Now that we’re well into the 21st century, any business that wants to be taken seriously needs to start leveraging every digital tool available to it. If you don’t, rest assured one of your competitors will. They could easily leave you in the dust despite offering an inferior service or product. That’s why it’s important you at least have a mobile app to provide employees and/or customers. Here’s what to look for in a platform for developing one.
Intuitive development
Unless you went to school to become a coder or otherwise have a history of writing your own applications, creating an app for your business can be an intimidating prospect. If you think you have years to invest in learning to create your own app, you may believe your only option is to outsource this job.
Well, first of all, no, you don’t have that much time. You need an app up and running immediately. However, the good news is that you don’t need a specialized degree in order to create one. With today’s enterprise mobility software, you can basically create an app by doing little more than clicking and dragging. It’s really that simple.
That being said, you want the learning curve to be as quick as possible. Although it’s important you set aside time for this goal, so long as you do, you want a platform that will reward you for being so forward thinking.
Seamless integration
Another important feature is that the platform can seamlessly integrate with whatever programs your company currently relies on. You may not need this kind of syncing across the board, but you will most likely want your app to connect with whatever business logic you depend on.
Some enterprise mobility platforms will come ready to cooperate with whatever you’re currently running. Others
might not be able to link up exactly as you’d like, but that’s not a big deal if they come with an agile API gateway. Such a gateway will make it possible for you to do the syncing in a manual, albeit easy, way.
What you don’t want is a truly manual process whereby you actually do need to have a pretty sophisticated and high-end understanding of what goes on inside your software. This is more than most of us – even programmers – want to think about getting into.
Ideally, the enterprise mobility software you choose will be able to extract host functionality with REST APIs into Web services. While it may require a bit of fine-tuning on your end, it’s nothing any amateur couldn’t handle.
Security from hackers
It should go without saying that security couldn’t be more important in the digital age. Hardly a month goes by that we don’t hear about someone getting hacked and often it’s a major corporation or even a government that gets targeted.
Although it definitely comes with a number of benefits, having an app is going to put your company at risk in a big way. First and foremost, it’s just one more digital component that a hacker could attack. This is always going to be a concern, no matter what type of hardware or software you add to your business.
Secondly, though, an app makes it possible for a far greater number of users to potentially become a problem. What security experts have long known is that sometimes your worst enemy is an employee or customer who means no harm. They can simply leave your company exposed by accident.
Third, hackers may download your app for the purpose of looking for vulnerabilities. If your enterprise mobility platform doesn’t make security a priority, those hackers may eventually find a weakness and use it against you.
One of the most important ways your platform can keep your company safe is through encryption. Every message sent between your company’s internal logic and the app must be encrypted. The same goes for any vendor info that gets stored on someone’s mobile device.
Security from users
As we mentioned above, sometimes it isn’t a tech-savvy hacker you have to worry about. It can just be an employee who doesn’t know any better. Unfortunately, many companies have had to find out the hard way that well-meaning, obedient employees can quickly turn on them too. If you’ve laid off enough people, you’ve probably learned this on your own at some point.
While it’s understandable for employees to be upset about losing their job (or missing out on a promotion, taking a pay cut, etc.), they can sometimes take things too far by trying to harm their former employer. If you’ve developed an app and gave them access to it, you must be able to revoke access to your company’s app as soon as someone is terminated. The majority of the time, this won’t be an issue, but you don’t want to risk it. In many cases, it’s also a good idea to have your app alert IT staff when someone is trying to get back into the program after they have been laid off. This will give you the opportunity to warn the ex-employee and get a free stress test on your system.
Management options
The above is a good example of how you need management controls in your hands if you intend to create an app for your company. Otherwise, all kinds of problems can rear their ugly heads in a matter of seconds.
It’s not just about keeping out hackers and angry ex-employees, though. Being able to properly manage an app is also how you ensure it performs optimally for as many of your employees as possible. While developing your app, you’ll want to take time to test how it works and look for ways it might be underperforming. This is a natural part of creating any kind of software. That being said, no matter what you do, nothing will prepare you for when you finally debut your app and let employees and/or customers begin working with it.
Reputation
Lastly, it never hurts to look into the reputation of a company from which you wish to buy. Apps have been around for nearly 10 years now. However, the idea of using software to create custom apps for one’s company is still relatively new, meaning you have a lot of manufacturers that have just jumped into the market. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t equipped to meet your needs, but it does mean you’d be prudent to be cautious.
Mike Miranda writes about enterprise software and covers products offered by software companies like www.rocketsoftware.com about topics such as terminal emulation, legacy modernization, enterprise search, big data and enterprise mobility.
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