Our day starts with a sunrise and ends with sunset, which means the first thing that we saw in the morning was the sun, and the last thing that we saw was the moon. But with the rise of smartphones and tablets, the first thing that we see in the morning today is most likely a phone and the last thing that we see at night.
The reason is not the device itself, of course, but the apps that keep us excited to access them again and again. Businesses have come to realize that the same attention to design and user experience that make for a compelling mobile app in the consumer space can be applied to help their organization in many different ways. That’s why our firm has been seeing more enterprise demand to build interactive and robust mobile applications.Â
The right enterprise mobility solutions can immensely help businesses to expand their brand, improve customer engagement, increase ROI, enhance visibility and grow sales. One of the biggest hurdles might be imaging the use cases, depending on the industry. With that in mind, here are a handful of examples to get the thinking process going:
1. Retail and E-commerce
As Starbucks and many others have realized, the most significant benefit of an app that could occur to a retailer is they can continuously stay connected with their customers. It improves customer experience as consumers can now shop at any time from anywhere.
The app offers a personalized shopping experience which can attract new customers and increase sales. Bring your customer engagement to the next level using latest technologies like IoT, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Big Data, etc. in the mobile app. This also means more data for internal teams, including marketing and sales, to determine the best way to nurture demand and boost conversions offline and in-store as well.
2. Health care
Mobility solutions can benefit both hospitals as well as private practitioners. It will help patients to connect with their doctors any time, but it also means hospitals have a mechanism for improved patient management and staff management. This includes appointment booking as well as managing wait times, particularly if prescriptions can be offered directly through the app.
3. Food Service Distribution
Foodservice distribution was a separate business until mobile apps came into the picture. It has consolidated food distribution business from the inside out. This includes time savings as distributors receive buying alerts from food vendors such as restaurants, hospitals, school canteens, and others on the app.
Apps in this sector can also centralize the process of distribution by connecting all food vendors to the distributor directly. It will also ensure on-time delivery of food and non-food products through live tracking of shipments.
4. Education
Many schools, from post-secondary down to elementary levels, have started to build apps which connect students, teachers, and parents. The best apps in this space improve the learning experience of students by offering them online lectures and tutorials. It will enhance the credibility of the schools as now parents and teachers will always stay connected and share their thoughts and feedback on school polices. The right app can also help schools improve marketing by attractively showing the amenities.
5. Travel and Tourism
Tours and travel agencies have made the whole travel booking process seamless through apps. Internally, this helps agents to increase their reach across the country, and booking agents can now potentially attract more customers by running multiple marketing campaigns simultaneously on the app. They can also increase sales by sending personalized discounts and offers based on user preferences.
An easy to use UI can enhance user experience and encourage them to visit the app again and again to make a booking. App analytics will give them the smallest piece of information required to take their next business decision.
6. Logistics and Transportation
Mobile apps in this vertical can increase operational efficiency and improve the safety of shipment by live tracking fleets of vehicles. Depending on how they’re build and the features includes, management and maintenance of the vehicles becomes easier, too.
As Uber and Lyft have shown, mobile apps are also a boon for on-demand cab service providers. They streamline the process of cab booking and control the vast network of drivers and customers. A well-designed app will improve company performance by allowing customers to share ratings and reviews about each driver and ride.
7. Manufacturing
Manufacturers have already improved production planning and operations with the help of mobility solutions. Mobile apps can optimize the factory performance as teams can access all the information from smartphones. Production units can improve the quality of products by tracking workers performance. Mobile apps increase the efficiency of the machinery by sending an alert to the maintenance staff in case of any machine break downs.
Conclusion
Mobility solutions can empower productivity, cost-efficiency, reliability, reduce production time and improve time to market. Not every business needs an app, but it only takes one early adopter to change the expectations of both customers and employees. While smartphones will continue to evolve, apps are probably here to say, which means this is the right time to make sure you’ve thought about whether or not they should be part of the tools you use to reach your business objectives in 2018 and beyond.
