Connect With Your Target Audience
Using Our Innovative App Solutions
There are millions of mobile apps available across both Apple iOS and Play Android stores and most of these are aimed at the consumer market. At ERS IT Solutions, we design mobile apps for both personal and business customers, with a special emphasis on the business environment. This is where we specialise in developing applications that add value to the customer.
As the mobile form factor and platforms have gradually gained momentum and overtaken the desktop as the preferred method for consuming information, businesses are now beginning to see the benefits that mobile applications can bring to the table.
The ubiquity of affordable mobile devices means that mobile applications can now be placed in virtually everyone’s pocket throughout all levels of a company and externally to partners, suppliers and customers. While having a mobile strategy is becoming an increasingly important factor for many business models, it is critical to first analyse the need for the app before making that investment.
When a business identifies the need for a mobile application, does that mean they should jump right in and build it? Businesses may feel compelled to be ‘mobile’ due to technology and competitor trends, so they feel pressurised to make an app just to be at the party.
It is possible that the app might solve some pain points but offer little help to the business, so the question that should be asked is “How much is this application worth to the business?” or “What is the potential return on investing in this app?”
Return on investment may not always be measured in terms of revenue. It could manifest itself through improvements in productivity, customer engagement, automation or any areas that are of great value to the business, or through significant savings rather than greater revenue generation.
For any mobile application to be successful, it must support a larger business initiative like streamlining a labour-intensive business process, automating a data collection process, building brand loyalty and acquiring new customers, or strengthening relationships with channel partners. If such business targets are being met, the mobile app development project has a greater chance of success.
The most important decision to make when developing a mobile application is often to pick the right app development partner. This might sound obvious but not all developers will have the required skillsets and experience to deliver a successful solution as it’s not just about writing code.
It is quite possible that what you might view as a simple mobile application can take a team of 4-5 app developers to deliver. This will primarily depend on what features you require within the app and what functionality needs to be delivered.
While cost will always be a major factor when selecting your mobile app development partner, alarm bells should ring if the proposal seems too good to be true. Low-cost developers generally do not fully understand or care about the overall project scope and will never be able to deliver a functional, reliable solution within the agreed timeframe.
Let’s take as an example a business that wants to enable their workforce to perform energy surveys on residential properties, perform a series of calculations on the data collected and produce an energy-saving PDF report that they can hand to the customer. To deliver this solution, the following components will need to be developed:
If your mobile app development partner lacks experience in any of these areas, your project is in jeopardy from day one.
Security is far too often overlooked in app development. If you are going to put sensitive data in the hands of your employees, you must take responsibility and consider the consequences of this data falling into the wrong hands. In order to protect company data when it is outside the office, businesses must introduce mobile policies that control their employee’s files and data sync-and-share habits.
In today’s environment, it is quite possible that someone will lose a mobile device containing a lot of synced corporate data. This can be devastating for the business when you consider that cloud storage apps don’t provide end-to-end, on-device protection by default. The business will need to consider deploying mobile device management (MDM) software in such cases to isolate corporate data from contamination and access by non-corporate personnel.
Another hidden consideration is the app store submission, an issue that doesn’t arise with traditional desktop or web applications. This task should be handled by your app development partner where they are responsible for the submission and acceptance of the app to the various stores.
Apple is very particular about how app design is handled and has very specific rules about the features allowed and how an app operates. It is very common practice for Apple to reject your app at least once and you will need your mobile app development partner to be able to identify the offending feature, fix it and keep resubmitting until it is approved and listed. If you are building native apps, you must understand that you are building for a platform over which you have no control. Every time Apple or Google update their operating systems, you must update your app to fit their new requirements.
At ERS IT Solutions, we have been involved in mobile app design and development in Ireland and further afield for more than 10 years, delivering hundreds of successful projects for our customers. We have specialist expertise in the area of ‘business process analysis’, where we can visualise a customer’s needs and transform this into a fully functional solution comprising Web Portal and Backend Database along with iOS and Android mobile applications.
All our projects are professionally managed throughout the complete development lifecycle from inception right through to app submission and post-project support. We have an unbeatable reputation for developing successful and robustly designed mobile applications on time and within budget.
Hundreds of satisfied customers
Impeccible record of delivering successful projects
Highly skilled and dynamic development team
Agile design methodology
Windows Azure Scalable/Elastic Platform
Mobile Application Development Specialists
SLA’s with Guaranteed Response Times
24/7/365 Support Service
“We chose to work with the ERS App development team when we decided on the development of a mobile application for Mandate members. By adopting the ERS InfoApp content management system which integrates with Office365 SharePoint, Mandate’s marketing team now have the ability to update App content independently and push updates out to Mandate members instantly. Mandate are also now able to collect valuable information from our members by utilising feedback forms within the App which can be completed for action and analysis. The App has streamlined the communications processes here at Mandate. I would highly recommend the mobile app team at ERS if you are looking to develop a mobile app…”
“…PHECC were looking to develop a multi-platform mobile application to complement their physical ‘Field Guide Manual’ that they distribute to all first responder personnel within Ireland. They also wanted a platform that would enable them to self-maintain the field guide information without the need for recoding. ERS were chosen as the partner of choice after a competitive tender process. From the outset an experienced project manager provided us with detailed project plan and deliverables. The management of the development was handled with great professionalism and delivered on time and on budget. I would have no hesitation in recommending the team at ERS for any similar project…”
“The Management at BEM were looking to develop an App to assist in performing energy audits for our customers. We see the biggest benefits after working with the team at ERS in how they were able to strip down to the key issues. They reviewed our existing systems and processes which were key to improving performance and then developed an App which was relevant to the company and the industry. The App now also works as a sales tool utilised by electrical contractors and facilities management companies so they too can offer broader services to their clients in tandem with BEM. The App has opened up more avenues that we expected and because of that we are delighted to continue to work with the team at ERS.”
