Without a doubt, developing a new app is a major decision. It will require resources from budget to time, but can ultimately make a major impact on your productivity, marketing, and bottom line. And that decision becomes amplified when discussing the possibility of developing a large enterprise app.
Most apps are front-facing, designed to help market and enhance your business and customer experience. Enterprise apps, on the other hand, often face inward, designed to improve employee productivity across major organizations. An app of that scale requires significant planning and testing, and will only make sense if you have specific problems you need to solve or efficiencies you want to create and the right team to do it.
So how do you know your business is ready for that type of major undertaking? Here are 4 signs you may want to look into enterprise app development to help your company succeed.
1. The Call from Management
If organizational leadership determines that the corporation needs an enterprise app, it’s time to look into the concept. Chances are the idea didn’t come out of nowhere; usually something sparks the ideas such as if a member of the C-suite has discovered flaws in communication or spoken to consultants about improving cross-departmental relationships.
A simple call from the CEO or CTO alone should not be enough impetus to embark on enterprise app development. But it should provide the jumping off point to do more research on the concept in order to determine whether such an app is viable and affordable for your business.
2. The Need for Enhancements
A lack of inner-organizational communication and productivity does not have to come from upper management. A study may find that your employees could work together and collaborate more effectively using centralized technology, or the workers themselves may have expressed their need for such an app directly.
Using an expressed need for enhancement as a jumping-off point for enterprise app development also comes with a significant advantage once the app is built: employee buy in. Without it, you will have trouble getting the app off the ground and turning it into an effective tool to improve your business. On the other hand, an enterprise app that is built specifically as a response to consistent employee feedback garners organic buy in from the workers who asked for it to begin with.
3. Cross-Channel Communication
Successful organizations operate proactively rather than reacting to existing problems. So even if you have not discovered an express need for better employee collaboration, the nature of your business may make an enterprise app a viable option to improve your processes.
For example, your organization may rely on cross-departmental communication to succeed. You may have offices in multiple locations or even countries that need to work closely together, or your product development relies on employees at all levels of the organization. All of these are potential reasons to develop an enterprise app that helps your workers communicate more seamlessly. You may even look to internal branding as a main reason for developing such an app, helping you push out regular communications to your employees and asking for their feedback on organizational questions or issues.
4. A Robust IT Support Structure
That last point in particular suggests that any large organization with a robust IT department should at least begin to consider an enterprise app to enhance their business. But this last part is crucial: without an IT department knowledgeable enough to support and maintain the app, you should not move forward. First, you need to find an experienced app development partner that can dedicate sufficient resources to your project to ensure its success.
Your development partner will help in building a software solution tailored to your business. We’ll also stay in touch to help with any new features, bug fixes, or other improvements you might want after your app launches.
Have you run into any of these four signs in the recent past? If so, you may be ready for enterprise app development. To start learning about the variables of developing an app, such as budget and timeline, contact us.
