Here’s how to know if your business needs an app

Nik Rawlinson Read more April 25, 2016

Businesses are adopting apps eight times faster than they took to the web, even when the dotcom fever was at its height. Seemingly everyone who’s anyone wants to bag themselves a home on your tablet or phone, but should your business be among them?

Here’s how to know if your business needs an app

To answer this question properly, you need to understand the role an app can play – and what you want your implementation to do. The latter falls into three camps: generating revenue, increasing brand awareness or saving your company money by ironing out kinks in its workflow.

While the first two of those aims are satisfied by consumer apps sold through a store, the third is most often a closed system for in-house use. Pete Gatenby, senior enterprise consultant at B60 Apps, one of the UK’s 100+ app-development houses, identified what he calls “soldier” and “hero” apps.

“[For soldier apps], we use the analogy of an archer who’s only there to do one thing – fire arrows, nothing else. But hero applications are often a lot bigger and can do many things. For example, one where employees can do all of their HR tasks on the go, whether they’re a salesperson on the road or an accountant in the office: an app through which they can do things like use the internal intranet, book holidays, submit expenses and so on.”

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“Implementations fall into three camps: generating revenue, increasing brand awareness or ironing out kinks in your workflow”

However, there’s no reason why it needs to be so clear-cut, as explained by Jonathan Boakes, UK managing director of app-development firm Nodes “When [Dutch transport company] Abellio took on the ScotRail franchise, it wanted to give passengers ownership of the stations by allowing them to take a photo of damage or graffiti and get a message back from Abellio to say that they’re working on it. [When the job had been done] the customer would get another message saying it’s all fixed and we hope they enjoy their journey.” Why? “It’s a marketing thing that gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling: you think, ‘even if my ticket prices have just gone up by a pound, I do feel that they care about me a little more than they did before’.”

Nodes developed the app, but rather than creating two entities, one customer-facing and one internal, it used a single codebase to produce a tool that presented Abellio staff with a different view – effectively a list of jobs and an internal leaderboard – if they logged in with company credentials.

How to pitch your business’ app

Clearly, Abellio’s app only works for that kind of company, so how do you commission an agency to develop something specific to your own needs? The key is to take your time. Decide internally what you need and what you want before you approach an agency.

Jason Gaved, managing director of Lexel, frequently receives enquiries from potential customers who have yet to think through what they’re looking for.

“The best approaches are where people have come up with a statement of what they want to achieve, some features of the app and basic wireframes. It gives us a very clear indication of what they’re looking to do, even if it isn’t correct. That way they get the most accurate estimate.”

Boakes agreed: “We’d rather someone came to us knowing exactly what they want so we can get straight in and start building it. A lot of the time when we build an app we also try to build an internal capability for them [to take it forward after it’s been launched], because it’s not in our interest to try and hog work. We want people to have a good mobile experience and then want to do more mobile work.”

When the app is out in the wild, it must be nurtured: responding to customer queries, heading off complaints by considering feedback (and building in feedback tools to the app itself, if possible) and bug-fixing over time. This is how apps achieve five-star reviews, after all. Many agencies work on a service-level agreement to provide this, taking a percentage of the cost of the project for continued support, but Nodes doesn’t feel this is always the best solution.

“We moved away from that a while ago, and now have what we call a service-agreement timebox,” Boakes explained. “There aren’t going to be any new [mobile] screen sizes or operating systems any time soon, so why should the client have to pay for [updates to cater for them]?”

Instead, companies pay for a certain amount of support per quarter, but if it isn’t used then the time is rolled over to the next quarter.

This helps to ease fears about high running costs, which is one of the barriers known to stop companies from investing in apps.

Does your business really need an app?

However, the question is whether your organisation needs an app of its own at all. We asked each of our contributors whether we’re at the same point now as we were when the world shifted from paper-based forms and phoning up from adverts to doing all of our business, online. The consensus was that either we are, or we’ve already passed it. However, despite app developers having a vested interest in encouraging us to shell out for development time, they advised against working on a mobile tool that wouldn’t deliver a return – awareness, revenue or cost savings – for the client.

“Clients often ask what’s the right way to do things, but there is no right way – it depends on your business and your customers”

“I’m in two minds as to whether a mobile app is required in the same way that a mobile website is,” said B60 Apps’ Pete Gatenby. “An app is a permanent point of reference to a brand on your device, so users want to see a return – something of benefit to them, or having fun with an app.”

Gatenby cited Subway and Zipcar as two prime examples where apps not only increase brand awareness, but offered something back, in the form of loyalty points (Subway) or easy interaction with a company’s back-end systems and mobile assets (Zipcar).

“If you look at the younger generation, we’re going to see a complete culture change and a shift towards apps,” said Lexel’s Gaved. “People don’t want to talk to people now. If [as a customer] you can do something through an app you can do it when you want, when it’s convenient for you rather than sitting on a phone line for 20 minutes.”

Nodes’ Boakes feels much the same way: “I think we’re in a time where companies feel they should be engaging in mobile. We’re in an experimental phase. Clients often ask what’s the right way to do things, but there is no right way – it depends on your business and your customers. We’re moving to a time where people will expect some kind of mobile relationship with businesses.”