Top 5 requirements for choosing a mobile app development platform

While the strategy formation and vendor selection are always a balance of internal requirements, the companies that “win” have a commonly shared view from both sides of IT and business: this is all about creating business value. Whether that means effecting engagement with your customers or empowering your employees to be more productive, IT and the business must be aligned on objectives in order to advance a truly successful multi-channel strategy.

There are five imperatives that bring the best thinking forward:

1. Mobile devices: they will continue to come.
2. Multi-channel apps: users want a consistent experience.
3. Underlying data sources: how much heavy lifting is involved?
4. Mobile management challenges: protecting the enterprise without messing with Angry Birds.
5. Empowering everywhere: mobilizing the moments of engagement.

These observations are pulled from the hundreds of engagements I’ve been lucky enough to have with prospects and customers building their strategy. Frankly, it’s easy to spot the companies that will have a successful mobile strategy because they ask the right questions.

Often, it’s the business side that will drive the mobile strategy, but the IT group makes recommendations about the options for a mobile vendor. So, how can you ensure that in the end your users get the best possible mobile experience and business creates the most value? Below is a deeper look at the five topics that every selection team should be thinking about. 

Mobile devices: they will continue to come

Over 2 billion mobile devices are sold each year.  That’s a heck of a lot of economic incentive for companies to introduce new and different devices.While Apple and Android smartphones dominate today’s market, Blackberry and Microsoft-powered devices are waiting in the wings. Tablets introduce their own form factors - the current supremacy of the Apple iPad is already under attack.

As you develop your mobile strategy, it’s important to take a multi-channel approach that plans to support multiple new devices.

Multi-channel apps: users want a consistent experience

Moreover, users expect engaging experiences - they aren’t satisfied with miniaturized access to predefined web sites. While mobile web apps are a way to get started, users need task-oriented solutions designed to deliver immediate access to relevant information, direct inputs to enterprise resources, and near real-time updates to one another and to their clientele. These mobile apps run on the devices themselves and leverage integration with GPS, accelerometer, camera, and other sensors.

You should expect to develop multiple native mobile apps, each designed to support specific business tasks and empower targeted groups of users. Invariably, cost becomes a factor. As you mobilize enterprise applications and engage customers, partners, and employees, it’s essential to optimize your firm’s investments in development resources. A good mobile vendor will help ensure that developers can rapidly deliver a continuing stream of native mobile apps. These apps should target the high-value tasks and produce business results.

Underlying data sources: how much heavy lifting is involved?

But native mobile apps are not simply the ends in themselves. Rather, they are the touch points for a larger business context. Mobile apps must communicate with predefined content and data sources to fetch information and return results.

Working with your IT group, you need to identify these data sources, taking into account how frequently you are updating information on the devices and how much data needs to flow across the network. It is important to define the connections between the native mobile apps and the back-end information sources. A good mobile vendor will deliver a flexible and extensible set of connectors to rapidly integrate with your firm’s existing enterprise applications and information sources.

Mobile management challenges: protecting the enterprise without messing with Angry Birds

Finally, there are the inevitable management challenges. How do you best roll out and provision multiple mobile apps to an ever-growing number of users? How do you update the applications and ensure the security of valuable enterprise information stored on the devices, whether they are company assets or employee-owned assets? If need be, how do you restrict the use of the applications to predefined locations and times of day?

A good mobile vendor will match application management capabilities to your organization’s policies and procedures, and enable you to track results.

Empowering everywhere: mobilizing the moments of engagement

As you choose a mobile vendor, be sure to identify the various devices and mobile apps you need to support. But these two factors are only the tip of the iceberg. You also need to pay attention to what is unseen and below the waterline.

These are the three factors related to your overall IT environment: how you integrate with existing applications and information sources, ensure security, and manage the mobile apps across your organization. An integrated SDLC platform like the Kony Multi-Channel Experience Cloud ensures that all of these are covered so you can empower everywhere.

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