Mobile Application Management:
Unlock the Value of Enterprise
Mobility
Enterprise mobility strategies that are
centered on device management are archaic.
In today’s enterprises, app-centric approaches
protect what matters most and drive higher
user adoption and ROI.
To date, the mobile industry has taken a line from the film Field of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come” – but the problem is, the analogy doesn’t ring true.
Enterprises are being misled to believe that locking down and controlling mobile devices is a necessary and sufficient platform for supporting enterprise mobility. We’ve learned – and industry experts are increasingly sounding off – that, if anything, device-centric control repels mobile app adoption by end users. Without question, a dictatorial approach to mobile management alienates the very employees companies want embracing enterprise mobile apps to fuel productivity and ROI gains. Furthermore, just making apps available is not sufficient for driving real transformational change in the enterprise.
“The industry got it wrong that a device strategy would stoke adoption, rather these device-centric solutions are slowing the adoption of mission critical mobile applications in enterprises” says Stephen Skidmore, director, product marketing at Apperian. Device management may have worked from the standpoint of locking down a smartphone or tablet if it became lost or stolen, says Skidmore, but it doesn’t drive adoption of mobile apps. If anything, it became a distraction.
IT and business leaders across a range of industries have discovered the same – that simply creating or distributing an enterprise mobile app doesn’t translate into success. Mobile apps need to be made easy for employees to access and seamless to use. Trying to control the mobile devices that are increasingly owned and used by employees is counterproductive, and turns away would-be users.
While BYOD is on the rise, device management is not. According to a July 2012 study by B2B International, just 11% of companies use device management software to ensure compliance with corporate security policies.
Executive
Overview
Mobile Application Management: A Better Way
It’s time for the next phase of enterprise mobility where the use of mobile apps meets its promise of powering business innovation, while also taking employee productivity to the next level. At Apperian, we’ve seen an app-centric strategy beat a device-centric strategy time and time again for driving adoption and transformation. To embrace the rights of employees who own the devices being used, while addressing the needs of different business units, companies need a comprehensive and flexible approach to mobile application management – one that’s intuitive and seamless for employees to access business apps and easy for IT to manage, monitor, and secure the full app lifecycle.
1. Listen to what users and business units need.
IT should work closely with line of business leaders and their teams to determine the applications and business processes that would benefit most from becoming mobilized. For example, if sales feel a work share app would be beneficial, they can communicate those needs to IT, which can then provide that app. A close relationship between IT and LOB ensures no app is wasted, while also assuring all needs are met.
Meanwhile, be sure to actively involve targeted employee groups in testing the use of enterprise mobile apps to solicit their feedback and incorporate the features and functionality that matter most to them. Identify whom your power users are and distinguish their needs along with the behaviors and needs of other types of users (e.g. general users, executives).
The Four Tenents
for Achieving
Mobile App
Adoption
App-centric strategies offer enterprises numerous business and produc-tivity benefits by fostering end user adoption.
The right MAM solution enables enterprises to choose between deploy-ing their own internal enterprise apps, leveragdeploy-ing external apps from an iTunes or Google Play, creating hybrid apps from existing websites or web apps, or relying on independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop or customize existing apps.
We offer a four-point plan for driving a successful mobile management strategy that accelerates end user adoption while managing all aspects of the mobile lifecycle. In today’s data-driven enterprise, companies need a mobile strategy that encourages and incents employee adop-tion of mobile apps, while providing IT the ability to manage, monitor, and secure apps and data across the full spectrum of the mobile app lifecycle.
The use of mobile apps by companies across a variety of vertical indus-tries can generate impressive productivity and ROI gains. For instance, salespeople who are among the most highly mobile employees within an organization are making extensive use of mobile apps for product demos with clients and prospects, dynamic pricing tools to quickly con-figure estimates for would-be buyers, along with mobile order place-ment tools that can speed the processing and delivery of customer orders.
In order to attain desired ROI and productivity benefits, mobile apps that are developed in-house or made available through an app store must be embraced by a significant percentage of end users. We block out the four tenets for driving high adoption rates that benefit both IT and line of business users.
2. Build or buy impactful mobile apps.
The mobile apps that can strengthen workflow between teams and drive personal productivity can come from a number of sources. In some cases where enterprises have the internal skills to do so, they can build native apps for field service technicians, sales reps, engi-neers, and other mobile workers. Since many companies lack these skills, they can also choose to buy apps from ISVs, have apps custom made by third party firms, acquire them from external app stores such as iTunes or Google Play, or deliver mobile-friendly HTML or HTML5 sites to end users using a hybrid Web app approach. Ultimately, whichever delivery mechanism is selected will provide end users with an enterprise app store that makes it easy for them to find the apps that are available based on their roles and respon-sibilities. The apps that are available can be categorized so that a dispatch technician or a warehouse worker doesn’t have to search endlessly for a specific app.
3. Manage all aspects of the mobile lifecycle.
In order for enterprises to foster app adoption, it’s critical to develop a comprehensive understanding of the mobile app lifecycle. Doing so can enable IT to effectively administer the 5 stages of the mobile app lifecycle (on-boarding, inspection, protection, packaging, and deployment) that eases IT management while making each of these stages invisible and unobtrusive to end users. Using a robust MAM solution, the mobile administrator is able to easily administer each of the 5 stages of the mobile app lifecycle:
• On-boarding apps: A complete MAM solution enables IT to support various types of mobile apps, including custom-built, public apps, and hybrid Web apps. Integration with various, popular development tools helps connect developers with app lifecycle by allowing “one-click” app publishing into the MAM solution.
• Inspection: IT can use a MAM solution to better understand app behavior and concerns about employee usage and access prior to deployment, including the potential for the employees’ app to download malware or expose apps and data to other security threats.
• Protection: One of the greatest benefits of industrial-strength MAM solutions is their ability to apply usage and security policies to an app without additional coding. The two primary methods for managing and securing enterprise mobile apps are software Phasing deployment through adequate end user testing and quality assurance will help ensure that employees will not only download the mobile apps made available, but also embrace them to help them do their jobs more easily.
developer kits (SDK) and app wrapping. SDK for MAM can be included when apps are being developed or added to an enter prise app store, while app wrapping can occur after app develop ment – all without having to make changes to any of the app code. Additionally, specific policies such as data encryption, app remote control and app-level VPN all provide these safeguards to help IT extend the behavior of an app for security, manage ment, and reporting requirements.
• Packaging: One of the most critical yet cumbersome steps is the signing of an app with enterprise credentials. This is especially important for iOS apps, which need to be resigned every 12 months. The ability to auto-sign an app within the MAM solution can turn a “5-day problem” into a 30 second non-event.
• Deployment: One of the barriers to employee adoption of mobile apps is the difficulty that employees often encounter when they attempt to locate and download apps. A MAM solution can deliver apps through a private app store that’s been branded with the organization’s look and feel, thus making it easy for employees to know where to look for and find enterprise apps. Meanwhile, an intuitive app catalog also makes it easy for employees to rate apps and to share comments and ideas for new apps, helping to drive enterprise-wide engagement around mobility.
4. Provide employees a closed-loop feedback mechanism.
In order to gain staff buy-in and adoption of enterprise mobile apps, employee’s need a voice to provide feedback about the apps they’re using and want to use. Providing workers with a platform to share their views on the strengths and weaknesses of mobile apps results in more satisfied and engaged employees who are likely to be more productive. Meanwhile, an employee feedback loop enables IT to fine-tune mobile management strategies and chart the next itera-tion.
The right mobile application management solution should provide IT with the insights and analysis to determine which apps are being downloaded, which employee groups that are installing and using apps, what devices are being utilized, and how the apps are being used. These features are a critical component of a 360-degree em-ployee feedback loop.
For many companies, enterprise mobility programs are often launched within sales and marketing organizations since they are among the most mobile employee groups and the return can be significant and swift. This was the genesis for Cisco’s enterprise mobility program.
The networking and technology giant began its enterprise mobility efforts in late 2009. At the time, many of its salespeople complained that they were having a tough time getting deals approved due to lags in the approval chain. The lags were caused by the need for account and sales managers to log into a desktop system to view and have deals sanctioned. Since BYOD was already very popular at Cisco, company leaders saw the deployment of mobile sales tools as an opportunity to leverage BYOD to solve this workflow problem. By May 2010, the company developed the prototype for its flagship mobile sales tool called Sales Mobile. The app allows salespeople to manage and monitor accounts and deals using their smartphones and tablets.
By the end of 2010, Cisco began its search for a mobile management vendor to help it deploy its Sales Mobile app to employees. At that time, Cisco didn’t have an app store and wasn’t comfortable relying on a public app store. Cisco selected Apperian and in early 2011 the company began a 200-user pilot for Sales Mobile. In March 2011, the company launched its custom app store, which it named the AppFridge. Within 3 months, AppFridge had more than 1,700 iOS users and by year-end the company introduced support for Android users. The intuitive design and ease of use for AppFridge helped its popularity spread quickly. By the summer of 2012, the enterprise app store had over 9,000 subscribers. Today, Cisco has more than 12,500 subscribers and the company is on its 8th version of the Sales Mobile app. AppFridge has provided Cisco with a number of productivity and cost saving benefits. Because the apps are so easy to use, Cisco doesn’t have to spend any money on end user training. Meanwhile, by providing employees with one-stop shopping for mobile apps, this has made the company’s 80+ apps easy to find through search capabilities, app categoriza-tion, and group access control. Over time, this has helped Cisco engender trust with users and help keep the program vibrant and moving forward.
By taking a methodical approach to mobile app development and deployment that places employees front and center, Cisco has been able to achieve tremendous success. To date, adoption has been very strong. More than 83% of commissionable employees are using the AppFridge. Meanwhile, 51% of account managers are active users of
AppFridge along with 50% of all sales managers.
Conclusion
Many company leaders recognize the benefits to launching enter-prise mobility efforts. However, they often struggle with effective strategies for managing the deployment and use of enterprise apps and data, while still encouraging the levels of employee adoption needed to drive the productivity and ROI gains that are possible. Clearly, the device management model isn’t working. A new ap-proach is needed that can kick-start user adoption without placing a burden on IT. Enterprise apps need to be designed for adoption and their entire lifecycle needs to be carefully managed.Industry experts are increasingly coming to the realization that app-centric is the right approach for achieving success. “Mobile Ap-plication Management is growing in popularity among enterprises looking to deploy flexible mobile solutions to support bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives,” says ABI Research senior analyst Jason McNicol. And while mobile application is on the rise, device manage-ment is on the decline. “Mobile device managemanage-ment is in chaos right now and I think this market is going to die,” said John Girrard, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “MDM will reach an endpoint and then we’ll really start to see vendors have to look at mobile applica-tion management and applicaapplica-tion shielding around the app – that is really what is happening,” Girard adds. The choice is clear.
Best-in-class MAM solutions provide the capabilities that IT needs and end users crave. This includes the ability to shrink the timeframe for IT to deploy mobile apps and securely distributing apps only to those employees that need them. Leading MAM solutions provide end users with intuitive and well-branded app stores, making it easy for them to locate and download the types of apps they need to do their jobs in today’s fast-paced business environment.
About Apperian:
Apperian is the industry pioneer for mobile application management. Our cloud-based platform is the standard for managing corporate mobile apps and data in the enterprise. Unlike traditional approaches, we protect and manage just what matters most -the actual apps and data- with a seamless user experience that doesn’t require intrusive technology on user devices. We power the world’s leading enterprise app stores for hundreds of thousands of users.
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