Mobile Development

Mobile devices are ubiquitous and in almost constant use by all of us – at work, rest or play. But alongside Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a myriad of other popular social networking and entertainment apps, tablets and smartphones are increasingly being used for serious business purposes as well – not just for keeping up-to-date with business email, but also accessing corporate systems to find information and submit reports, and by remote and mobile workers to submit field data and manage sales.

At the same time, with the volume and variety of internet‐enabled devices continuing to grow exponentially, businesses are facing the very real challenge of how to create and manage a single, unified online identity and an optimal customer experience regardless of device.

Ultimately, the purpose of an enterprise mobile/tablet application is to complete business process tasks efficiently, conveniently and accurately, fully integrated with corporate data in real time, where possible. Users expect a fast, familiar and functional user experience (UX). Ideally, the applications they use on a PC or laptop in the office are the same applications they use “on the hoof” but either rendered to be “mobile responsive” (for web-based applications) or supported by a complementary “app”. That decision between mobile web and app can be an important one and depends on factors including:

• Is the software to be used by the general public or a large customer base?

If yes, you will probably want an app that users can obtain from an app store on their device.

• Does the software need to work when there is no Internet connection?

Apps will be usable whether there is an internet connection or not. Traditional Web applications can’t provide this, although the latest technology called “HTML5 offline” does allow this.

• Do you need the software to work on all types of device? (Apple, Android and Windows?)

Apps can be written to be “native” i.e. programmed for each of the three types of device, but writing natively means re‐producing much of the code for each device type ‐ and therefore 2 to 3 times the cost of development. The alternative is to write the app using a common framework (usually based on Javascript) which requires less specific code for each device type and therefore reduces the cost. A web application is another possible solution for covering all devices as it only has to be written once.