Mobility in the enterprise is a hot topic these days. And in doing our regular light reading, we’ve found a wide variety of articles discussing just that. Some are good, some are bad, and some we’re indifferent to—but it’s not often that we read articles that we truly, strongly agree with.
Enter a blog published last week by Brillo, a provider of software products and technology consulting services. Titled, “It’s Time for Enterprise to Clean Its Mobility House,” we just had to take a moment and give some credit to Sahara Alexis of Brillo for publishing such a great piece.
Here’s the gist of it: Alexis sees employees with mobile apps that create true business value as the future of the enterprise. The trouble is, just “having a mobile app”—which many companies today are unfortunately doing—really isn’t enough. Alexis outlines elements of the so-called ‘mobility house’ that may need cleaning, ranging from metrics, to productivity gains and user experience.
The whole post really is a great summary of what’s wrong with so many enterprise mobile apps today, explaining why “most apps are dismal deployments of existing desktop applications.”
This entire post reflects (nearly) exactly what one of our goals is here at App47: to enable enterprises to start seeing mobile apps as value adds and true productivity gains instead of cost centers and something that they have to do just to “have a mobile app.” Gone are the days when rushing to create an app and releasing it into the wild was acceptable (we saw a similar thing happen with the dawn of web apps—it took a while for businesses to realize that there’s a real need for analytics).
A favorite point from the blog? Alexis’ note that “79% of companies believe mobile applications will provide productivity gains.” That’s not “79% of companies know” or “79% of companies are certain”—that’s believe. It’s time to move beyond belief—there’s no reason for companies to simply believe that mobile apps will provide productivity gains. There are ways to track these gains and move from belief to true knowledge of fact, and that’s exactly what cleaning the mobility house requires.
The tools for tracking productivity gains and, in turn, ROI, exist (we know a thing or two about that). The problem is that many businesses aren’t utilizing them. And because of that, they’re missing out on the incredible gains that a well-developed, researched, and tracked mobile app can provide.
We appreciate the message in Brillo’s article: it’s time to clean the mobility house. Stop thinking about mobile apps as a cost center. Stop haphazardly releasing apps just so you can say you have them. And stop believing that apps might be a good thing.
Instead, start tracking the things that can help you determine the ROI of your apps. Start making informed decisions through the development cycle and beyond. And start seeing—and tracking—the gains that mobile apps can give you. In cleaning your mobility house, you may be surprised with what good things you find.
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