Finding the right enterprise mobility platform for your business
Every company these days needs an app. Otherwise, you’ll quickly lose ground to competitors that do have one. You’ll also look out of touch to your market. Fortunately, you can invest in enterprise mobility platforms that allow you to make your own custom app. Look for the following in one of these programs before you make your investment and you’ll love the results.
User-friendly design
The reason that enterprise mobility platforms have become so popular is twofold. First, there’s the simple fact that basically every company needs its own app to stay relevant and competitive and then the fact that this app needs to be unique to that business’ specific needs and market. Then there’s also the fact that these platforms are supposed to make design something anyone can handle.
Therefore, if you’re seriously considering a platform for creating an app, it needs to be one that will make development easy on. Otherwise, there’s no point. If you had the design chops to go through a convoluted process, you wouldn’t need this type of platform in the first place.
Fortunately, most of these platforms make it possible to create an app with little more than your mouse. You can basically click and drag the necessary parts into place. If this isn’t something an app development tool recommends, it’s probably worth skipping over.
Be smart upfront by demoing a platform before you pay for it. This will give you a good sense for the software and what you can expect in the future. If you don’t see a demo advertised on the manufacturer’s site, contact them and ask for one. Any company that doesn’t offer at least some kind of free trial should probably be avoided.
Easy integration
Another feature you want to see in an enterprise mobility platform is easy integration. By this, we mean that your software should allow you to connect the app you make to your company’s internal systems. This will most likely be a mandatory feature of any app you build.
For example, if you create one to help your customers place their orders with you while they’re on the go, you need to map your app to your company’s inventory management system. If you can’t do this, the app isn’t going to be much good and may actually result in bigger problems.
As long as your software comes with a flexible API (Application Program Interface), your problems should be largely solved where this feature is involved. You’ll be able to map the solution your app needs to run properly.
A lot of times, you may not even have to go as far as the API. Many manufacturers have programmed their software so that it’s ready to play along with popular systems your business may use. Look into this beforehand and even contact the company and ask to see if this is a benefit their software offers. It’s definitely a helpful one.
Like we said in the last section, you’re not a coder and shouldn’t have to be to use this kind of technology. There is a whole market of people just like you, so don’t feel bad about only settling when you find the most user-friendly product.
High-quality security measures
No matter what kind of app you build, you can’t afford to have lackluster security. If you’ve paid attention to the news these past couple of years, it’s obvious why: there are more hackers than ever before and they keep very busy.
Creating an app for your company is definitely a net positive for it, but that’s not to say there aren’t risks involved. If your enterprise mobility program doesn’t come with adequate security measures, you may have the misfortune of dealing with these risks early on.
In most cases, your app is going to mean more users accessing your system than ever before. Naturally, then, hackers will have more opportunities to join them and then cause all kinds of problems.
This is why you need encryption. It’s the best way to keep communications between your company’s internal system and your app a complete secret. Encryption has become such a commodity in the security world that you should be very surprised by any software manufacturer that doesn’t offer it as a feature.
Depending on your goals for the app you create, you may want role-based access for it. This means that there will be different levels of access and people’s credentials will be based on their position in your company. Role-based access allows you to share more over your app without worrying that it will end up in front of unapproved eyes.
Management features
Finally, you’ll need to be sure you’re properly managing this amazing asset you’re about to create for your company. To do this, your enterprise mobility program needs to give you a number of options.
One of the most important is the ability to revoke access from anyone who has downloaded or otherwise installed the app whenever you want. You might find that a customer is accidentally misusing it, for example, or it might become obvious that their device has been hacked.
On the other hand, you may terminate an employee and need to shut them out of the app ASAP.
These are just two of many ways you have to be able to manage your app or potentially suffer for this oversight.
Mike Miranda writes about enterprise software and covers products offered by software companies like www.rocketsoftware.com about topics such as Terminal Emulation, Legacy Modernization, Enterprise Search, Big Data and Enterprise Mobility.
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