http://www.FirstRain.com

Table of Contents

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IntroductionThe Castle in the AirKnowing the ObstaclesBuilding a StrategyCase Study: Navigating the MazeConclusion

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Blurring the Line

Many companies have noticed that the world is going mobile, but they’re not certain of how to use this shifting behavior to their advantage.

One thing is for sure: with the revolution in consumer mobile apps, user expectations are growing in regards to user experience, relevance and most of all, derived value.

Nearly everyone uses mobile devices, whether a smartphone or a tablet, to do everyday tasks. Because of their ubiquity, mobile devices are becoming more and more of a necessity rather than a luxury. Riding the wave of how connected people are—and, of course, driving it even more—the usability and efficacy of consumer apps are progressing at an astounding rate as developers are continuing to unravel what, exactly, users want. The amount of personal time people spend on their smartphones and tablets presents an incredible opportunity for enterprises to drive their own agenda through mobile—but they neeneed to fully think through their development and deployment strategy and how they will fit into the multitasking employee’s mobile world.

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If enterprises rise to meet these expectations and clearly show that their app provides unique, compelling value to their users, they will be able to successfully blur the line between work and life and make their employees productive anytime, anywhere —increasing the engagement of their workforce and turning the multitasking lifestyle into revenue for their company.

In this e-book, we will address the steep curve for enterprise apps in a consumer-dominated market, including: what enterprise apps can learn from the consumer world;

the current enterprise app landscape;

challenges involved in creating an enterprise app;

how to gain mindshare for your app to turn BYOD and multitasking into revenue.

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The Castle in the Air

It’s Personal

Because of the proliferation of apps in this day and age, any new enterprise app that is released will automatically be compared to their competitors and the incumbent best-in-class—and those are, for the most part, consumer-focused. What makes an app best-in-class? What experiences and features have users come to expect? There are three key characteristics of which to be aware:

An effective app will tune to the user’s life and fit into his particular workflow. Apps need to strike a delicate balance between being extremely knowledgeable about the user and not passing the tipping point to creepy or invasive. For example, notifications from your app must provide value to the user by alerting him to important events; for the enterprise to get the maximum benefit from the app, the user mumust also be constantly engaged. However, too many notifications will be seen as annoying and will effectively turn him away from your app.

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When developed properly, your app opens up a world of possiblities to drive your business forward. You provide your teams with right-on-time expertise, which helps them be more knowledgeable about what is going on in their business world and more involved with their business objectives and their customers. When users become more productive and recognize that the app seamlessly integrates with their day-to-day activities they will be more likely to use it—making them more engaged.

Creating a useful, engaging app and deploying it to all members of your organization will also facilitate a cohesive, genuinely connected team. Your organization will run much more smoothly as they are easily able to share key content elements amongst themselves and add even more value to the customer. All of this will result in more fluid workflows between you and your customers—meaning greater efficiency and more revenue.

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Creating a successful app is easier said than done.

The main problem with any app is competing with sheer volume.

They are all vying for attention, and it’s hard for any app—but especially an enterprise app—to win a user’s time on a consistent basis through all the noise that is bombarding them. What about your app is compelling and valuable enough to grab the user’s attention—and does it fulfill a specific need for them? Unfortunately for enterprises, consumer apps are usually more fun than work, so they’re more likely to grab a user’s attention.

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The second struggle is the fragmentation of the devices on which your app will run.

All of these approaches have their pros and cons. There is no straightforward way to tackle this divide, and it is a challenge for app developers who need to appeal to a mass market rather than constrain themselves to the users of just one kind of device. The architecture approach chosen for mobile application development will ultimately depend on the sort of application experience that you’re trying to create. In the end, however, it comes down to providing the best user experience, as seamlessly as possible, for as many people as possible.

The challenge doesn’t simply boil down to a tablet-or-smartphone conundrum—there are different screen sizes to contend with, as well as different operating systems. All of this differentiation is compounded by the fact that people are particular about their preferences between iOS, Android, or Windows, among others. In addition, you have to choose whether to develop using OS-native programming languages, HTML5 or one of several hundred cross-platform solutions that aim to solve the problem of software reuse and generalization.

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Lastly, security is a massive sticking point for enterprise apps.

Users want an easy, porous experience.

As we discussed in the previous section, users expect an app that provides significant value—and for enterprises, that usually means that they will be walking around with critical business data in their pocket. For the company’s IT department, whose first priority is keeping their data safe, this is a big challenge for them, and they want to have that data under lock and key. Despite mobile OS vendors baking increasingly complex encryption solutions and app sandboxing into their offerings, many app developers are forced to consider the mobile device as fundamentally insecure—and security is approached from the perspective of risk-mitigation rather than risk-elimination.

If it’s too hard for them to access the data they need—or if there are too many obstacles to overcome—whether it’s too many logins, aggressively frequent timeout policies, or anything else—they won’t use the app and your ROI will decline. Many organizations’ IT policies require integrating with a mobile device management (MDM) solution, which will play a pivotal role in user adoption based on how tight the coupling is. Striking a balance bebetween a fluid user experience and keeping the data secure is one of the biggest challenges for enterprise apps.

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Keeping the possibilities and challenges in mind, how can you approach building an exciting, useful app? Before you do anything else, it’s important to look at your target market and users to devise a strategy.When considering how to solve a specific problem for your enterprise, be mindful of the larger ecosystem with which your application will need to integrate. Consider if you would you be better off building a standalone app or making an app that integrates with an existing enterprise solution (like Salesforce.com). App platforms can provide an environment that makes it easier for companies to create an ecosystem of various touch-points for a user, mamaximizing usability and engagement.

The decision boils down to what you believe will make your app recognizable and consumable to users and prospective users, because a good foundation will lead to further good results.

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Case StudyFirstRain creates personal business analytics solutions for the enterprise, pulling business-focused content from the unstructured data of Web and social media to help users deeply understand their customers and markets.

One of our core target segments is sales and marketing professionals; they are constantly on the move and need to be able to access these deep customer insights wherever they are.

SinceSince our users work across every kind of device and many of the leading CRM systems, we decided that we needed to create a native application for each platform, which provides an incredibly seamless ecosystem for an integrated user experience across any and all touch points at a higher development cost. We are constantly re-evaluating our apps for usability and experience—for example, we started out with a hybrid development strategy, with some of our applications being built using a combination of native and web technologies.

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As the adoption of our mobile applications grew, our customers began to call for a better user experience to satisfy their requirements of faster access to personalized sales insights on their mobile devices.

FirstFirstRain identified the retrieval and rendering of this content as a key performance metric and made the decision to re-implement our mobile applications across all platforms using exclusively platform-native architectures. This approach allowed us to have more explicit control over the user interface and optimize the application behavior around key use cases.

Web Portal

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Our flagship application, the online desktop web portal is designed for the power user at their desk. It is rich in features and capability and is best used when the user is at their desk, researching—but its designed to be responsive, so the experience is helpful and not overwhelming. We make sure our users get the most relevant experience possible by directing them to define their profile right from the beginning using our Start Here flow. There is a huge amamount of data out there, but by defining a profile, we prevent our users from getting lost in the deluge by providing them only what they need.

iPad

Email

Smartphone

CRM

We developed this app natively in order to provide an incredibly rich user experience for our customers tailored specifically to the capabilities provided by the platform. By developing this application natively, we are able to leverage the evolving capabilities of the operating system and maximize the responsiveness and functional complexity of the application—the best of both worlds for both the user and their IT department.

Designed to provide a scan-and-go experience, our responsively designed email briefs deliver the most critical information right to a user’s inbox and are optimized for both desktop and mobile consumption. These emails allow the users to be flexible and see what they need, whether they are at their desk or out meeting with a client.

We currently have apps for iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile. Because of the smaller screen size, our apps have a leaner footprint to allow users to scan and go, but still get the rich insights they need.

Our solution integrates seamlessly into core workflows, enriching the CRM experience for the user and adding value. This integration allows their CRM to be a one-stop shop to access relevant information.

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Mobile is the way of the future. And the possibilities that come from a well-executed mobile application strategy are staggering.

However, the path to measurable ROI for business and enterprise applications is more difficult, as they have to meet the current expectations set by consumer apps while still providing exceptional value and maintaining business effectiveness and enterprise security. The user expects a magical experience, while the IT department expects that everything will be locked down—and the best apps are able to find a happy medium between them.

ByBy creating an app that provides exceptional value to its users and is both appealing from a user experience perspective, enterprises can take advantage of the wave of BYOD in business and see a significant increase in employee productivity.

FirstRain Headquarters 1510 Fashion Island Blvd. Suite 120 San Mateo, CA 94404

650-356-9040

FirstRain.com

@FirstRain

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