Re-defining Business with Mobile Applications
Expanding cell networks and mobile internet is on the rise and last year smart phones and tablets in all sizes invaded the Indian market by storm. So, what does all this mean to a business? It means that more mobile-apps would get designed for businesses to get competitive advantage over others.
Technology can transform and is slated to do that. Surrounded by immense amount of advertising, customer is gradually drifting – and technology can be roped in to stem this drift. With apps, customers can interact with business entities by engaging themselves at their convenience, getting messages on ETAs, viewing exactly about their technician/ goods on a map, and providing real time feedback on their service experience. Business entities, on the other hand leverage their mobile field service workers to their optimum. Businesses can have scalable mobile workforce empowered with mobility apps to view jobs, record asset details, interact with manager’s on the fly, send status updates, view service histories, view customer information, send messages, record asset details, parts usage, view manuals,collaborate with colleagues and lot more.
Prime Minister Modi in a speech at San Jose’s SAP center asked, “Can we use location services and tell our fishermen where the best prospects are?”. Location based apps take the real-time location of field resources and provides better decision making. Well theres something for everyone to leverage on for sure.
On hardware front PC is giving way to mobile devices like smart phones, tablets etc. and on the software front it will be mobile apps. There will be mobile apps for all business functions. Its time to embrace business-app revolution, if not already. The question is, How?
Well, there off-the-shelf apps in plenty and business might acquire them. Some businesses may opt for in-house apps team and develop core competency on mobile apps for competitive advantage. Some may like to get apps developed, customized to their requirement. Previously, say about two years back, customized apps were expensive especially for small businesses. These days advanced software development kits are available that makes developing apps much easy than ever. Even, there are several on-line utilities/websites that allow non-coders to create a fully-functioning app. Ease of building apps has increased, and also the potential functionality. The cost of creating an app has dramatically come down due to all these developments. There are cost-calculators available that would give a ballpark estimate – incase a business has decided on the list of features they seek in an app to be developed.
Many businesses might argue that they have a web presence – but its not sufficient.Online activity continues to shift to mobile. 75% of internet users were using mobile device at the end of 2015.
It is expected that by 2016, mobile devices would overtake all other devices in terms of time spent online (as per the trend-watch information, published by GlobalWebIndex). Talking about India, the average smart-phone usage per day is about 169 minutes. Thus, businesses have more chances of meeting potential clients via app and the ability to showcase can make the difference between closing the sale and losing the client.
Concluding bottom line of this article would be, “Be present on mobile so people can find you when and where they’re ready to engage with you”.
