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Should I buy or build a mobile app for my attraction? — Attractions.io Blog

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Should I buy or build a mobile app for my attraction? — Attractions.io Blog

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Not quite. When it comes to apps for attractions, the options aren't just black and white. From custom-built to SaaS solutions, there are several ways to get your attraction a spot in the App store. Over the years, we've spoken to hundreds of attractions struggling to weigh up their options so now, we're going to put that stored up knowledge to good use.

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Ellen WilkinsonContent specialist, zoo enthusiast and french bulldog [s]mother

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Should I buy or build a mobile app for my attraction? — Attractions.io Blog

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Trying to weigh up your app development options? Here’s what to consider when it comes to buying and building attractions software.

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Enterprise Mobile Apps - Should I Buy or Build?

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Enterprise Mobile Apps - Should I Buy or Build?

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So, your mobile workers need access to their business applications while they are working outside the office. Home-office doesn’t do the trick, because your workers are really mobile. Field services, salesforce, traveling project managers, supervisors, IT service engineers, equipment inspectors, etc. You’ve tried a variety of patch-together solutions, but realize that you need enterprise mobile apps that are much more robust and comprehensive.

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Enterprise Mobile Apps: Should I Buy or Build?

So, your mobile workers need access to their business applications while they are working outside the office. Home-office doesn't do the trick, because your workers are really mobile. Field services, salesforce, traveling project managers, supervisors, IT service engineers, equipment inspectors, etc. You've tried a variety of patch-together solutions, but realize that you need enterprise mobile apps that are much more robust and comprehensive.

But, how do you do it? It's the classic buy-vs-build dilemma in software development. Do I buy a product to allow me to get to market quicker, or do I hire software developers to build a custom solution?

And the question isn't even that black and white because there are so many options available - SaaS (Software as a Service), Open Source, frameworks, and customizable platforms - that blur the lines between buy and build so you can take advantage of the gray area between two extremes, i.e., you can buy a toolset or framework that gets you most of the way there, and then customize it to meet specific requirements.

In terms of enterprise mobile apps, the choice of web-based / HTML5 applications, native applications, and hybrid applications also plays into the mix. You need to think about which mobile platforms you want to support and what tasks you want your mobile end-users to be able to perform on their mobile devices.

Native applications will provide the best user experience and most robust functionality because your software program will have access to all of the capabilities of the device and will be able to operate without connectivity to a web server.

Web-based applications make it easier to support a variety of mobile devices because they run inside a web-browser, which is available on most mobile devices. However, user experience and performance suffer and are highly dependent on connectivity.

Hybrid applications try to find some middle ground by operating as a native, downloadable mobile application that utilizes the web-browser environment to remove the requirement for building a device-specific user interface. All of that is important, because, regardless of whether you buy or build, you really want to know what you're going to get. If you buy a solution, you want to know if the end result will be native, web-based, or hybrid. You'll want to know how customizable the solution is, and how to make changes to it in the future. If you build a solution, you need to properly set requirements and understand the limitations and costs of each approach.

Use this buy versus build flowchart to help guide you through the decision-making process on deploying cross-platform enterprise mobile applications.

Enterprise Mobile Apps: Buy Versus Build Decision Tree

Don't make the mistake of predicating your decision about HTML/Web-based versus Native apps on the cost of development! In both cases, there is significant development cost and time as well as maintenance over time. The decision of Web vs. Native should be made strictly on user requirements, considering performance, security, user experience, device feature usage, and offline capability.

Understanding that the enterprise mobility arena is very complex and fractured, make sure to think about what you'll want and need in the future and make sure your approach is flexible enough to scale and change along with your ongoing business needs.

Finally, if your analysis leads you to a "Buy or Build Native" answer, we encourage you to investigate Mobile Reach solutions. We strive to provide an environment for you to rapidly build and own robust, task-focused, cross-platform, native applications giving you an excellent user experience while eliminating the biggest challenge (time-to-market) of the process.
Get more insight on enabling your field technicians and engineers with our mobile field service apps guide.

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Enterprise Mobile Apps - Should I Buy or Build?

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So, your mobile workers need access to their business applications while they are working outside the office. Home-office doesn't do the trick, because your workers are really mobile. Field services, salesforce, traveling project managers, supervisors, IT service engineers, equipment inspectors, etc. You've tried a variety...

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Deciding whether to build or buy enterprise mobile apps isn't easy

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Deciding whether to build or buy enterprise mobile apps isn't easy

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There are plenty of business-focused apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. No matter how unique business leaders think their requirements are, it's worth doing some research to see if there's an app out there that meets them. Even if a publicly available app doesn't seem to be an exact match, it may be worth exploring.

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Sergey Nivens - Fotolia

By

Applications are the driving force behind the mobile explosion in the consumer technology market, and they hold the power to do the same in the business world. Unfortunately, deploying enterprise mobile apps -- beyond the basics, such as email and calendar apps -- is a daunting task.

Organizations can develop their own applications, but mobile development requires unique skills and significant investments. Publicly available apps have a lower barrier to adoption, but they present their own challenges when it comes to management, security and licensing. And because they're built for mass audiences, they may not meet every organization's specific needs. Various hybrid approaches have also emerged to help businesses deploy customized apps with their existing resources.

Deciding whether to build or buy enterprise mobile apps doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing companywide decision. If your business has a unique product management workflow, for example, it may make sense to develop your own app from the ground up to meet its specific requirements. But if your business has fairly typical employee collaboration needs, there's no shortage of those types of apps available, and it would be easier to buy and deploy one instead of reinventing the wheel.

Builder beware

Difficulty in finding skilled mobile developers is the top roadblock to releasing enterprise apps.

When organizations need to mobilize a legacy application or business process, the first inclination is often to build it themselves. Executives might task in-house developers with creating a mobile app, or they may consider hiring an outside firm. Before going down either of these routes, business leaders should ask two important questions: Is there a publicly available app with the capabilities we need? And if not, do we have the necessary resources to build such an app?

There are plenty of business-focused apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. No matter how unique business leaders think their requirements are, it's worth doing some research to see if there's an app out there that meets them. Even if a publicly available app doesn't seem to be an exact match, it may be worth exploring. The best mobile apps use streamlined workflows with more user-friendly interfaces than traditional enterprise applications; it may look like they don't have required features when they're actually putting those features to use in better ways.

Still, there are times when customized apps are truly required. Organizations that don't have in-house iOS or Android developers will face significant challenges here, because demand for mobile developers is sky-high -- as is the cost of putting their skills to work.

Difficulty in finding skilled mobile developers is the top roadblock to releasing enterprise apps in a timely manner, according to a 2014 report by mobile app development platform provider Appcelerator and research firm IDC. More than 41% of IT decision makers and 34% of developers named it their biggest challenge. Estimates of how much it costs to develop your own app vary wildly and depend on a number of factors, but they range from tens of thousands of dollars to more than $100,000. Organizations can expect to pay even more when hiring an outside development firm.

Public app challenges

It's significantly easier to purchase existing apps and deploy them to employees, but that approach is not without its own difficulties.

An organization that develops its own apps can build in hooks to its mobile application management (MAM) software, allowing IT to control and secure the app and its data. With publicly available apps, however, that power is out of the company's hands. Some public apps are compatible with multiple MAM products, some only work with one MAM product and others don't work with any at all.

A company can always use mobile device management to apply some level of security and control over the smartphones and tablets to which the app is deployed. But for those that need the more granular protection that MAM provides, using publicly available apps can cause major frustration.

Hybrid options and the future

A hybrid approach to enterprise mobile apps may help organizations meet their customization needs without expending as many resources. Some enterprise software vendors offer partially pre-built apps that perform certain common tasks or are tailored for users in specific industries.

Businesses can buy these apps, complete them with their specific requirements in mind and then deploy them to users. This approach still takes some development resources, but it can provide organizations the jump-start they need to get into the mobile app game. The software vendor may even offer post-purchase development assistance to further lessen the blow.

Application refactoring presents another option. Refactoring takes legacy Windows and Web apps and allows developers, IT administrators or even end users to transform them with mobile-friendly interfaces -- sometimes with little to no coding required.

In the future, organizations may even be able to customize and add features to publicly available apps through the use of containerization. Today, containerization is primarily a technology for adding new management and security features to apps, but MAM vendors are looking at expanding its capabilities. If these vendors can solve the technology- and licensing-related challenges of containerizing public apps, it could open up a whole new world of possibilities.

There are many options for bringing mobile applications into the enterprise. They all present challenges, which organizations must find a way to overcome. Apps are too crucial to future business success to do otherwise.

Next Steps

What's the best way to acquire third-party apps?

Setting standards for in-house development

Why enterprises are turning to MADPs

Codeless MADP provides an app dev shortcut

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Deciding whether to build or buy enterprise mobile apps isn't easy

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Sergey Nivens - Fotolia By Applications are the driving force behind the mobile explosion in the consumer technology market, and they hold the power to do the same in the business world. Unfortunately, deploying enterprise mobile apps -- beyond the basics, such as email and calendar apps -- is a daunting task.

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When to Build vs. Buy Enterprise Platform: Risks, Benefits, and Considerations

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When to Build vs. Buy Enterprise Platform: Risks, Benefits, and Considerations

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This is the first post in a two-part series that explores the challenges faced by CIOs in deciding to build versus buy technology for the enterprise companies. This post provides a clear and comprehensive overview of this debate based on an organization’s needs and expectations, and what CIOs should consider before deciding on the best approach for their team, budget, and business goals.

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This is the first post in a two-part series that explores the challenges faced by CIOs in deciding to build versus buy technology for the enterprise companies. This post provides a clear and comprehensive overview of this debate based on an organization's needs and expectations, and what CIOs should consider before deciding on the best approach for their team, budget, and business goals.
Digital transformation drives brands into the "Experience Era", where personalized and consistent communication across all channels is no longer just a nice-to-have but a basic must-have requirement. Every organization today is exploring a better approach to designing and delivering exceptional experiences across online and offline channels. This exploration typically leads to an organization deciding to invest in a unified customer profile that relies on machine learning to power intelligent decisions, in real-time.

Traditionally, the preferred approach to such an investment has been to build custom applications in-house over concerns that a third-party solution won't meet their specialized needs or connect with existing systems. While IT teams are perfectly capable of building tailored software, it's often an expensive and unnecessary distraction from more meaningful work. Additionally, IT teams are struggling to continuously upgrade their architecture, integrate new technologies, and capture user data from sources while balancing to stay head of digital innovation and the growing expectation for personalized customer experiences.

These challenges bring CIOs back to the long-standing debate of whether to build software in-house versus buying software from a vendor - a decision that returns a different answer for each business landscape. Enterprise CIOs are expected to lead cost-efficient and scalable technology choices that balance the company's immediate needs with its long-term growth.

In this post, we outline the considerations and potential consequences of build vs. buy through both an executive and technical lens. Plus, we invite you behind the curtain to analyze a common brand scenario in the hope that it will provide the insight you need to reach the most beneficial decision for your business.

With global enterprise software spending projected to grow 8.2% in 2020, reaching around $466 billion in value, it appears that many companies are finding it more convenient to buy commercial software rather than building it themselves.

Although this approach may work for some companies experiencing similar challenges, others face unique edge cases that can't be solved by a software solution built for the general market.

Here are four key factors that should guide your approach to answering the question of whether to build vs. buy enterprise software to make an informed decision for long term growth:
Cost
Companies will always lean towards the most cost-effective and efficient solution for their business. Internal IT projects empower the company to decide how much it wants to spend on development - except IT projects have a knack for taking longer than expected and costing far more than estimated.

After factoring in the cost of the initial build, support, bug fixes, upgrades, and keeping up with market trends, it's no surprise that Gallup reports one in six IT projects have an average cost overrun of 200% and a schedule overrun of almost 70%.

While purchased software can have a high upfront cost or a substantial subscription fee, it's a known expense for a product that will be ready to use immediately. For many CIOs, this fixed cost vastly outweighs the unpredictability associated with building software in-house.
Control
The biggest appeal of building software in-house is the notion that it can be molded to meet the company's specific requirements as they arise. What this also means, however, is that you will always be reliant on the developers building it.

It's unsettlingly common for companies to be left with unusable code bases created by developers who no longer work at the company, adding an ongoing maintenance cost of hiring new developers to rebuild the codebase from scratch.

As a general recommendation: if the requirement fit of commercial software is 60% or more, buy is the way to go. You may not have full control over the product roadmap, but many vendors will work closely with customers when designing or improving their products.
Connectivity
Each company has its own ecosystem of applications that need to be compatible with systems beyond the company, such as marketing destinations. Building your own solution can help ensure that these connections are made, as long as your team is capable of undertaking the extensive process of stitching together multiple, smaller solutions.

Chances are that a more advanced and comprehensive solution already exists on the market. Some commercial software solutions can even act as an extension of your existing ecosystem, rather than entirely overhaul the architecture your IT team has so arduously built.
Maintenance
Building software means not having to rely on an external team to develop new features or roll out upgrades. But most internal teams do not have the same availability or expertise as an external team when dealing with complex architectures typical of global companies.

From multi-tenancy to data compliance, an experienced team armed with best practices and the latest market insights will typically be better equipped to handle maintenance for enterprise-scale software.

As the team behind Adobe Experience Platform we have seen our fair share of companies on the fence when deciding to build or buy. For an honest insight into the situation many companies find themselves in, we will share a common scenario from our own experience - one that may even be similar to your own.

For context, Adobe Experience Platform is the first purpose-built customer experience management platform that collects data from multiple sources to build comprehensive customer profiles. With continuous intelligence and an open and extensible architecture, Experience Platform conveniently delivers personalized customer experiences in real-time and at scale.

In this scenario, we will focus on a brand struggling to unify and understand the customer data streaming from a plethora of channels and devices. They had already invested heavily in an ecosystem that collected data into a data lake, built customer profiles, and even derived insights from it using machine learning.

What they lacked, however, was the connectivity to transform all this collected data into action to orchestrate real-time, contextual, omnichannel customer experiences.

Below, we offer an example of what a platform might look like if the brand's decision was to build the necessary architecture to bridge the gaps in their existing ecosystem.

Figure 1: An example of the Adobe Experience Platform end-to-end architecture from data collection to activation.

As shown in Figure 1, the complete end-to-end solution involves a complex interconnection of disparate applications that must be seamlessly integrated - a task that requires a tremendous amount of time, money, and expertise.

First, every dataset comes from a different source, which means there are several different pathways to get that data into the platform. Next, we have the main building blocks of the platform responsible for ingesting, unifying, and transforming the data into actionable insights. Lastly, and most importantly, these insights are delivered in real-time to various systems across advertising, marketing, sales, call centers, and point-of-sale environments.

Many brands will tell us that they have already built and integrated all these pieces themselves, but their end-to-end latency is rarely real-time due to the number of custom integrations. There will always be that one component that acts as the bottleneck for real-time action.

For a better understanding of what the brand would need to build on top of their data lake, let's walk through the diagram to briefly describe each of its key components.

Data Governance

Identity Resolution

Machine Learning

Connectors, Ingestion & Processing

Profile

Segmentation

Edge Delivery

Data Governance
This encompasses the people, processes, and information technology required to properly handle data across the enterprise. Data needs to be labeled and every label should have its own policy on where that data can be visualized, used, and edited. This also includes complying with regional data protection laws, such as GDPR and CCPA. Botching this stage can result in multi-million dollar fines and the loss of customer trust over data privacy violations.
Identity Resolution
Every customer is identified in a different way across the many environments and devices they use to interact with your brand. Identity resolution means that, as a brand, you need to have an identity graph that makes it possible to identify every customer across all those channels and devices in real-time, whether they're known or not. Additionally, brands with operations across multiple countries and brands need the flexibility to define what identity means for each of those countries and brands individually.
Machine Learning
A machine learning environment needs to have access to high-quality data to build, train, and improve models. When done correctly, machine learning enables marketing teams to move away from human-built prone to errors and rule-based segmentation in favor of a genuine one-on-one approach.
Connectors, Ingestion & Processing
This block holds a collection of technologies and services that form a bridge between the incoming data and the data lake. Here is where the ingested data must first be processed and transformed into a consistent format that enables their entry into the data lake. To keep up with enterprise-scale data, this block must be capable of handling tremendous amounts of data and processing it, both at scale and in a timely manner. While ETL applications are part of the answer to this challenge, they aren't the full answer. Brands really need a single language to describe all their experience data, to ensure a consistent approach in personalization in an omnichannel world.
Profile
This stitches together a customer's identity and descriptive information to build a complete profile that supports contextual marketing. The challenge is collecting data from both known and unknown users to generate comprehensive, marketable audience insights.
Segmentation
Customers need to be grouped into specific segments based on common traits to help marketers better target their ads and optimize ad spend. This block is crucial since it is responsible for creating, managing, and activating these audiences in everything from advertising and marketing to sales and support.
Edge Delivery
Creating and delivering exceptional experiences requires everything to happen in real-time. Customers live in the here and now, and just like with conversations, experiences need to be contextual and in real-time. An experience will no longer be contextual if delivered after 15 minutes, let alone 24 hours. So, to achieve real-time delivery of experiences you need edge computing, in which profiles and segments live and are continuously updated in real-time.

Adobe Experience Platform is an integrated solution that encompasses all the above, but like many brands in the same position, this brand was hesitant to adopt an out-of-the-box solution to a problem their IT team had already partly solved in-house.

For precisely this reason, we built Adobe Experience Platform as an open, extensible, and API-first platform that can be integrated across various levels of any tech stack. This flexibility allows brands to swiftly onboard Adobe Experience Platform as a "partner ecosystem" that enhances - not replaces - their existing architecture and leverages their hard-earned data.

In the case of this particular brand, the best approach was to invest in an integrated, comprehensive solution that solves the complexities they were struggling with, without leaving behind investments they had already made in their data lake and machine learning models.

Before entering the build vs. buy debate, CIOs must arm themselves with a complete and thorough understanding of the company's needs and what is available on the market before reaching a final decision.

To help you navigate this sometimes murky process, we will outline the most important considerations when deciding to build or buy software depending on your current business needs and constraints. These are the considerations:
Use cases
The most important question you need to answer before building software is what use-cases you intend for it to solve. The use-case behind the platform influences who the stakeholders will be and who will use the platform in their day-to-day lives.

For example, when building a platform mainly intended for data collection, machine learning, and reporting; the stakeholders are typically data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists who are deeply technical and feel comfortable working with data. On the other hand, a platform intended to drive customer experiences will have the same technical stakeholders but must cater to business users, marketing users, and others who require a user-friendly interface to comfortably interact with the data.

A proper understanding of the use-cases that need to be delivered by the platform you're building (or buying) greatly impacts the requirements for the end result.
Readiness
Building or buying a platform is not something that can simply be dropped into an unsuspecting organization. Any new addition to a company brings some level of disruption, the scale of which should be accounted for when choosing to build vs. buy.

Traditionally, most companies operate with their marketing and development teams working in silos, where each team has their own datasets, processes, and established way of working.

As a result, introducing a platform (whether built or bought) without transforming the organizational side of things is a recipe for disaster. While technology is a required catalyst for success for both your teams and your customers, it's still "just technology." Your company's people and processes need to be in a position that enables them to embrace change. This makes it crucial that you first evaluate what organizational changes would be necessary when building vs. buying software.
Project scope
The next thing to consider is whether the problem you are attempting to solve is common to the industry or unique to your company. Many of the problems enterprises struggle with today are already solved in commercial software, but if your needs fall within edge cases beyond what's on the current market, it could be an argument for the decision to build.

There is also the question of complexity. Most internal teams can handle a reasonable level of complexity, but if your solution must span multiple geographical locations and comply with data regulations, such as CCPA and GDPR, it's advisable to buy software to save on time and resources.

It's worth mentioning that a solution that reduces the risk of unintentional non-compliance can often pay for itself when compared to the hefty fines that might be imposed if the one you build in-house fails to provide adequate governance.
Resources
When building software internally, you should ensure the company has enough people, time, and computing resources to see development through to completion - even if it goes over budget.

For example, a platform like Adobe Experience Platform has been in the making for several years. Its creation has involved an incredible number of people ranging from Apache Kafka developers, Java developers, data engineers, UI/UX experts, data scientists, and dozens more. Even today, Adobe Experience Platform continues to evolve to keep up with a market in which a new standard, channel, or destination can appear any given day.

You should also consider the potential impact of pulling resources away from activities that drive the company's main mission. For many companies, building a platform intended for data collection, insights, and analysis safely aligns with their core business. But a platform that needs to communicate and orchestrate customer experiences, user profiles, and content in real-time would only lead their teams astray.
Opportunity cost
Another important question to ask is whether building this software will significantly distract employees from solving core business problems that are more impactful to the bottom line.

Ideally, your company's IT teams should focus on data and building the infrastructure to gain, report, and predict mission-critical insights. We consider a company's "big brain.". Rather than overload this brain with tasks beyond its capacity, it can offload those insights to a second brain specifically designed for communication and orchestration.

Handing off complex tasks that are beyond your team's comfort zone will allow them to focus on what they do best, while a specialized company takes care of amplifying your team's efforts and transforming your data into exceptional customer experiences.
Time-to-value
A shorter time-to-value helps companies keep their customers engaged and position themselves ahead of the competition.

For Adobe Experience Platform, we have encountered many companies that have spent 2-3 years building similar software, only to fall short of the requirements marketers need to use it. It's all too common for requirements to fluctuate over time and internal teams not being able to shift gears fast enough, or at all, resulting in poor adoption by the business teams and impacting the ROI.

This surfaces the question of whether your team can develop the platform within a reasonable time-frame, and if they can keep up with ever-evolving requirements to ensure the final product truly addresses the problems it was created to solve.

Furthermore, if the challenges your company faces are time-sensitive, you must ask yourself how long the company can wait before those problems adversely affect business. When time is of the essence, buying software will address immediate needs as opposed to waiting years for the solution to be built internally - with the risk of the end-result not solving it entirely.

Building a custom platform can be a smart investment that an enterprise should consider only if it has sufficient time and resources for development. They should also have a strategy to ensure its connectivity with applications outside of the company to ensure long-term viability, along with user interfaces that are available and intuitive for day-to-day use.

When resources are sacred and leading digital transformation is top priority, then investing in a comprehensive, extensible platform can reduce costs and maximize performance more than any homegrown solution ever could. It also guarantees a specialized solution that can be continuously enhanced by a dedicated partner, which in turn supports your IT staff in what they do best rather than distracting them from core business tasks.
In part two of this series, we will dive into the technical challenges brands face when building an architecture capable of generating and delivering personalized customer experiences. We will also reveal how we solved each challenge as we pieced together what is now Follow Adobe Developers on Twitter for the latest news and developer products. For exclusive posts on Adobe Experience Platform, follow Jaemi Bremner on Medium. Adobe Experience Platform.

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When to Build vs. Buy Enterprise Platform: Risks, Benefits, and Considerations

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This is the first post in a two-part series that explores the challenges faced by CIOs in deciding to build versus buy technology for the enterprise companies. This post provides a clear and comprehensive overview of this debate based on an organization's needs and expectations, and what CIOs should consider before deciding on the best approach for their team, budget, and business goals.

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5 Considerations to Decide on Enterprise Mobile Application Development - Build vs Buy

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5 Considerations to Decide on Enterprise Mobile Application Development - Build vs Buy

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One of the biggest questions enterprises face when preparing for digital transformation is whether they need to embark on in-house enterprise mobile application development or purchase already popular apps and customize them as per requirements. Following are some of the key considerations to help you arrive at the right decision:

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One of the biggest questions enterprises face when preparing for digital transformation is whether they need to embark on in-house enterprise mobile application development or purchase already popular apps and customize them as per requirements. Following are some of the key considerations to help you arrive at the right decision:

1. Resource constraints - Developing an app from the scratch to meet your unique business requirements, say automating your production department or payroll, needs considerable investment in terms of manpower and finance. If your organization is big and the app you develop is expected to have a greater impact on key users of a specific business operation, it makes sense to embark on the new app development. However, if your organization is small and lacks the necessary bandwidth to support heavy investments, it is prudent to buy an app. Flexibility of the mobile solution to match unique business needs is the key aspect that needs to be taken into account while buying it.

2. Strategic sourcing considerations - For small enterprises, an alternative is to strategically outsource their mobile app development to a third party vendor to help them achieve their objectives. Companies can hire a skilled developer to either develop new custom apps or make some changes to an existing app, without much burden on the outsourced organization. The basic advantage of strategic sourcing for an organization is it minimizes the overheads and the potential complications of developing the applications in-house.

3. Technical architecture - Companies face uncertainty about how to proceed in an incredibly dynamic mobile environment. The right architectural framework that an organization can select is dependent on the mobile development that it chooses - native, cross-mobile platform or a mobile web solution. Native development approach provides the best user experience, but at a higher cost. Cross-platform networks, though offer economies of scale, face user experience challenges. The mobile web app model often creates problems in performance and user experience.

When automating a typical business function, you need to consider various parameters including the key workflows that need to be automated, number of business users, infrastructure and deployment strategies. Based on these parameters, you can embark on the right architectural strategy for mobile app development.

4. Security considerations - If the enterprise app has best-in-class features, supporting your business cases, but doesn't meet the minimal security requirements, it falls flat and is rendered useless. Organizations are very much concerned about the data security in the backdrop of the "bring your own mobile (BYOD)" strategy that is rapidly gaining ground. Commercially available apps may not perfectly meet the security requirements for a specific organizational setup. If your organization places high emphasis on data security, you may prefer to develop your own app, integrating all the required security features that you intend to enforce, rather than buying a commercially available app with compromised security paradigms.

5. After-sales support - If you have decided to purchase an enterprise app that could typically match your business requirements, look for a vendor that can offer ongoing support for the purchased app for a specified time period. This assumes significance as your workforce needs time to adopt the solution to leverage its maximum potential. This means, the vendor is expected to offer after-sales support in the form of user training to expedite the transformation. However, if the mobile solution that you intend to purchase has to support multiple workflows of a specific business function, offering minimal after-sales support, it is better to build the application in-house, rather than depending on third-party vendors.

To guide you further along the crucial phase of digital transformation and help you decide on enterprise mobile application development, click for a free demo, or call our experts now at 844-464-6668.

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5 Considerations to Decide on Enterprise Mobile Application Development - Build vs Buy

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One of the biggest questions enterprises face when preparing for digital transformation is whether they need to embark on in-house enterprise mobile application development or purchase already popular apps and customize them as per requirements.

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How Developing Mobile App is more Robust than Buying an App for Enterprise

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How Developing Mobile App is more Robust than Buying an App for Enterprise

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Read this blog to know how developing custom mobile app will benefit  enterprise instead of buying an mobile app

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Enterprise Mobile App Development: Should You Build or Buy?

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As more and more companies embrace the digital revolution, they are faced with a critical choice: do you build your app, just buy one or modify third-party apps? It is one of the biggest questions enterprises face while preparing for digital transformation initiatives.