How to Create the Best Enterprise Application Strategy in 2021

Editor's note: In this article, we will share some useful tips on the use of the core elements of the modern enterprise application strategy. And if you are interested further in a professional tech consulting and implementation partner, study Utah Tech Labs’ offer in application services.

Mobility solutions are a huge part of our everyday lives. In the U.S. alone, average consumers are spending 5 hours per day on mobile devices. In 2010, a fourth of internet traffic was from mobile phones and tablets. Today it is over 70%.

The nature of enterprise software management has shifted dramatically in the last few years, particularly characterized by a heightened demand for highly modular and functional applications.

Most people rely on the apps on mobile phones and tablets for:

• Shopping
• Banking
• Entertainment
• Productivity
• Connection

Millennials and Generation Z recognize mobile as the only viable platform. By 2035, these groups will make up most of the workforce and consumers. This brings mobile to the center of digital strategy for all enterprises.

Companies start to experience pressure for operational efficiency and fast adaptability to changing business and customer demands. A pragmatic enterprise application strategy, including the latest technologies and approaches to application development, implementation, and management, can help rise to the challenge. Read on to find out what the key elements of a modern application strategy are.

What is Enterprise Mobility?

Enterprise mobility is the deployment of mobile solutions across an organization. It leverages mobile tech to connect people, processes, and data. Enterprise mobility improves the way consumers interact with products and services.

Highly robust enterprise mobile solutions can offer your employees endless ways to increase their impact on business growth and allow your consumers to use your products and services easily. At the same time, they increase customer touchpoints with your business.

Enterprise mobility solutions can:

• Provide customers with self-provision services;
• Create new user experiences that are simple, personalized, and smart;
• Remove complexities from internal processes;
• Build new revenue systems.

Of course, enterprise mobility is ineffective in a silo. Enterprise mobility is a part of an overall tech narrative and strategy. It works with other digital initiatives within your business.

Must-Haves To Consider In Your Application Strategy

#1 Cloud computing

Adopting the cloud is a top investment priority of more than 30% of modern companies. The reason is that cloud services are provisioned on-demand, automatically scale the capacity up and down, and are based on a flexible pay-as-you-go model (for example, by the number of resources consumed). Providing that a business brings optimal cloud services and one can expect the following benefits:

• Minimize or eliminate resources needed to support and maintain in-house hardware and infrastructure;
• Reduce software development efforts;
• Reduce time to develop, test, and deploy apps;
• Reduce time and costs to upgrade software;
• Allocate cloud resources based on fluctuating demand;
• Automate most of the IT operation processes, thus allowing an IT team to focus on supporting strategic business initiatives.

#2 Protection of corporate data and user privacy

It is necessary to provide sufficient levels of security to minimize the risk of data leakages through:

• Unauthorized usage of applications for personal purposes by staff
• Loss of leakage of corporate data due to unmanaged applications
• Unauthorized access to corporate data.

This is especially important, considering that the number of data breaches is on the rise. For example, in the US, a hacker attack happens every 39 seconds. To improve data security, enterprise applications should have the features like user authentication, data encryption, backup control, and compliance tracking.

#3 Chatbots

More and more companies opt for chatbots to handle customer queries and drive more customer engagement. According to Finances Online, 24% of enterprises, 15% of mid-sized companies, and 16% of small businesses now use chatbots. They also mention that by the end of 2021, more than 80% of companies will have some kind of chatbot automation.

#4 Web-based services / SOA

You can choose a service-based approach to your application architecture and consider moving your legacy monolith applications to modular architectures. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a style of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. SOA/microservices architecture includes building or re-building an application as a set of small, independently deployable components, each focusing on a single business function. Here are the major gains of such architectures.

• Easier service enhancements, which helps react to changing business needs faster. As a result, a company can extend the platform’s functionality and reach high user satisfaction scores fast;
• Unification of overlapping functionality into more efficient shared services;
• Independent scaling.

#5 All-round automation

Another important element of a modern application strategy is the automation of all stages of the application life cycle. Application development, releasing, implementation, testing, configuration, managing and monitoring should be automated as much as possible. Some of the key tools and processes of automation:

• Test automation (standardization of test planning, design, development, and automation of test execution). The approach helps to achieve high software quality while supporting frequent releases and keep the testing process cost-effective.
• DevOps. DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development and IT operations. Its goal is to shorten the life cycle of systems development and ensure the continuous delivery of high-quality software. The DevOps approach and its practices like continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) provide companies with more frequent and reliable software releases through automated coordination of application development and testing.

#6 Progressive Web Applications (PWA)

Progressive Web Applications are another important enterprise app development trend. Created by Google, PWA is a web app solution that offers mobile users an experience very similar to that of native apps. There are several reasons why companies decide to create PWAs:

• impressive user engagement,
• page speed, security,
• spike in conversion rates.

In fact, according to statistics shared by Google, companies who have turned to PWAs note a rise in the conversion of up to 52% and an average page load time of 2.75 seconds (which is 8x faster than on a website).

To sum up

The enterprise application development market is undoubtedly on the rise. It is predicted that in 2021, the sector will have grown by an impressive 7.2% within just one year.

An effective enterprise mobility strategy is not about determining pros and cons, rather it is about embracing the overall impact that new mobile technology will have on the future of your business. Nevertheless, bringing impressive improvements, the core initiatives of any modern application strategy are also quite challenging and risky. Their successful realization requires relevant experience and professional competencies and skills in advanced techs, creativity, and up-to-date management approaches. Thus, we strongly recommend you ask a reputable consulting or outsourcing firm for advice or help.