Real User Monitoring for Native Mobile Applications

At some point, your enterprise is going to realize that it has to get serious about improving the performance and quality of your mobile applications. There's a lot of confusion about what's involved in monitoring performance of mobile applications. In many instances, someone in marketing or on the business side desperately wants a consumer-facing app for some new project or initiative for the company brand, be it for a promotional effort or some other type of campaign.

The enterprise IT group doesn't have the internal skills for native mobile application development and mobile apps in general are outside the domain of the traditional IT Ops group and it would take way too long for them to gear up to do it, so the business uses their discretionary, project, or advertising/marketing budget to engage with an agency or a consultancy to build the app in time for the project at hand.

Then, once the app is out in the wild among your customers for its initial purpose, the following process will inevitably happen:

       The desired scope of the application will expand as the company decides they want to use it for other purposes with additional features and functionality beyond the original minimally viable product definition.

       There will also certainly be problems with the app due to unanticipated issues or as a result of bugs and performance problems introduced by new features that got added later like tying the app into the enterprise IT infrastructure for services needed to support the new features.

       Users will be upset by the issues and write scathing reviews in the app stores or on social media, which will give the app poor rankings. They may even delete the app entirely. The company will realize that the poor app experience is hurting the company brand and costing it customers and good will.

       There will be frantic calls that somebody has to DO SOMETHING about it to make it right.

The process for adding monitoring of the performance of mobile application as it is being used by your customers is different due to the level of indirection involved and the lack of direct access to the devices where the application is running.

Since the mobile application is being used directly by your customers on their personal or corporate mobile phones, the mechanism of monitoring the performance of the app "in production" is called Mobile Real-User Monitoring or Mobile RUM. 

Monitoring Brand Performance with a Mobile Application Platform

One of the most prominent current trends among enterprise companies is the nearly insatiable demand for enterprise mobile applications. Mobile applications are the way that companies are interacting with all of their stakeholders. The most visible mobile applications for the enterprise are the ones that are directly customer facing, but enterprises are also increasing mobile applications for their employees and other stakeholders.

As more and more of the interaction with the company, its products, services, and operations are transacted through its mobile applications, these same applications are increasingly becoming the face of the company to all its constituents. As a result, the enterprises' mobile applications are becoming critical to the company's brand identity, both directly and indirectly.

Companies are very protective of their brand identity because the brand acts as the lens through which customers build a relationship with the company. Consumers build a solid emotional association on what a brand means to them, how it makes them feel, what other people may think of them wearing, eating, and driving a brand. These emotional associations build brand loyalty and human connection to a brand so consumers begin to treat a brand as an extension of them, a friend that they can always rely on.

Companies spend a lot of money and put a lot of effort into building and protecting their brands. There are, of course, many factors that contribute the company's brand value. It's not just your logo or your website, it's about everything that contributes to how a person builds their identification with the brand, and people are very passionate about that brand identification. As more and more of a person's interaction with a company happens through a mobile application or as a result of the use of a mobile application by a company's employees, the mobile applications will have an increasingly profound effect on the company's brand value, positively or negatively.

Can it be any clearer that just having mobile applications to help run your business is not enough?  Companies are spending incredible amounts of time, money, and effort to build their brands. You also have to make sure that those mobile applications perform flawlessly or at least that you can quickly identify and resolve issues quickly before they become big problems for your customers, your employees, and your partners or else you will have big costs and negative brand effects as a result of poorly performing applications. Otherwise, all of that investment in the brand can be wasted as a result of one bad incident.

To ensure the excellent performance of your mobile applications, you need to have a strategy and systems in place to monitor and manage their performance.

Deep linking: Promote Your App

Facebook has extended their deep linking capabilities beyond engagement ads to also include mobile app install ads. This new feature will help developers and advertisers send people directly to information they care about when their app is opened for the first time.

When a person taps on a mobile app install ad on Facebook, the developer can choose to send them to a specific place in their app after it's downloaded, such as a product page rather than the homepage. This will make mobile app ads more effective for achieving a developer's goals beyond the install, and provide people with better experiences by taking them to the content that attracted their attention in the ad.

For example, if a travel app is running mobile app install ads featuring a vacation to San Francisco, people who install the app and open it will be taken directly to information about the San Francisco offer. This makes it more likely the person will find information about the San Francisco trip that interested them, rather than having to search for it manually. Removing extra steps between clicking the ad and getting to the travel offer provides a more seamless customer experience.

Getting Started

There are two ways developers can use this feature. One way is through App Links, open, cross platform standard for deep linking on mobile. Developers have already enabled App Links for more than seven billion unique URLs on mobile. They support App Links for mobile app re-engagement ads — developers can now use them for mobile app install ads too.

Any developer using the Facebook SDK who has already enabled App Links can start deep linking with their mobile app install ads by calling these implementation methods. For developers who haven't enabled App Links, it's simple to start deep linking in their mobile app install ads. A new field in the ad creation tool lets developers define the location they want their ads to link.

Mobilize Your Enterprise

v  Smart phones are a happening topic and as time goes on, the mobile application market is doing nothing short of continuing its popularity explosion. Over the past few years my phone has transitioned from a over-powered toy into a hyper-productive business tool.

ü  Over 1 billion of the world's 4+ billion mobile phones are smart phones.

ü  Mobile internet usage is projected to overtake desktop internet usage.

ü  More than 50% of local searches are preformed from smart phones.

ü  Apple has the smart phone largest market share of around 47%, followed closely by Android, with Windows and Blackberry being the runner ups.

ü  Apps are developed differently for Apple, Android, Windows, and Blackberry devices, yet if properly planned apps can be created for all devices on a single framework.

v  Now you're up to speed with a few facts, let's address how mobile applications can enhance your business.  Here's almost a handful of ways that applications can help you solve business problems:

Create a Virtual Office

It doesn't matter if you're at the local coffee shop or on the other side of the world, if you have your mobile device, work can be done! Virtual office space consists of access to project management software, client relationship management software, time tracking, document sharing, expenses, invoicing and more. The only thing special is that it takes some time to make sure everything works in/outside the office, and the same can be done for you!

Facilitate Customer Relationships

Applications are a great way for a company to communicate directly with their clients, while adding value every step of the way. The potential for on-the-fly project management is limitless as you can track to-do, set project milestones, and facilitate measurable employee communications regardless of where you are. Sales catalogs for product viewing/ordering can also be leveraged for a more interactive customer experience.

Now you understand a few ways apps can help facilitate customer relationships it's time to brainstorm what kind of app your business could use. The best way to decide what to make is identifying what presently frustrates your clients the most, and form a strategy for addressing these issues.

Cost-Effective Marketing

Getting the word out about new products, services, events, etc. can come at a great expense. Recently, companies have been developing applications geared for a targeted audience with sponsorship of their corporate funders. Corporate funders in turn receive advertising opportunities to reinforce their brand and gain product exposure to a highly relevant user group. As we all know, you have to be known to make a sale!

New Platforms for Software

As mobile technology continues to progress, the boundaries of what can be created for smart phones and tablets also expands. All industries have sector specific software that are highly catered their respective market(s). For the longest time, software companies were limited to building for PC or Mac. In today's market we've entered the era of being capable of developing for all mobile devises as well.

v  Another way of seeing this is many devise specific applications no longer need to be tied to expensive hardware. For example, rather than purchasing an abundance of bar code scanners to track inventory, an application can be quickly built utilizing mobile cameras to scan inventory. Cost effective solutions are just a brainstorm away!

v  If you're a dreamer, mobile applications can help solve any information based problem. If you like examples, apps can help you create a virtual office, facilitate customer relationships, cost-effective marketing, re-create software for new platforms, and much more. If you'd like some help thinking your mobile application through don't hesitate to give us a call or send an email to start the conversation.

 

The next WhatsApp

There is an app for everything today: to study, to order groceries and to even call a valet. Two people could build an app, given the vast resources available today. There are even courses that help non-
coders build apps. 

WhatsApp identified that people needed to talk to one another, without paying. Flip board improvised on the "flip" action. They might not be the best looking apps, but they stick, because they solve a very big problem. Compared to creating websites for PCs, developing mobile apps is a different ball game. Website keeps you in a bubble. Even if a website crashes, it is blamed on the browser or the net connection. Not so for an app. Android and iOS platforms lay down the frameworks where one can build an app. But even before that, a bit of groundwork always helps. 

It should be a two-way street — app developers should create awareness and desire among users to get the app. Most start-ups and developers forget that an app is a means to an end and are often under the impression that a founder needs to know how to make apps. Mobile application development itself is not a barrier to starting up. Key is the business model that the app is built around.

The appification of the smarter web

The arrival of smart phones, iPads and touch screens has had a significant influence on web design in the last couple of years. We see a proliferation of new designs and techniques that originated from mobile app design. This phenomenon has been referred to as the "Appification" of web. People spend more time on apps than on a website. In the last decade we have seen how web design has moved away from heavy text-based websites to interactive, image-rich, video sharing applications. These applications engage the viewer more than web-based content.

The popularity effect of Pintrest, Instagram, Viddy and others has had a leading role on website layout. Even the older social networks such as Facebook have had to update their designs. In app design, performance is a key factor in a medium that imposes significant challenges on designers. In order to perform well and be user-friendly, they have had to change or adjust many design elements. Many changes in app design originated from the limitations and constraints that smart phones and tablets have in their platform. Now, even though web site layouts do not have these same limitations, the same pattern and approach has been followed.

Some factors, such as finger tapping instead of using a mouse and time and space limitations forced app designers make different decisions for how to use their space well. Lately these decisions have become a standard base for web and mobile design.

In the past brand recognition was achieved only by presenting well-crafted content. Now, every app should "Wow" users in their first approach in design, along with prefect performance and error free interactivity. That is why we see the attention to web aesthetic and interaction plays an even greater role on web and mobile development than ever before. Applications use bigger fonts and buttons due to the touch-based interface they utilize. This trend has slowly expanded into website design over time. On apps there are limited features, which have resulted in a streamlined and focused experience. Because of the inherent space limitations of the platform, app designers display only the most important information.

Aerizo Group – IT Consultancy

 

Will Your Business Evolve Toward Digital Transformation?

Business and IT leaders must be ready and willing to innovate rapidly from a business model, business process and technology perspective. They should also recognize that some business processes must become deliberately unstable during this transition. 

Deliberately unstable processes are designed for change and can dynamically adjust to customers' needs. They are vital because they are agile, adaptable and 'super maneuverable' as customers' needs shift. Large, stable processes that have no ability to dynamically change according to new information will not enable organizations to deliver on the promise of digital business. But what intrinsically separates the organizations that will succeed in their transition to digital from those destined to fail?

It's all about the people. Nobody thinks about the people part of it. Projects like this don't fail because the technology doesn't work — it's the people.

Get Ready for Change

A company's journey to digital experience is similar to other changes that organizations experience as they evolve over time. But digital does present some unique challenges. Everyone is going through transformation. It is the digital era. With any type of change, the approach is the same — anticipates, adapt and adjust accordingly. With technology, the difference is that it's moving so quickly that people can't always anticipate, adapt and adjust that quickly.

Change is hard and not everyone adapts to it easily. Leaders to take stock of the level of support their team members are willing and able to provide. It's also important to anticipate
pockets of resistance. When assessing the level of resistance, you need to understand the key players and stakeholders. Assess how close they are to the change and to what degree they're willing and ready to change, and how capable they are of doing so.

Based on your assessment, you could design specific strategies around those who are closest to the change and most impacted.

Aerizo Group – Mobile Applications

 

Mobile enterprise apps drive mobile working into a new era

Looking for strong indicators that enterprise mobile apps are on the rise? Consider this: evolutionary changes in the way mobile applications are developed and integrated with back-end, legacy software mean projects take days, not months or years, to complete. This opens up brand new opportunities for solution providers to deliver significant benefits inherent to mobile very quickly, tapping their expertise in vertical markets to develop tools that mobile-enable legacy line of business applications. 

A well-designed mobile app offers lots of user benefits, including better efficiency and productivity, by delivering the most in-demand business practices and workflows right to the point of need.

Mobile App Trends

To be successful, a mobile app must operate on top of a strong foundation. This includes ensuring client environments include devices (owned or BYOD), mobile OS, a robust security platform, a network, enterprise mobility management, and a payments module, if needed. Then solution providers can leverage the following trends to write apps that make mobile workers – these days, that's everyone — more efficient and effective.

Rapid Mobile App Development

Some critical mobile apps demand a full-scale global IT development effort. But many apps that drive productivity don't need that kind of complexity. You can look at the database you've got, use the web services and the reports you're already generating, and even the web-facing apps you've already got and extend those to mobile users particularly around the workflows and best practices that are relevant in that environment, and do it at a low cost and quickly and simply.
This approach enables solution providers to easily layer mobile onto existing legacy line of business apps extending their value. Mobile toolsets have made development so fast that they're exposing new opportunities for solution providers in temporary applications.

Mobile First

Mobile enterprise apps used is to be watered down versions of desktop apps. Now with mobile devices so pervasive, that's been flipped on its head. Smart developers are starting with the worker and the business process, then designing simple mobile applications with a tablet or phone (or watch!) experience in mind. Mobile users don't want every feature and function, just the ones that get the data and transactions they need quickly, without having to look in multiple places.

Cross platform

A key decision point is whether to develop native apps on each of the platforms favoured by users, or developing once in a cross-platform tool or html5.

Aerizo Group – Mobile Applications

Reach Your Customers whenever and wherever they are most Receptive

Talking about on-hand information, how about digitizing that loyalty program you have in place? Instead of sticking to the old point-collection card, make it possible for your customers to collect their rewards via your mobile app.

       The number of mobile phones in use now exceeds the number of toothbrushes!

       People carry their mobile phone almost everywhere, so your clients or customers can always be reached — at home, at work, at play.

       Better still, your clients or customers can use your app whenever and wherever it's most relevant to them. So, if you don't have an app on their mobile phone, the chances are your competitors do.

       A mobile app is like a blank billboard sign. You can do what you want with it; you can make it stylish, hip, functional, shocking, or informative.

       The power of 'smart phones', such as the iPhone and Android based phones, makes it possibly the most effective tool for com­mu­ni­cat­ing, collaborating, marketing and, of course, selling.

       This is why a well designed app can make your sales, marketing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion far more effective.

       Your app can also provide your clients or customers with your latest news and seamless links to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube pages.

       The more often you can get customers involved with your app, the sooner they will be inclined to buy your product and/or service.

Be the first in your neighborhood to offer a mobile app to your customers. They'll be astonished by your forward-thinking approach!

Aerizo Group – Mobile Applications

Mobile apps: Important for companies as corporate websites

Mobile apps have been around for some time and there is a lot of hype around the developing market. But how sustainable is this development, and where does it lead? Apps will eventually be as important for companies as web pages are today.

What are the reasons for this optimistic view? Here are just six reasons why we think that apps will become as important as Websites to companies in the next years:

1.     Ubiquity of smart phones: Smart phones will increasingly replace feature phones in stores. Nearly everyone will be able to use smart phone apps, not just – as of now – business people, social networkers and gamers.

2.     Manifoldness of possibilities: Smart phones are small computers which are becoming more and more powerful. They will be suitable for an increasing number of tasks which have previously been restricted to laptops or desktops. Today smart phone apps are used by companies to promote their brand or product, or to provide access to their existing products. In the future we will see a lot more use-cases, e.g. new products enabled by apps, mobile health, mobile selling, or apps which help to improve working efficiency within a company.

3.     Ubiquity of app stores: For the foreseeable future, Smart phones will always depend on the app store. If you have a smart phone or advanced feature phone you will have easy and convenient access to the world of apps.

4.     Unmatched user-experience: Apps offer a user-experience which mobile Websites or widgets are unable to provide.

5.     Proximity to customers: Mobile devices, especially Smart phones, are much more personal and intimate devices than a laptop or desktop device. For most users their phones are never further than 1 meter away 24/7. Imagine how attractive it is for consumer goods, food, and myriad other companies across the economy to be able to place their products and services so close to consumers.

6.     Better visibility: Although there is a lot of clamour about the discoverability of apps, especially in the Apple App Store, standing out among 140,000 apps is much easier than being found amongst millions of websites. In addition, these distribution platforms are stores, and unlike the web or its search engines, they are designed to sell and present products. Cross-selling and promotions are components of their core features. The new generation of app stores make it easier than ever before to be in the forefront of millions of potential customers' minds.

Aerizo Group – Mobile Application

Alpha Software Simplifies Development of Forms-Based Mobile Apps

One of the primary things that most enterprise IT organizations are trying to do with tablets is deploy applications that eliminate paper-based processes involving forms.

To accelerate the development of such applications, Alpha Software previewed the beta release of an update to its Alpha Anywhere mobile application development and deployment environment that simplifies the development of applications based on forms that can run offline and online.

Most IT organizations are struggling with a backlog of application requests for these types of applications. While the capabilities being requested are simple enough from a business perspective, developing mobile applications that run natively on every mobile platform that supports functions such as capturing signatures is time consuming.  

Alpha anywhere solves that problem using an HTML5 construct that has been optimized to make it simpler to develop this class of applications in a way that can be deployed on any mobile computing device that supports HTML5. Using that approach makes it possible to both develop and deploy forms-based mobile apps significantly faster. Those applications can either run in the browser or on top of Phone Gap, a framework for deploying mobile applications using JavaScript and HTML5.

 

Twitter Adds Advertising Tools to Promote Mobile Apps

Twitter is testing some new tools for mobile application advertisers. The new features will include a video app card, which will allow advertisers to showcase their apps with video before prompting users to install them. Twitter is also giving advertisers more choice in how they're charged for ads.

For example, marketers will now have the option to bid for ads and pay for them only when a user actually installs an app, as opposed to simply tapping on an ad.

The social network first launched its app promotion ad product a year ago, but said the new options are intended to provide marketers with better return on investment from their app promotion ads.

Some marketers have recently questioned the effectiveness of ads on Twitter, and the company attributed its poor revenue performance during the first three months of the year to a "demand problem" for its direct-response ads products. Ad product tweaks such as the ones for mobile app install ads are designed to address some of those issues.

The new tools will be rolling out to all mobile app advertisers globally over the coming months.

 

What’s next for Brand Advertising: Mobile Era!

Being able to easily link to content inside mobile apps could make them easier to use and also boost the mobile ad industry.

In the beginning there was the Web, a thicket of virtual pages connected by hyperlinks that enabled blogging to flourish and companies like Google to make piles of money by directing people where advertisers wanted them to go. Today mobile apps increasingly rule our free time and require us to dive into separate, walled-off digital containers that don't link up.

That's now changing as ad technology start-ups, together with established companies such as Google and Facebook, seek to reinvent the hyperlink. They're rolling out technology that makes it easy to put links into a mobile app, Web page, or email that with a single tap take a person to a specific section of another app installed on the device.

A product manager at Facebook said that this should be a fundamental building block of how all mobile apps work, just like URLs are fundamental to how the Web works. The new kind of hyperlink could make apps seem less walled off from one another. Deep linking, as the technology is called, is also seen as a way to open up new forms of advertising that will provide revenue to make mobile advertising more closely match its online counterpart. 

Aerizo Group – Mobile Applications

Bad outsourcing experiences can be predicted

Developing a mobile app requires a considerable degree of bespoke talent and expertise. To be able to find an app developer who falls in line with your ideas and thought processes, and has the expertise to bring the app to fruition is to hit a gold mine. In the process of arriving at the perfect choice, it is but necessary to go through an evaluation of potential leads and explore what they have to offer before deciding to go with a given app developer.

Approaching a new potential business partner might involve asking a lot of questions, and requiring information to help clarify different things. To this end, there is but an absolute necessity to ensure that the other side is willing and open to answering questions, and offering up information that can help a user define a scope for him. 

Estimates are a very significant part for a customer to sign on the dotted line for a deal. Whether it is in time or money, estimates offer an insight into the currency that defines a given app development process. Finances and time always go hand in glove with transparency.

As a user, you will find need to be in on the process throughout the journey of the development of your app. Constant communication is necessary to ensure that this takes place comfortably – and to this end, it is imperative that your questions via email and phone calls be welcomed. If there is no open-door communication policy, it can be a dangerous trend to follow for the future of the collaboration.

Aerizo Group – Mobile Application

The benefits of Next Generation Asset Management Software

How does Next Generation Asset Management Software differ from traditional ones and what can they do for you?

Asset management software has been around for a long time. Broadly defined, it refers to any system that monitors and maintains things of value to an entity or group. Non-financial assets fall under two major types of assets in the enterprise:

·         Assets that are used to carry core business functions (e.g. plant machinery and equipment, technicians' tools)

·         Assets that are used in support functions (e.g. cars, mobile device, IT equipment)

Things have evolved and in such a competitive landscape they are now required to find solutions to manage their assets more efficiently and proactively control their costs.

Many traditional asset management systems are built on desktop or simple web technologies. But companies are looking for solutions that leverage the benefits of collaboration and mobile usage offered by the latest web technologies to be even more efficient in their day-to-day tasks. Additionally, the Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing significant opportunities to get real time data from enterprise assets (using tracking devices and sensors) therefore it is critical to invest in a scalable solution that will allow to provide smart data out of all these connecting things.

Here are 5 key things you should expect from a Next Generation Asset Management solution:

ü  Superior user experience

ü  Collaborative and mobile solution making it easy for managers, asset users and suppliers

ü  Multi-asset capability

ü  Integrated asset tracking and life cycle management solution

ü  Smart data

Companies want smart solutions that will make asset management much more simple and will help them to achieve more savings.

Aerizo Group – Mobile Applications

What Would You Pick? An Exercise in Selecting an App

Apple's old slogan, "There's an App for that" reinforces the concept that people download apps to solve problems. There are about 1.2 million apps in the app store. The Apple App store is an amazing distribution system. The question is, how does the public find your app in the huge sea we call the app store? 

·         Free vs. Paid: It's just human nature; would you pay to get an app when you can download another for free?  For our clients, I recommend that they make their app free and try to figure out how to monetize it by other means (like in-app purchase, advertising, etc.).

·         Brand: The brand of your company will help.  People go with what they know and are familiar with. 

·         Videos:  A new feature of the Apple App Store is they now allow developers to post a video promoting their app.  The videos can be seen when you're doing a search for your iPhone and replaces the screenshot.  It's pretty powerful.

·         The Icon: People will download an app based solely on the icon.  To illustrate the importance of the icon, a major app game developer will create 40 app icons and then bring in a focus group to help them select the app icon.  

·         Reviews: If a user has more time, they might spend time checking out the reviews.

Aerizo Group – Mobile Application