Enterprise iPhone app development process

Before you develop an iPhone app for your company…
…make sure that it makes complete sense to get one.

Jof Arnold, web geek and entrepreneur, discusses the process of developing iPhone apps and gives out some handy tips and pitfalls to beware of.

(Don’t worry there is nothing technical in there.)
We loved the talk. It was short and gave us many ideas. Here are the five most important questions to ask before building an iPhone app for your company:

1. Do people need your services on the go?
According to Jeff, a company can use an iPhone app to drive sales or use a technology not available anywhere but on mobiles. The first and most important question to ask here is whether you can offer services that people would love to use/have access to anytime and anywhere. Is your audience a heavy iphone user?

2. What features and functionality are in it?
If the answers to above questions are yes, then what features would you want to add? Can you entice your customers to buy things by bolstering your presentation with the latest mobile tech? If yes, then in what ways can you, most effectively, use those features to make your iPhone app?

3. How much are you ready to spend?
If you decide to build an app, then be sure about how much you want it to cost. (Hint: think ROI). A well coded, reliable enterprise level iPhone app will cost you at least 10 – 20 k (if it’s simple) and 30-60k (if it has more bells and whistles.)

4. What is the element of Novelty in your App?
Sales driving iPhone app don’t just become overnight sensations anymore. You will need a committed strategy and planning to launch your app and “make” it a success. Jeff makes a valid point here, “There are thousands of other apps in there. 1500 apps are launched each day. What is new in what you are doing?”

5. Who is the app for?
You can use your app to do either of these things: establish your brand, increase sales by offering access to your services anywhere anytime, or enabling your employees by helping them connect to your company’s system such as Customer Relationship management software etc. Both have different criteria of success; success of customer related apps depends on how many people have downloaded it, while that of employee related apps depends on how convenient the app made your employees’ lives. Think about who you want to build it for- your employees, customers or both?