How Growing App Development Is Changing Business Decision Making?

The exponential demand and language development has led to more and more number of mobile apps are being deployed in the enterprise environment than ever before. Enterprise mobility exchange annual survey report from December 2018 reported that an additional 11 percent of the organization deployed 6-20 applications in 2019 while last year, the number was close to 0 to 5 applications. Despite having to pay a hefty cost for each of the mobile applications, according to VDC research most recent survey, the average cost of deploying an enterprise application is $140,000. Some developers even say that the cost tends to be much higher compared to the predicted cost as the feature tends to vary. With enterprises producing more mobile applications and as the cost of development increases, IT leaders need to prove that a significant amount invested will produce the required ROI for the business. Divyan Bhatt, an enterprise application expert, added that as the cost of the application is increasing, can the apps achieve the required ROI? Business wants to achieve profit or additional revenue for enterprises. If you achieve the required ROI, your investment was successful. Some enterprises are able to achieve the required ROI for every application development, while some enterprises struggle to even achieve that number. In February 2019 survey by enterprise mobility exchange, 34 percent of the respondents revealed that they tend to achieve positive ROI for the mobile enterprise applications for almost 76 percent of the time. However, the staggering number of strugglers is also great, with 46 percent of enterprises achieve ROI less than 25 percent of the time. The ongoing epidemic of failing applications is creating a tremendous challenge for enterprises that are investing largely in applications.

There are several barriers that can obstruct the IT teams ability to successfully create an enterprise application that could assist in achieving the required ROI. The major roadblock occurs when the IT team fails to effectively communicate the required business value the C-level want to achieve using the application. The team should rectify the points that will be focusing on the application development, while most of the teams focus on usability that might not be a wrong way but will it secure the profitability. Ryan Martin, the Principal Analyst at ABI Research, added that it’s not just about the functional requirement of the application but achieving the functional requirement relative to the firm’s performance. A complete failure to determine the business goals or lack of analytics could completely derail the enterprise mobile application before it’s being developed. Usability will come if it’s a valuable application that can be used.

Measurable Metrics

To achieve the required ROI, an enterprise must develop a measurable plan that includes several key factors-performance indicators relative to the purpose of the mobile application. When you look towards the difference between both mobile application vs. desktop applications, they both have a common factor such as time and amount of iterations. Without keeping track of KPIs, organizations tend to follow the wrong development indicators wasting time and money. In many cases, Apps released by enterprises tend to disrupt the workplace. According to 2018 study from Ring central found that 70 percent of the employees tend to waste 60 minutes each day to navigate between the applications.  The secret to achieving the required ROI in mobile application development begins when you are looking to identify the key metrics and tracking them after deployment. Enterprises can measure success by comparing the key business goals with other metrics that include monetary benefits vs. cost of mobile application, application usage, and adoption, percentage of users leveraging the mobile application vs. going back to legacy systems to do the same tasks. The user journey is a key measure that can be used for business success, an application, in the end, should make the life of end users better by saving time.

What is the most important metric that can be used to measure ROI for enterprise applications?

In February, a survey was conducted by the enterprise mobility exchange, the most important metric that comes in when we consider an application is ROI. The results revealed that 35 percent identified an increase in revenue as the most important metric, while 29 percent said that lower cost is more important when it comes to acknowledging the application replacing the legacy operation solutions, 21 percent of the enterprise view increased productivity as the top priority and 15 percent used the user orientation as the underlying tasks. Time and cost are two metrics that are imperative for business when it wants to enhance their capacity. There are capital expenses as the annual cost of managing or maintaining the application needs to be included, several users using the application, division based on privacy- data, fees, or licenses. The ROI will cut down the costs of management, resources, and complete tool along with an added reduction in time used for the same operation.

Conclusion

Overcoming the ROI barriers a successful enterprise might find it daunting to develop an application or even convey the business leaders about some achievable revenue. Measuring your plan against ROI regularly will assist you to be on the right path. One way that enterprises can improve the ROI before deployment is to identify the cost of drivers with plans to either reduce them or cut the development time.  Developers can use the application development using the parallel sprints with teams developing something similar, working on the same path, testing, and collaboration. Developers can try out two different solutions along with that reduction in process time and eliminating the bottleneck. Staying close to user persona can be a big challenge because most of the developers tend to more focus on usability rather than user, getting constant feedback can assist you in achieving the required stability in application development. Developers shouldn’t be afraid of getting negative feedback that might save the project, while enterprises need to follow with iterations that will reduce the training, management, and redevelopment cost.

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