Tag Archive for: Communication during COVID

Is It Time To Launch a Custom Enterprise App?

The Rise of The Custom Enterprise App

Organizations all over the globe adjusted operations over the past year in order to meet the needs of the market. Specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic completely altered the economy as we knew it. As a result, many companies began developing custom enterprise applications. These applications have a wide range of features and capabilities and vary significantly from business to business. However, despite the large variance in design and function, there is no denying that a custom enterprise app is perfectly capable of elevating your organization to the next level.

Finding the right time to invest in custom enterprise app development is sometimes crucial to successful implementation. Therefore, it’s vital to do your due diligence before pulling the trigger on custom enterprise app development to make sure that you’re setting yourself up for success.

Conducting an Internal Analysis

One of the very first steps to take in considering the development of a custom enterprise application is; conducting a thorough internal analysis. Performing an internal analysis is a vital process because it yields a waterfall of helpful insights and data that inform decision-making in the context of custom enterprise app development. For instance, by conducting an internal analysis you’ll gain impactful insights into the types of functions and capabilities to be sure to include.

Be sure to take note of your staff’s input when conducting your internal analysis. Staff will often provide deep insights into the exact functionalities that would benefit them the most. Then, by including those features in specific, you’re well on your way to a successful custom enterprise app design.

Another major area to pay attention to throughout the course of your internal analysis is your financial standing. This is arguably the most significant indicator to determine whether or not your firm is in need of a custom enterprise application. Furthermore, this data will allow you to know what sort of budget you would be able to invest in enterprise application development.

Developing Custom Enterprise Applications

As mentioned above, finances are an extremely significant determinant of when to develop a custom enterprise app. However, there is still more than one avenue through which appreneur’s and app developers can pursue custom enterprise app development. There are really three options when it comes to recruiting the programming team. First, you can look in-house if you have a few talented programmers, developers, and designers on staff already. This is arguably the most cost-effective as all of the development processes remain in-house and self-contained. Not to mention, when working with staff and employees, there’s a stronger internal sense of communication that already innately exists.

For those that aren’t lucky enough to have their own suite of developers in-house, there are still two other options. Organizations and decision-makers can look to agency developers, or they can seek help from a freelance developer. As you can imagine, each of these options comes with its own series of pros and cons. For instance, with freelance programmers, there is generally a higher risk associated with the quality of the end result, as well as timing, and other factors that could throw off your project. While some freelancers are more than worth their weight in salt, so to speak, there’s a wide market percentage of freelance developers that are under-trained and under-experienced whose work ends up being subpar. This can range from issues like bug-ridden applications full of faults; all the way to incomplete code, or a final design that feels clunky and unprofessional.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, if fishing for a freelancer isn’t your game; you can trust the development of your custom enterprise application to an agency developer.

Choosing Your Developer

By far one of the most enticing benefits of choosing agency developers to take on your custom enterprise application project is the guarantees that come with. Agency developers and programmers are often part of entire project teams. In other words, they’re pieces of the whole or cogs in the machine, if you will. As such, your app has more people working on it from a variety of angles. With design specialists to UX experts, and everything in between, by choosing an agency developer, you can rest assured your application is in good hands.

There is, however, a common misconception with the agency development avenue. Since agencies come with quality guarantees on design, user experience, and delivery, they too bring with them a slightly heftier price-point. Consider this, though; when it comes to application development costs, the true lifetime value of the development process is presented in the final application. In other words, while agencies may require a bit more capital; there is a lot less risk when it comes to the end result.

The Benefits To Employees

Committing the time and capital necessary to develop a custom enterprise application, though, will go miles. In the new economy that is nearly fully virtual and with the world quickly accelerating toward an entirely digital social experience, consumers are hungry for instant gratification. As well as instant results. Beyond the growing expectation for instant results in the consumer base, however; is the fact that a large majority of the corporate workforce now operates remotely. To accommodate the remote workforce, more and more companies are buying into custom enterprise solutions for their organization.

One of the most common areas that these custom enterprise applications address is internal communication. While there are plenty of options in the enterprise app market that already target communication, employees show a significant uptick in productivity and efficiency with custom solutions.

Communication Solutions

In today’s day, communication is being recognized as one of the most valuable elements in any context. This extends from business settings to emotional life situations, and every and any type of relationship in between. As such, business leaders and decision-makers have put a much stronger emphasis and priority on developing strong avenues of communication, both internally and externally.

Developing a well-connected and interlaced internal network through strong communication channels elevates business operations, efficiency, and employee productivity. By creating strong channels through which team members can communicate swiftly and seamlessly, you’ll be providing them the suite of tools that they need to conduct and complete their daily activities from wherever they may be stationed.

Equip Your Staff For Success

Following suit, by investing in a custom enterprise application; your company can create a unique suite of enterprise solutions that is specific to your organization. This is a major benefit. It’s a major benefit because it offers you and your team the opportunity to elevate and optimize the processes that are specific to your firm.

Wrapping Up On The Custom Enterprise App

Many companies are trusting custom enterprise applications with the bulk of their internal communications. Not to mention, firms are finding more and more uses for their custom enterprise apps each and every year. This is another benefit of investing in a custom enterprise application. Once your enterprise app is launched, it always has the ability to grow, scale, and adjust itself to the needs that are most pressing in your organization.

For more information on custom enterprise app development, or anything else related to application development, keep browsing NS804. NS804 is the proud development agency for the everyday appreneur.

Internal Communication Solutions

Communication is arguably the most important aspect of any company. The ability to collaborate, delegate, inform, and present are just a few of the common functions internal communication enables. Being able to communicate across teams and between departments is absolutely essential to the survivability of companies and the success of projects. Especially in today’s volatile economy dominated by work-from-home roles, and remote operations. Communication software is vital to ensuring that teams can continue to function, and deliver on expectations. Mobile apps offer a versatile and robust internal communication solution to companies that need to stay up-to-date with constantly shifting deadlines without hindering a busy professional’s ability to stay focused and efficient.

Most communication software designed today has some integrated productivity tracking functionality. This could include something as basic as a to-do list function. It could also be as robust as project-management software capable of generating complex production schedules, and designed specifically to improve efficiency and productivity. Designing innate productivity tools creates a more robust and comprehensive communication software, that allows business professionals to streamline activities, and keep communication focused.

Without strong communication channels enabled, customer requests can be ignored, projects can derail and productivity can come to a screeching halt. Both could spell disaster for a company striving to Consumers and customers both need reliable avenues to get in touch with knowledgeable support staff to handle any issues that may arise on the user-end of things. Consumers should also always, and without fail, have access to a sales-staff equipped to help them through any issues, and convert them into customers, or in the case of mobile apps: users.

Internal communication channels for personal connection, the development of company culture, and team building should also be made a priority during these unprecedented times. Building a robust and exciting company culture has been a mainstream focus for the better part of the past decade. As the workforce has become empowered with access more information than ever before employees no longer settle for hostile or subpar work cultures. Keeping this in mind, businesses need to emphasize personal connections in order to stay competitive and attract top talent. Especially during the global pandemic, it’s more important than it ever has been to make a palpable effort to support virtual-socialization in a time of almost pure isolation.

Effective Business Communication With Mobile Apps

Mobile apps can be life-saving for companies looking to pivot to remote operations and implement work-from-home roles. Working in tandem with desktop communication platforms like Slack and Zoom, companies can build an infrastructure of communication that competes with traditional in-person communication. One thing to note regarding Zoom and Slack is that they actually both offer their platforms in a mobile-app format; which gives companies a nice array of options when utilizing these platforms to supplement communication processes within an organization.

One of the strongest arguments for pivoting to mobile-app for business-communication solutions is that they are offer push-notifications. In the world of instant-gratification that we live in; smartphones have almost become an extension of our hands. Considering that the majority of workers have their cell phone within 3 feet of them at any given point during the day – the feature of a push-notification ensures that important communications are never missed.

Hipchat is another name in the internal-communication game. Offering a myriad of products that target internal communication, collaboration, and file-security. Hipchat is another player that provides both desktop and mobile app platforms and a nice suite of functionality that’s both user-friendly and corporate oriented. Enabling companies to communicate between departments and individuals while also offering file-storing and file-sharing capabilities that boost efficiency and encourage collaboration.

Internal Communication and Team Building

The work-from-home trend isn’t going anywhere. Not any time soon. With that in mind, companies need to get creative when it comes to team building. The traditional after-hour happy-hours, company-wide pizza parties, and team-specific outings are quickly being phased out of company cultures due to the pandemic, social distancing, and the remote-operations craze. The disappearance of traditional team-building activities leaves a glaring void that needs to be filled. Regardless of industry or profession, top talent candidates still expect a certain standard of company culture that both rewards performance, and promotes socialization.

Instead of heading to the bar after work for a few drinks, managers and team-members are replacing these in-person experiences with virtual happy hours that still promote socialization and team building. While nothing can replace the experience of going to the local watering-hole with your co-workers. Virtual happy hours and virtual pizza-parties are swiftly becoming a relatively popular alternative in order to promote social distancing and employee safety, while also encouraging team-building and internal socialization to bring employees closer together.

As the popularity of mobile-app communication soars, there’s a wide breadth of opportunity for developers and mobile appreneurs. While the virtual happy hours and pizza parties discussed above certainly offer some sense of normalcy – there is an abundance of possibility for bolstering mobile-app communication as it relates to team building. Beyond video conferencing, and instant messaging; mobile apps are capable of delivering real-time experiences to c0-workers, like gaming, going head to head in problem solving activities, or any number of other functions that have yet to be widely implemented in corporate communication solutions.

With work-from-home accommodations, and remote operations becoming the norm for most companies during COVID-19, and likely into the foreseeable future, reliable and reputable communication capabilities are more than essential. The ability to collaborate, conference call, and conduct normal business activities from virtually anywhere is invaluable to companies. This trend in the workplace should continue to grow in popularity over the years to come. The integration of business activities, communication, team building and productivity tracking all into a single mobile app could be the next evolution in the mass-communication industry. This would empower companies, professionals, and individuals alike to maintain the same levels of productivity from anywhere around the globe. An all-in-one communication app would also significantly contribute to a work-teams ability to conduct team-building activities, offer personal connection, and deliver a sense of community in a time of severe isolation to the point that it’s nearly crippling to some.

With new adversity comes new challenges, and 2020 has been chalk-full of surprising new challenges that are universal in nature. The world may never be the same again, and as is natural, the burden of inventing and adjusting to our new normal falls on the shoulders of entrepreneurs. Once again it is the duty of early adaptors, appreneurs, entrepreneurs and pioneers to maintain a sense of curiosity and invention in these dark times so to pave the path ahead by taking the first steps forward.

Wait for the “right” opportunity, and spend a lifetime waiting. There has never been, and never will be a “right time” to take on a new venture, and the risk is all a part of the journey, but with COVID-19 keeping the majority of people confined to their houses, while most businesses remain closed to the public, consumers and companies alike are turning to mobile apps for communication solutions, entertainment, and much more.

Contact NS804 with a mobile app idea and get professional consultation from tech experts dedicated to making mobile app development accessible to the average person with a great idea.