Mobile apps are being used by leading companies to optimize their business operations. Is mobile right for your business? What kind of benefits can you expect?
With the popularity of mobile apps, it’s become increasingly common for businesses to look inwards and consider how to utilize apps to improve business processes. Mobile apps can often provide convenient and streamlined ways to accomplish otherwise tedious tasks.
What’s driving mobile in the the enterprise?
A growing culture of bringing our own devices to work has significantly reduced the cost of rolling out mobile solutions. Mobile devices provide attractive features and rich experiences with the promise of better workflows and accessibility. Mobile development can be relatively quick and economical, allowing for rapid innovation with low risk.
Should you invest in a mobile solution?
Mobile can be applied to wide range of industries and business types. To decide whether mobile is right for your business, you need to ask yourself: what problems are you trying to solve?
The most common challenge for enterprise workers is a lack of access to key information. In order to be productive, these workers (especially field representatives) require access to content and services only available in the office. These might be important customer details, order details, product information, subject matter experts, communication or sales tools. This lack of accessibility forces workers into tedious processes involving lots of printouts and redundant data entry. It’s ineffective and leads to costly errors.
Being able to identify the key problems goes a long way to justifying a solution and helps identify quick wins and a clear ROI.
What are some example benefits?
Data entry
Filling out hard copy forms and then re-entering the data back in the office is a very tedious and time consuming task. Being able to enter this information directly into a smartphone connected to your enterprise system speeds up the task, maintain better control of the information, and reduces errors.
Customer satisfaction
Having versatile access to information allows your workforce to respond more quickly and resolve customer issues right away. The entire customer service is improved because everyone knows the status of the work.
Sales acceleration & customer decision making
If your salesforce is frequently out in the field or traveling from city to city, they’re often without critical information that’s only stored back at the office. Providing them instant and easy access to that information allows them to give clients the numbers they need right away, even if they didn’t anticipate the question beforehand.
Find data quickly
When we think about mobile apps, we tend to think of the mobile workforce but forget that onsite personnel can also benefit from streamlined access to key information. For example, manufacturing workers need constant access to important production information such as inventory data or floor activity. Delivering information stored in enterprise applications to mobile devices keeps processes moving with peak efficiency all the way from raw materials to the finished goods.
Transfer of knowledge / information sharing
Mobile apps equip your workforce to solve problems in the field within seconds, even if they’ve never encountered them before. These tools capture the experience of the most knowledgeable technicians and turn that experience into accessible task guides and checklists.
Mobile solutions empower your workforce, allowing workers to answer their own questions, determine the right option for tackling a task, and verify task completion even if they have not performed the task in months. They no longer need to wait for someone to come approve their work or next steps.
Real-time alerts
The average person responds to text messages within 90 seconds. In the past, businesses struggled disseminating information and alerting the right parties about key events or information. Now we are all connected in matters of seconds, which can give your business the agility to change and react immediately. Consistent quality of products and responding to customer demands are major elements of an operational excellence plan. Keep your team up-to-date about changing job priorities. Immediately inform customers and suppliers when parts are missing from purchase orders. Real-time notifications give your business the tools to drastically improve response times and customer service.
Governance
Most companies have certain standards and regulations they must adhere to in order to guarantee quality and safety. Mobile apps can help organizations stay in compliance. Reminders of rules during certain procedures, as well as checklists for maintenance and operations are examples of how a mobile app can help improve processes and identify compliance inefficiencies.
It’s important for businesses to understand the power a mobile solution can have on their business operations. Mobile apps have helped organizations increase operational efficiency, accelerate time-to-decision, deepen customer engagement, and streamline workflow processes. Now that you have an idea of the different ways mobile can add value to your business, the next step is to analyze workflows and identify which ones could benefit from a mobile solution.
