Investing in apps pays off – research

Mobility brings improvements to the enterprise in terms of efficiency and lower operational costs.

This means that by investing in a mobile strategy, employees are given the tools needed to make better and faster decisions. Is delivering mobile applications worth the effort and will they really add value to the business?

According to OutSystems, there is sufficient evidence that investing in mobile pays. In a recent Forrester survey, 75% of decision-makers indicated deploying mobile apps had increased worker productivity, while 65% acknowledged mobile apps increased employee responsiveness and decision-making speed.

“it’s something that has already proven its benefits,” says OutSystems SA director Craig Terblanche. “The way mobile apps achieve these benefits is by providing access to relevant information at the right time and place, in an easy-to-use, consumable and actionable form. This gives workers the insight and tools needed to accomplish more.”

There are three types of mobile applications to choose from: those including native applications, mobile web applications and hybrid applications.

Native applications are mobile applications written in the languages prescribed or allowed by the mobile OS manufacturer. These apps provide a rich user experience because they are built specifically for a particular device’s hardware. On the downside, for each device supported, a specific version of the app must be built.

Mobile web applications are increasingly rich mobile applications accessed via the device’s web browser. These applications can take a variety of design forms. Historically, companies that went down the path of mobile web enablement created specific mobile-only versions of their websites or applications.

More recently, a methodology known as responsive design has taken hold. Enabled by advancing technologies, such as HTML5, responsive design allows developers to create one application that responds to the form factor of the accessing device.

Hybrid applications build a thin native shell around a mobile web application. Companies use this technique most frequently, mainly to get the mobile app listed on a variety of app stores. A secondary use case for hybrid apps is to implement the mostused functions natively. Some companies use the native layer to access additional local sensors or applications and data.

Terblanche says mobile web applications provide the quickest way to get started.

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