Achieving Better Results with Mobile App Strategies

Within the workplace, mobile apps are proven solutions for delivering tangible gains in productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Yet, any software development and deployment efforts come with a measure of risk. Those risks are multiplied when working with relatively unfamiliar and fast-moving mobile tools and platforms.

How great is the risk? IAG Consulting surveyed more than 100 large enterprises and found that 68 percent of all IT projects are at high risk of failure due to a poor grasp of requirements and subpar analysis.

In 2014, Xebia Labs surveyed more than 1,000 companies and found that a little more than 30 percent of all software delivery efforts end in failure. The danger is higher still in mobile app deployments, which present a number of unique challenges. Among them:

• Adapting to new or unfamiliar mobile platforms and software models
• Supporting a diverse range of mobile client device types (tablets and smartphones), operating systems and device models
• Responding to shorter OS and app version release cycles common to mobile platforms
• Grappling with security issues unique to mobile app deployment and maintenance

Mobile apps can deliver substantial benefits or produce calamitous results, depending largely on how organizations go about deploying them. A flawed development effort can yield software that is expensive to create, hard to maintain and prone to flaws. A poorly planned and managed mobility effort will yield a fractured and fragmented mobile infrastructure that complicates operations, inflates costs and sharply increases the chance of bad outcomes.

By the same token, a rush to mobilize business processes with poorly selected or designed software can result in reduced productivity, lost sales or damaged customer relationships. Study after study has shown that poorly designed software yields depressed adoption and usage rates, higher incidents of error and lower user satisfaction. A 2013 study by research firm Equation Reach found that only 16 percent of surveyed users have the patience to keep using an app after two failed attempts to launch it.

Enterprises that take the time to coherently understand their business requirements and outline their mobility goals see greater results. A strong mobile strategy yields tangible competitive advantages for an enterprise that commits to it.

For more information on mobilizing enterprise applications, read the white paper “The App Roadmap: Mobile App Strategy for the Workplace.”