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Enterprise Mobile App Development Fundamentals For A Startup Guidelines that can be adopted by mobile app development startup.

By Mehul Rajput

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As per the analysis conducted by the world's top researchers, the forecasting says that the mobile sales will continue to boom reaching 2.1 billion units by 2019. Such hype in mobile sales will also fuel the demand for enterprise mobile applications that is scalable, robust, and promises supreme level of performance. Business to customer (B2C) mobilization is a hot trend showing no signs of slowing down.

From social media apps, healthcare, account access, banking transactions, to online research, shopping, traveling, taxi hiring, etc., customers are looking for all the facilities in their mobile handset, and enterprises are searching for more ways to reach customers and meet their expectations.

Enterprise mobile applications (apps) are extremely in demand in the business of mobile app industry. This term belongs to apps that have dynamic functionalities like location(GPS), audio/video messages, transactions, sensor, high responsiveness, etc. on a common platform, and it supports various mobility devices like phone, tablet, wearable devices, etc.

The users of such as can be business users as well as consumers. There are many tools and technologies available in the market to perform the enterprise apps development, however, it is crucial for a startup firm to select the right tools, technologies, and processes to develop such a complicated application.

Enterprises are all set to innovate and develop mobile apps that can meet customer needs through mobile services. To cater to the rising demands, it becomes challenging for mobile app development startup organizations to constantly innovate, develop and implement mobile apps.

Enterprise mobile applications are cross-platform apps that can be deployed to smartphones, tablets, wearable devices, and any hand handled devices; moreover, these enterprise apps are scalable enough to be upgraded with the changing technologies. For a startup organization, it is very crucial to define a strategy to for development of an app and its maintenance such that the app gives flawless user experience.

Here are some fundamental guidelines that can be adopted by mobile app development startup companies for enterprise mobile app design and development:

Clear Purpose

The first step is to understand the purpose of the application. This is important for the entrepreneur to understand what he is investing into and also the developers to understand what they will work on. Instead of framing features randomly, the startup firm needs to perform a focused research to understand the demands in markets, and what targeted customers required. Based on the research done, the list of features can be finalized with clear objectives, which developers can bind to follow while development, instead of adding features randomly.

Strategize the Development

There is rapid demand for mobile apps in the market, and to meet the same mobile app startups needs to strategize the plan that includes planning of using the correct tools and techniques, resources, and how to allocate the decided budget for the app. Mobility platforms are evolving and changing rapidly and to decide which is the right mobile platform technology is to meet your business needs. Also, this includes prioritizing the app that should be taken first based on the demand in the market, need of business, and available resources.

A Scalable Development Platform

Trends in technology change at lightning speed, and hence it does not take much time for a specific platform to become outdated. And it becomes impossible to maintain the app and upgrade it to new technologies. Investing in a mobile development platform that is not scalable can lead to revenue loss in the future. Hence, mobile startups must always be careful while choosing a development platform that are able to optimize the development and testing efforts to create a robust enterprise mobile app that is sustainable and upgradable with changing time.

Consistency Matters

While development of an app is ongoing, it is highly necessary to maintain a consistency in development practices. If there is no consistency in how different screens look in an app, then it can cause confusion to the users of the app. Suppose the codes that you write are not backed up in different versions, then it will become difficult to reuse the same. Hence, it is crucial that the user interface of the application, programme updates, documentation, and reusability of codes must be consistent through the development cycle. To achieve this consistency, the development team need to give collaborative efforts for designing, coding, testing, and implementing the application as per the processes defined.

Bug-Free and Secure

Since an enterprise mobile app has cross-functional features, there can be more than one third party systems with which it is integrated. For example, a payment gateway for making transactions. Integration consists of data exchange, which makes the mobile apps vulnerable. Hence it is highly recommended to implement the security practices of encrypting the sensitive data. And also conduct a robust testing to make the app bug free and secure.

Launch a Pilot Version

Once the application is developed and tested full-fledged, a pilot product launch is a key to understand how successful your application is and if there are any loopholes. During pilot launch, you can inform your staff, friends, and family to download and use the app as a trial. And their feedback can be used for analyzing how the key features of the application are performing, which features are admired the most and the features that are not working accurately. In such type of pilot launch, you can know which features still require debugging or development efforts, and it can be reconciled before an actual launch.

Be Updated with Emerging Technologies

Since the mobile technologies are evolving, app developers must keep a track of new trends in technologies. For a startup company, it is highly necessary to keep its application features up-to-date and efficient enough to give utmost user experience.

These are some of the fundamental ways that a mobile app development startup must consider when working on an enterprise mobile apps.

Mehul Rajput

CEO, Mindinventory

Mehul Rajput is the CEO of Mindinventory, a mobile app development company. He loves to write on mobile technologies, Startups, Entrepreneurship and mobile applications.

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