5 Ways Enterprise Mobile Apps Can Increase Your Business’ ROI

Enterprise app trends have changed the enterprise landscape in various ways. For example, they’re great branding tools that help your Brand stay in the mind of your users. In this way, a mobile app can act as a marketing channel that works 24/7 — as long as the app is on a phone, it can market. 

More specific to our topic today (and if done correctly), they can help businesses increase their ROI. 

This can be done in two ways:

1. Internal apps that drastically improve productivity, thereby increasing ROI 

2. External, client-facing apps that bring in their own revenue and help with marketing efforts

Enterprise App Trends: Adoption to Increase ROI

Fueled by increased ROI through a one-time investment that goes into a mobile app,  businesses are adopting more and more enterprise mobile apps in an effort to adapt to smartphone-dominated world we live in. These companies are seeing that apps, both internal and external, help boost ROI directly through revenue, and indirectly through increased employee productivity. 

Here’s what they can do for you:

The first two ways enterprise mobile apps can increase ROI entail increased employee productivity through internal apps. This line of thinking is as follows: with mobile apps helping employees, they can work faster and better, improving overall company productivity. 

As Van Baker, Research VP at Gartner said, “The mobile app should make work faster, and better, for the employee, as well as less expensive…Don’t simply extend existing applications — make them better for the mobile worker.”

The beauty of mobile apps, or apps in general, is that they can be programmed to do whatever you want. The first way, therefore, is by using mobile apps as tools for employees. As such, if there’s something that’s currently lagging or can be improved, an app can be developed to fix it. Even better is the mobile aspect of the app because it entails mobility and flexibility. 

Going off of using mobile apps as tools for tasks, they can similarly be used to streamline tasks and improve employee efficiency. This is because the best sources for information on how a company runs and how it can run more smoothly are the ones in the front lines everyday, the employees.

With mobile apps helping them navigate through tasks, employees can not only work more, but also better. This translates to more productivity for the company as a whole, and more productivity usually means more money.

Moving on to external, client-facing apps, the first way to increase ROI is by opening a revenue channel. More specific to eCommerce businesses that sell products/services, it’s easy to see how these apps result in more money for the enterprise. You put in a one-time investment to develop the app (with maintenance updates every now and then), and then let it do its magic — sell to your users 24/7.

Another beauty of mobile apps is that they’re a goldmine of user data that can be used to improve marketing efforts. Once installed, mobile apps provide a company with a picture of how their users are interacting with the app. This includes the products/services they’re interested in, the ones they’re not, and general demographics that can be used to tailor and better target marketing campaigns.

Rounding off the list, enterprise app trends have shown that apps serve as marketing channels all on their own. From our last point we see that user data can be mined from apps. The next step, therefore,  is to use that data to better target marketing campaigns. For example, if you notice that a certain demographic is more likely to purchase a particular product/service, you can shift marketing efforts to target that particular demographic.

In an alternate vein, mobile apps can also help your company’s marketing team with push notifications that ensure that your Brand will always be in your user’s minds.

For enterprise mobile mobile apps to be successful, they have to have a positive impact for users. More than that, they have to have provide a real value. That is to say that they have to actually streamline tasks and help them work better (internal apps —> employees), and improve their interactions with your Brand (external apps —> users).