Mobile App Development: Define Your Strategy with A Fast Five-Point Checklist

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1 Mobile App Development: Define Your Strategy with A Fast Five-Point Checklist There is definitely a need to mobilize. And it needs to happen yesterday. It s no surprise then that many feel there isn t a lot of time to review all the options and still meet high pressure deadlines. But diving headfirst in to mobile app development without considering the development landscape and what it means to you and your organization can be dangerous. With this white paper, we ll give you an in-depth understanding of mobile app development with a fast, five-point checklist to consider when defining your mobile app development strategy. \\ info@avoka.com

2 MOBILE BANKING INNOVATIONS SUPPORT A MULTICHANNEL WORLD We live in a multichannel world, where customers can and will move between devices during the course of a single transaction. Whether it s a simple retail transaction, or one that s more complex such as a loan application or an insurance claim, your customers expect you to support mobile banking innovations that allow them to use their phones. Mobile first design, once promoted as the new standard of a mobile world, no longer works in a multi-device, multichannel world especially when it comes to mobile account openings. Multi-channel is more than just catering for mobile and a desktop (which can be addressed with responsive design). It s also about different mediums of transactions, including call centers, fax, and more. For example, if a customer starts a transaction online (whether it s an application, a service update, or a claims report), but runs into difficulties, they can decide among various options without starting over. They may choose to use chat, call your call center, or enter a bricks and mortar location. This should happen as seamlessly as possible. WHICH IS BETTER IN DIGITAL BANKING: A MOBILE APP OR THE MOBILE WEB? Typically, when we think of mobile banking innovations we think of apps. But many of us also do a lot of browsing of websites and online web applications via our mobile browsers. There is always the option to build for this mobile web either instead of or alongside mobile apps. Mobile web applications are transaction-oriented, hosted online, and they re optimized for mobile devices. There are a number of advantages of the mobile web over mobile apps: It s easy to deploy, upgrade, add features / products, and fix bugs to the mobile web. Your users don t have to install an app before they can interact with you. You only have to develop on one platform. You don t have to worry about people using an old version of the app. 2

3 For these reasons the mobile web can be perfect for occasional or one-time use digital banking scenarios, such as a mobile account opening. However, apps do have several advantages over the mobile web: Apps are sticky. Once installed, they have a presence on a customer s device. They are convenient. It s faster and easier to load up an app rather than a website. They work offline. Apps can leverage device features, like GPS, cameras, calendars, etc. It s not necessarily a simple, straightforward decision on how to support mobile banking innovations like apps or the mobile web. This paper gives five considerations to contemplate before you jump into mobile development. A FIVE-POINT CHECKLIST FOR MOBILE DEVELOPMENT #1 - CAN I CONFIGURE AN EXISTING APP INSTEAD OF BUILDING A NEW ONE? The first question to ask yourself is if there s an existing app that will give you what you need. There are an increasingly varied and powerful set of enterprise-class mobile apps that you can use off the shelf or customize. Examples: Salesforce.com The mobile client for salesforce.com offers many automation features to a mobile workforce. Most other CRM and ERP vendors provide apps as well. Box, Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. Services like Box and Dropbox, as well as the more traditional document management vendors, provide apps that give access to private and shared content. Put some emphasis on finding and configuring an existing app rather than building your own. #2 - DO I REALLY NEED AN APP OR SHOULD I USE THE MOBILE WEB? In many ways, building your functionality for the mobile web rather than as an app means that you can probably develop it more simply, update it more easily, and add features more quickly. The real question is to understand the nature of the business problem you are trying to solve and decide whether it is an intrinsically sticky function. 3

4 By intrinsically sticky we mean is it a business function that the user is going to perform often, and which they need readily available at all times on their mobile device? You cannot make a business function sticky by turning it into an app. In fact, you are likely to make your customers less likely to interact with you for non-sticky functions if they need to download an app to do so. They d be happier just hitting your website. The other good reasons to build a mobile app over using the mobile web are: Your users need to access the app while offline. The business function they are performing requires access to device capabilities that aren t available via a browser. Only consider building an app if the business function truly is one that customers will want to use regularly, and/ or they need to use it offline or need access to device capabilities - otherwise use the mobile web. Given this logic, a mobile account opening, for example, would be best served using the mobile web. Leverage your mobile web experience within your app to deliver a more engaging customer experience. #3 - CAN I USE A COMPOSITE APPROACH? A composite approach allows you to reserve your more commonly used features for your app and still access less frequently used features via a link to the web. In mobile app development you should always give careful consideration to a composite approach. Gartner predicts that improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment and that developers should look for ways to snap together apps to create larger applications.8 4

5 This of course requires an understanding of the variety of options available, best use of each type of technology in each scenario, and then assembling them into optimized content for each device. 9 Some ecommerce sites, such as Target.com, provide an app to drive customer loyalty, such as offering coupons and special offers. Their main website is then utilized for the primary shopping experience. Give careful consideration to the composite approach as it may give you the best path forward to implement the most important parts of your mobile strategy. #4 WHAT TECHNIQUE SHOULD I USE TO BUILD MY APP? Assuming you have decided you need an app and not the mobile web, how should you build it? Organizations are faced with an increasingly complicated device landscape, with at least two primary device types (ios and Android) and several others including new Windows devices. Anything which helps developers have a single knowledge-base and code-base across multiple platforms is generally a good thing. The hierarchy looks something like this: You should build using a HTML5 approach unless you have extremely good reasons to do otherwise. Most enterprise apps seem to fit well with the hybrid / HTML5 approach. This also means you can potentially share code and skills across the app and web development teams. If you have good reason to build an app natively, then consider a cross-platform framework. You should only do this if you have a large portfolio of apps to build and have the budget to be able to establish and maintain a large team of developers dedicated to the framework. Consider using the platform s native tools if it is absolutely the only way to achieve a particular function. You can also consider developing a native app if you only have a small number of apps to build, or if you want to outsource development, in which case using popular tools may be more important than speed or cross-platform capabilities. The high costs associated with developing for multiple platforms means you should give priority to cross-platform development approaches. 5

6 #5 - CAN I SHIFT SOME OF THE RESPONSIBILITY FROM IT TO THE BUSINESS? One consideration is whether you can effectively empower the business to take some responsibility for digital banking by developing content. The modern approach to marketing-type websites is for IT to maintain a web content management system and for the business to maintain the content that is hosted by that system. Where possible, it makes sense to do something similar with mobile apps by finding a mobile app platform that allows the business to develop mobile content. For IT, if you can find a way of enabling the business rather than doing the work for them, you will relieve pressure on yourself as well as make them happier. CONCLUSION The proliferation of device types and the increase of mobile devices in the workforce add to the strain of trying to deliver mobile applications. The good news is options are available to speed up development if careful consideration is given to matching the type of development to the application s purpose. Our fast-five checklist to the mobile development landscape should help you set the stage for evaluating your own mobile needs and move you along the right path to deployment of your mobile app or web application faster. 6