobile app development refers to creating mobile applications specifically tailored to enhance productivity, optimize operations, and efficiently access information and data on the go. Unlike consumer mobile apps, enterprise apps are built with specific purposes, such as improving employee communication, increasing sales, or managing workflow processes. They are often integrated with existing business systems, such as databases, CRMs, or ERPs, to ensure seamless data flow and accessibility.

Mobile app development for enterprises can help automate tedious tasks, saving time and effort for employees. These applications provide a centralized data collection, storage, and analysis platform, leading to streamlined workflows. An enterprise mobile application can help a business be more efficient, productive, and responsive while providing a better customer experience and competitive advantage. Mobile applications can provide real-time access to critical business information, enabling employees to make informed decisions quickly. By leveraging enterprise apps, businesses can improve operations, better serve their customers, and ultimately achieve their business objectives.

Here are some of the main reasons:

• Improved productivity: With a mobile application, employees can access business information and data from anywhere, anytime, making them more productive and responsive to customer needs.
• Increased efficiency: Enterprise mobile apps can streamline business processes and automate workflows, reducing the time and effort required to complete tasks.
• Better customer engagement: Mobile applications can provide a better customer experience by allowing customers to interact with your business efficiently and quickly.
• Enhanced data collection and analysis: Mobile applications can capture data on customer interactions, preferences, and behavior, which can be used to improve products and services.
• Competitive advantage: A modern enterprise mobile application can differentiate your business from competitors by providing employees and customers with a unique and convenient experience.

Mobile enterprise applications are custom developed to cater to specific business needs. Some of the most common types of enterprise mobile applications are:

• Client-Facing Apps: These apps enhance the customer experience by providing easy access to information, ordering, and support. Examples include mobile banking, retail, and food ordering and delivery apps.
• Field Service Apps: These applications are designed to improve the productivity of field service employees by enabling real-time access to customer information, schedules, and service history. Examples include inspection apps and maintenance scheduling apps.
• Marketing Automation Apps: These applications automate marketing processes, such as lead generation, campaign management, and customer segmentation. Examples include social media management apps and email marketing apps.
• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Apps: These apps streamline the management of business processes, such as finance, procurement, human resources, and supply chain. Examples include accounting apps and inventory management apps.
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Apps: These applications help manage customer relationships and improve customer engagement. Examples include sales force automation apps and customer support portals.
• Supply Chain Management (SCM) Apps: These applications manage the supply chain process, from procurement to delivery. Examples include logistics management apps and warehouse management apps.
• Collaboration Apps: These applications enhance communication and collaboration among employees, departments, and partners. Examples include project management, team collaboration, and file-sharing apps.
• Financial Management Apps: These applications are designed to manage financial operations, such as accounting, budgeting, and payroll. Examples include expense management apps and tax preparation apps.

Mobile apps for enterprises have become increasingly popular in recent years as more and more companies recognize the potential of mobile technology to improve business operations. The benefits of mobile enterprise applications are many, including:

• Automation of Repetitive Manual Tasks: Enterprise mobile applications can automate tedious and time-consuming tasks such as data entry or report generation. This can improve productivity and reduce errors, enabling greater capacity to focus on strategic tasks and long-term goals.
• Superior Supply Chain Operations: Companies can streamline their supply chain operations with real-time information about inventory levels, order status, and delivery schedules. It can help improve your order fulfillment process and reduce delays and errors.
• Simplified Employee Onboarding Process: Human Resource professionals can simplify the onboarding process for new employees by providing easy access to important company information and training materials. This can help new employees get up to speed quickly and become productive faster.
• Streamlined Data Management: Enterprise mobile apps can streamline data management by providing a centralized data collection, storage, and analysis platform. It can help companies make better decisions based on accurate and up-to-date reports.
• Minimized Paperwork: Apps minimize paperwork by automating tasks and providing digital forms and documents that can be filled out and signed electronically. It supports companies in reducing paper waste and manual errors while maximizing efficiency.
• Improved Customer Experience: Businesses across industries can enhance customer experience by enabling instant access to product information, easy ordering, and prompt support. This can help build stronger customer relationships and improve loyalty.
• Seamless Communication: Enterprise mobile apps can improve communication between employees, departments, and customers. This can help companies collaborate more effectively, resolve issues quickly, and provide better service.
• Enhanced Responsiveness: Enterprise mobile applications can improve responsiveness by providing real-time alerts and notifications, enabling employees to respond quickly to customer inquiries or issues. It can help companies improve customer satisfaction and reduce downtime.

Here are some core features of enterprise mobile apps designed to meet the specific needs of businesses and their employees:

• Voice Assistants: Voice assistants can provide a convenient and hands-free way for users to interact with the application.
• Cloud-Based Storage And Collaboration: Cloud-based storage and collaboration features can improve productivity and efficiency and facilitate remote work.
• Offline Access and Synchronization: Provide offline access and synchronization capabilities to ensure that employees can continue to work even when they don’t have an internet connection.
• Mobile IoT Integration: The development of mobile IoT apps has increased in various sectors, including healthcare, retail, agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation. Mobile IoT applications enable users to monitor device and sensor readings, view live video footage, analyze data, generate reports, manage devices, and perform various other actions. These apps are equally beneficial for customer-focused solutions, such as wearables and smart home appliances, as well as enterprise-grade management, such as hospital & care facilities, retail, and autonomous cars. Mobile IoT applications serve as a central interface for human interaction with intelligent systems. For example, a mobile app to track hospital inventory with control sensors would enable service staff to locate hospital assets and even track drug inventory via mobile applications to receive real-time information and procure them appropriately.
• Integration Capability with Enterprise Systems: These apps must integrate with enterprise systems, such as ERP, CRM, and HRM, to provide employees with real-time data and enable them to perform their tasks efficiently.
• User Authentication and Access Control: Enterprise mobile apps require secure authentication and access control mechanisms to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive data and functionalities.
• Data Security and Encryption: Robust data security and encryption mechanisms are a must to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, data breaches, and cyber-attacks.
• Customization and Personalization: Enterprise mobile apps should allow users to customize and personalize their experience based on their preferences, roles, and responsibilities.
• Push Notifications: Push notifications are needed to alert employees about important events, updates, and tasks.
• Analytics and Reporting: Analytics and reporting capabilities enable managers and administrators to track app usage, performance, and user engagement.
• Meeting Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: Enterprise mobile apps must comply with relevant regulatory and compliance requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS.

Companies must embrace innovation in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape to avoid falling behind more forward-thinking competitors. Developing a modern enterprise mobile app requires a shift from traditional methods.

Below are some key considerations and best practices for adopting a modern mobile enterprise application development approach;

• User-Centered Design: It is an essential aspect of mobile enterprise app development. It involves conducting user research to identify user needs and preferences, developing user personas to guide the design process, creating wireframes and prototypes to test the app design, and conducting user testing and iteration to refine the app design. The ultimate goal is to ensure the app is intuitive and easy for the target audience. By focusing on the needs of the end users, the app can deliver a better user experience, leading to increased adoption and engagement.
• Agile Development Methodology: It involves iterative development cycles, frequent testing, and collaboration between development and business teams. This approach ensures that the app is developed in small, incremental steps, and feedback from users and stakeholders is incorporated throughout the development process. DevOps and CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) are critical for efficient and effective enterprise mobile development. It involves planning and tracking everything to manage the current processes better, fix the issues early and minimize the chance of failed deployments. Using DevOps and CI/CD, the app development team can deliver new features and updates faster, with better quality and reliability.
• Cross-Platform Development: By using cross-platform development, the app can reach a wider audience and deliver a consistent user experience across different platforms. It involves choosing the best-fit development framework, such as React Native or Xamarin. Using native code for critical components ensures optimal performance & implementing cross-platform code sharing reduces development time and cost. Read this blog to learn more about the comparison of Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAP) to assess the required mobile development efforts.
• Cloud-Based Development: Cloud-based development involves using cloud infrastructure and services to build, deploy, and manage the app. It would include choosing the right cloud application development services provider for your application requirements. The app should be designed for scalability and high availability, implementing security and data privacy measures to protect user data. Using cloud-based development, the app can leverage the benefits of cloud computing, such as scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. A cloud-based infrastructure provides a scalable and secure platform for enterprise mobile apps. It allows easy access to data and resources, ensuring the app is always up-to-date and responsive to user needs. A cloud-based infrastructure provides a scalable and secure platform for enterprise mobile apps. It allows easy access to data and resources, ensuring the app is always up-to-date and responsive to user needs.
• Analytics and Performance Monitoring: Analytics and performance monitoring help enterprises understand how users interact with the app and identify areas for improvement. It also helps them track key performance metrics such as user engagement, retention, and conversion rates.

When you choose our enterprise app development services, you can rest assured that the app we build is intuitive and easy to use. We help you design, develop & modernize mobile applications for your enterprise while supporting you in maintaining them over time. Our team starts with creating wireframes, prototyping them to test the app’s design, and iterating until we refine it to perfection. We have helped organizations build enterprise mobile apps from various industries, including retail, media & entertainment, healthcare, fintech & more. Some of our exciting projects include – mobile wallets, workforce management & collaboration, kiosk applications & more.

And as an experienced mobile app development company, we develop native & cross-platform apps for startups, mid-scale businesses & enterprises. Our enterprise mobile app developers utilize Java, C#, Python, Dart, Swift, and Objective-C for native app development. Our team has hands-on experience with custom enterprise mobile app development using cross-platform frameworks like Flutter, Xamarin, and React Native. Further, we have experience building IoT applications with Python & Progressive Web Apps (PWA), Angular, and more. Our team ensures your application complies with relevant regulations and implements secure coding practices to mitigate risks.

Success Stories

Field Sales Management Mobile App Development

A business & technology solutions provider wanted to streamline sales force initiatives. They sought to get visibility into field sales operations.

We developed a unified field sales management mobile app that enabled sales teams to build & nurture customer relationships within their network.

Key Benefits Delivered   

• 43% improvement in sales prospecting and forecasting
• 2x faster deal closures
• 4x improvement in performance and reliability

Read more about how the field sales management mobile app helped the US-based business and technology solutions provider to boost productivity and maximize revenues.

Gas Cylinder Distribution & Tracking System

A prominent gas supplier sought to optimize its supply chain network and gain more control over stock levels. They wanted to monitor the movement of cylinders & vehicles between the plant & refilling depot efficiently.

We helped digitize the process with a dedicated mobile app to digitally control the end-to-end gas supply process. From picking up the order to delivery and returning to the plant, for which a manual assignment was in place previously.

Key Benefits Delivered     

• 40% faster delivery process
• 46% clarity in order workflow & inventory control
• 4x increase in driver proficiency to manage multiple orders

Read more about how the gas cylinder distribution & tracking system helped the French gas distribution company to boost the supply chain efficiency.

We understand that every enterprise has its challenges, goals, and customer expectations, so we work closely with our clients to develop custom solutions tailored to their needs.

Final Words

As the world becomes increasingly mobile-centric, enterprise mobile application development demand will soar in 2023 and beyond. And developing a mobile app for your enterprise can bring numerous benefits, including increased efficiency, improved customer engagement, and better brand recognition. With the ongoing digital transformation across various industries, the future of enterprise mobile app development will likely see more sophisticated and advanced capabilities. However, it is essential to carefully plan and strategize the development process to ensure that the app meets your business’s and your customers’ needs. From selecting the right platform to testing and deployment, many factors must be considered.

Footnotes:

1 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/466579/enterprise-applications-software-market-value-worldwide/