A guide to streamlining workflows with custom mobile applications
Aside from making money, the name of the game for most modern enterprises is to become as efficient as possible within the confines of what actions you’re attempting to take.
However, just like increasing revenue, this task is often easier said than done, particularly if you already have exciting ways of doing things and your team is less than willing to accept change. Nevertheless, with the right tools at their disposal, most businesses should be able to adapt to new commercial environments and take advantage of new avenues that open.
In this article, we explore how custom mobile applications could allow companies to streamline operations dramatically in numerous ways and how to go about finding a solution that matches their needs.
Identifying key pain points in processes
If you are serious about improving an aspect of your business, the first step is inevitably to identify areas that need improvement; otherwise, you risk going into the process blind and risking a hefty investment allocation that won’t yield the desired results.
According to this mobile app development company, if you go down the custom route (as opposed to simply buying an off-the-shelf solution), you can gain valuable insights from the development company themselves, who have the requisite experience and understanding to dig into your current workflows and proffer some suggestions. This can be an invaluable option to take as you can lean on their experience from previous jobs they’ve taken.
Outside of this, you will also need to perform an in-depth analysis of what you need, which can involve numerous tasks, from an all-arms meeting with employees and management to trying to discover what’s lacking and what’s required to remedy it.
Analyzing your team’s existing workflow
In conjunction with the previous step, you must pick through your team’s current workflows to see how they’re operating and what a mobile ought to contain that could boost productivity. This is going to differ massively based on the industry you operate in and how large you are. Nonetheless, by performing this task, you will see where things are going wrong, which will provide a practical understanding of the things you will need to fix them.
Just be cautious of observer bias, which is the effect of influencing an outcome based on the fact you are observing it. Instead, you should try to perform your observations as quietly as possible so that you get a more accurate picture of where things might be going wrong. You might do this with the agency you’ve selected to build the app in order for them to also gain the insights required to get things right the first time.
Choosing the correct development platform
Although life is made exponentially more manageable due to the fact that there are only two major mobile operating systems, the fact remains that you will need to choose whether you create an Android or iOS application, or as it might well turn out to be, both.
The truth is that you will probably have to foot the bill and get your application developed for both systems, especially if you demand your staff to download and use the app on their personal devices. However, if you happen to offer work devices for your employees, then you can save money and opt to have the app designed for whatever OS the work phones use.
In fact, if you plan on going down the mobile app route and don’t currently offer work phones, you might want to weigh up the cost-to-benefit ratio of investing in devices compared with the cost of having an app created for two disparate operating systems.
Integrating existing tools with new apps
Asking a developer to create a brand new app is one thing, but ensuring that it plays nicely with your other apps and software is another thing entirely! The ideal outcome is obviously to ensure that you can access your various exciting solutions relatively easily to avoid bottlenecks that could affect business and overall employee dissatisfaction by forcing them to use yet another solution but in a silo to what they already have to use, which will ultimately reduce productivity rather than streamline it.
In order to achieve this, you will have to spend enough time with the development agency you have selected and inform them of your current software and what you hope to achieve. This could mean asking them to utilize an API if available or coming up with a workaround if not. The idea is to ensure they know all of your current workflows so they are better able to come up with a solution that fits the bill.
Ensuring user-friendly interface design
In a similar vein to the points about employee satisfaction, any application you have developed must absolutely adhere to UX’s best practices. Even if you only plan on using the app internally, it must have a user-friendly interface that even your most technologically inept team members can use as intended. The more confusing it is to use, the less productivity you will achieve, and you can kiss your dreams of streamlined workflows goodbye.
Therefore, it might be a good idea to get a few samples by way of an MVP to present to those who will end up using it and get some feedback based on their experiences. This could cost you more in development fees, but what you lose initially, you will gain tenfold from the fact that the app will hit the ground running, and your team can pick it up and start improving their own workflows immediately.
Testing applications for optimal performance
Just as you would with a publically available application, so you must also test, test, and test again an internal one. Only by intense rounds of testing will you ever be able to ensure that the app has the intended consequences of improving workflows and removing any inefficiencies that currently exist within your organization. Such testing will inevitably occur via various stages, with the results being gathered and the feedback used to fix any issues and overall improve the app.
Creating a mobile application for internal business use can be both more tricky than releasing a comically available one and less tricky due to the closed internment it will be used in. However, what is sure is that as long as you choose a reputable agency to design and create the app, you should see some pretty signal improvements to your overall business productivity.
