Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development

1.
Solving The Complexities Of Enterprise App Development
Cracking The
Complexities In
Enterprise App
Development
Sponsored by:

2.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
Foreword
Senior information technology professionals have come to a
crossroads in the world of enterprise application creation, where
challenges come in the form of development, design, and
deployment.
Enterprise Mobility Exchange conducted a survey in July 2016
where hundreds of respondents explained why their apps were
being abandoned, what they believed users wanted, and how
they planned on moving forward.
We learned less is more when it comes to deploying functional
apps in the enterprise. For instance, a quarter of those surveyed
said they believe enterprise apps are too hard or confusing to
operate, which is why the technology is completely abandoned
and discontinued.
An intuitive user experience and the pervasive adoption of
mobile apps are driving digital transformation for enterprises.
To outpace market disruptions, businesses need technology
that helps it adapt quickly to the change in user expectation
and meet the demand. Continue through this report to better
understand the challenges enterprise professionals are facing
in the world of app development and how they can overcome
obstacles for better user experiences with their products.
Table Of
Contents:
Page 3:
The Evolution Of Enterprise
Applications
Page 4:
App Obstacles Lead To Poor
User Experience
Page 5:
Investing In The Future
Page 5:
How Are Apps Operating,
And Where Are They Made
Page 6:
Let Users Dictate Needs
Page 8:
Hand Over The Blueprint,
Watch Buildings Grow
Page 9:
About SAP
Page 10:
About EME

3.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
The Evolution
Of Enterprise
Apps
Long before “there’s an app for
that” became an expression of the
masses, enterprises were building
their own backend technologies
to enable employees with easy-toaccess
data and communication
avenues.
As those enterprises became
increasingly reliant on mobile
devices, the functionality for
employees to work quickly and
independently became paramount.
Thirty-one percent of survey
responders said mobile apps are
the primary interface of the future
(Figure 1). Another 21-percent believe
mobile access to corporate data is
critical for employee productivity.
For the better part of the last decade,
mobile has been on the forefront
of tech for many reasons. As digital
transformation and enterprise
mobility become omnipresent, it’s
clear where businesses plan on
focusing their resources. More than
93-percent of respondents said their
enterprise will increase investments
in mobile over the next five years,
while nearly seven percent more said
spending would remain the same.
“Enterprise apps will gradually
become the go-to means for
employees to conduct day-to-day
activities,” said Quinn Banks, Senior
Product Marketing Manager for
Farmers Insurance. “We will begin
to see large desktop applications
broken into core components and
find their way to mobile devices.”
Other enterprises are completely
restructuring staff to accommodate
the transformation into mobile
digitalization.
“[We’re] placing a focus on mobility
and digitalization as ways to improve
and enhance the way people work,
from the traveling executive and
office worker to the associate on
the production floor,” explained
Matt Taylor, Manager of Mobile
Applications Development for global
automotive supplier Autoliv.
Figure 1: Why is mobile important to your business?
Mobile apps are the primary interface
of the future.
31%
Mobile is necessary to realize the full
benefits of digital transformation.
Mobile access to corporate data is
critical for employee productivity.
19%
21%
Mobility creates differentiation in critical
value chains with key business partners.
4%
Mobility creates a high-value digital
experience for our consumers.
24%

4.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
App Obstacles
Lead To Poor
User Experience
We’ve been hearing about the
‘application of everything’ over the
last few years. It’s been happening
in both consumer web and business
applications, where monolithic
application suites gradually evolved
into task-based apps.
Enterprise IT organizations have
been busy building and extending
apps. Despite the multiple benefits
that enterprise mobility or desktop
apps offer to end users, including
opportunities for employees to
do their jobs faster and more
effectively, the adoption continues
to remain stubbornly low across
many industries and geographies
and a large percentage of such apps
still end up as ‘orphan apps’ with
lukewarm user adoption.
Trends in the industry show
enterprise apps are too complex
and cumbersome for users to
easily navigate. As a result, their use
becomes limited, or worse, the apps
are completely abandoned despite
investments in time and money.
“I believe apps are abandoned
because the end user is
disappointed in the functionality it
delivers,” Taylor commented. “Mobile
devices have a ‘wow’ factor which
means the new way of working
should be better than the old way.
I believe the primary reason [for
app abandonment] is not enough
emphasis is placed on the app being
a better experience than the way
they currently work.”
Apps can quickly transform the way
business is done for organizations
as a whole and for the employee
specifically. For instance, with the
proper mobile capabilities, an
employee could request time off or
conduct inter-office business with
the swipe of a device, rather than
having to log in to the company’s
VPN and carve out essential
production time.
Figure 2: Why Are Enterprise Apps Abandoned?
Enterprise apps are too hard or confusing to use 26%
Apps lack the necessary functionality 22%
Back end data has not been properly designed for mobile consumption 16%
Apps aren’t available on the right devices 13%
Apps are missing native performance or native look and feel 11%
Apps are not well promoted or easy to find and install 6%
Apps are no longer needed when they are finally completed 6%
More than a quarter of IT
executives believe enterprise apps
are abandoned because they’re
too hard or confusing to use
(Figure 2), while nearly 22-percent
say the necessary functionality is
missing and, in turn, makes the
app unusable.

5.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
In trying to suit the needs of all
users, enterprises are throwing
everything at the wall to see what
sticks. But data shows nearly a third
of IT leaders admit the users’ needs
have never been identified or pinned
down (Figure 3), leading to the
development of a misguided app.
“Far too often it is the poor user
experience which causes enterprise
apps to be abandoned,” Banks
said. “The same attention to details
the development team places in
customer-facing apps should be
applied to internal apps. The fact
of the matter is if an enterprise app
doesn’t look or function as well as
the mobile popular apps on their
phones, it shows how out of touch
the company really is with its end
user.” (Figure 4)
Figure 3:
Please rank the challenges in mobile app development?
e Difficulty in identifying or verifying end user needs. 30%
e UX Gap: Lack of process to understand and properly define user 16%
experience.
e Developer Gap: Not enough mobile developers. 16%
e Collaboration Gap: Lack of tools for technical and non-technical 11%
people to collaborate in app development.
e Data Gap: Finding and consuming back-end data/services is too difficult. 10%
e Skill Gap: Developers have the wrong skill sets. 6%
e Operations Gap: Lack of ability to scale out deployment, support and 6%
management.
e Tool Gap: Inability of existing development tools to scale mobile app 4%
development.
e Feedback Gap: Lack of iterative feedback from end users. 1%
*Multiple answers permitted
Figure 4:
Please rank the following obstacles for a good user experience
e Lack of alignment among stakeholders of what needs to be built 26%
e Poor knowledge of UX best practices within development 21%
e Lack of end user feedback throughout design and development 18%
e Lack of design or design thinking skills within the project team 18%
e Ineffective collaboration between business and IT 17%

6.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
Investing In The Future
Historically, spending has fallen into
two buckets: development and
infrastructure, with minimal amounts
being allocated to testing and
administration, i.e., discovering how
the technology works in the hands of
the user (Figure 5).
Enterprises are pouring money into
perceived solutions without testing
the market, deploying complex
apps when users are seeking
niche products to easily maintain
and accomplish day-to-day tasks.
About 20 percent of mobile app
development projects are funded
by IT and 20 percent by Line of
Business in an enterprise. A huge 55
percent of projects are jointly funded
by IT and LoB.
Figure 5: What Consumes Most Of Your Mobile App Budget?
e Development 44%
e Infrastructure 24%
e Design 18%
e App admin 9%
e Testing 6%
How Are Apps Operating,
and Where Are They Made?
A disconnect in app development
may be seen in the lack of uniformity
from the enterprise. Less than
30-percent of IT leaders said their
enterprise conducts in-house
development and design of the
apps they’re building (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Do you design and/or develop
your apps in house or outsource them?
e Outsource both 39%
development and design
e In house development 29%
and design
e In house design; Outsource 27%
development
e In house development; 4%
Outsource design

7.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
Another 66-percent outsource the
development phase of the project,
while nearly 44-percent let other
businesses design the apps that will
be used inside the company.
Figure 7:
In the future, what app style
do you plan to use for mobile
app development?
e Primary app style
e Will use for some use cases
e Will NOT use
The truth is capable developers
are expensive. Creative designers
also come with a hefty price tag
and, more times than not, the two
sides operate in silos, often causing
expensive backend and frontend
miscues.
The variety of apps and the
operating systems they’re built on
may also be a driving force behind
the large number of failures. Nearly
half of IT leaders plan to build future
apps in a native iOS, while more than
39-percent are moving toward a
native Android platform (Figure 7).
Native iOS
8%
11%
Mobile Web
Native Android
17%
47%
43%
39%
53%
45%
38%
Hybrid
10%
40%
50%
Native Windows
10%
33%
58%

8.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
Let Users
Dictate Needs
Because of the complexities of
ensuring an optimal user experience
across multiple OS and device
platforms in the mobile world,
companies often compromise on
user experience or burn time on
a back-and-forth process across
stakeholders. This situation is
exacerbated by the lack of support
for technical and non-technical
personnel to work together, for
developers to concurrently build
applications, and for the reuse of
common application components
and services.
But most IT organizations have very
limited designer resources or design
skills. Hiring a lot of designers is often
not economically feasible. Instead of
bringing in extra design resources,
or asking business users to learn
programming languages, end users
can now leverage platforms that
abstract away from code, making
development possible for a greater
number of people.
Tech executives believe building
apps should not be exclusive to
technically trained developers and
designers. In fact, the overwhelming
majority of business leaders say
it’s important to enable non-IT
developers, or citizen developers, to
deliver mobile apps (Figure 8).
“It’s extremely important to provide
the right tools for developers to use,”
Banks said. “I use the analogy of a
‘spice rack’ in which a library and
snippets of code can be stored for
later use. This way teams don’t have
to reinvent the wheel and libraries
will be written only once.”
Streamlining the functions and
capabilities in a one-stop-shop
space – the cloud – will enable those
citizen developers to customize the
app and make it easier to use for
their personal business production
needs. More than 33-percent of
those surveyed said a simple, one
screen data mobilization app would
best suit the non-IT developer and
end-user (Figure 9).
The end-user is driving expectations
on how apps should look, feel, and
function. Shouldn’t that same person
be able to customize the product’s
capabilities to create a more
effective technology?
Figure 8: How important is
enabling non-IT developers
(i.e. citizen developers) to
deliver mobile applications?
e Somewhat important 43%
e Very important 38%
e Not important 19%

9.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
Figure 9: In what type of
mobile applications will
citizen developers be most
productive?
e Simple “one screen” data 34%
mobilization apps
e Forms for data input 18%
e Surveys and decision 18%
making
e Workflow or approval apps 16%
e Analytic dashboards or 14%
reports
Enterprises can benefit from
tools that allow them to rapidly
prototype applications so they can
be previewed by all stakeholders –
on actual mobile devices, and with
testers’ real-time feedback integrated
– from the time the application is
created to when it is deployed. They
can also benefit from tools that allow
them to quickly develop native apps
that provide access to core data and
business processes (Figure 10).
Application development and
deployment in the cloud helps
jumpstart the development and
adds flexibility, as it is suggested
from the top two reasons that are
driving adoption of mobility in cloud
(Figure 11).
Reducing the gap between app
demand and supply is a real
possibility. Once enterprises enlist
the use of integrated user research
and feedback tools, synthesize
results in one place, and provide the
developer with real code, there will
be a shorter time to market.
Figure 10: What are the
factors driving adoption
of mobility in the cloud
compared to on premise?
e Developing mobile solutions 26%
in the cloud enables faster
innovation
e Apps in the cloud are easier 23%
to scale on demand
e Delivering mobile apps 21%
using on-premise mobile
technologies lacks agility
to respond quickly to user
requirements
e Using a trusted cloud 14%
provider helps meet data
privacy, security and
compliance requirements
e Cloud apps are less 11%
expensive to operate
e Mobile apps need better 6%
contextual information that
can only be aggregated in the
cloud
Figure 11: Which of the
following will help meet the
growing demand for mobile
apps?
e A rich set of starter apps 29%
that can be easily adapted
e App templates to quickly 21%
bootstrap development
e Reusable content to 18%
accelerate app development
e Off-the-shelf mobile apps 16%
e Tools that enable citizen 9%
developers (non-IT developers)
to build apps
e Non-app mobile experiences 6%
(virtual private assistants,
bots, etc.)

10.
Cracking The Complexities In Enterprise App Development
Hand Over The
Blueprint, Watch
Buildings Grow
There are plenty of obstacles and
challenges associated with enterpriselevel
app building and deployment,
as we’ve seen. But what’s the solution,
and how can organizations effectively
minimize mobile application issues
without losing the purpose or intent
behind the tech?
Apps need to be relevant, and they
need to be now. One giant app
haphazardly attempting to fulfill
the user’s needs will ultimately fail.
A solution-based app, on the other
hand, can alleviate development and
design time while saving resources.
Enterprises need to get in the game
of building applications users actually
want to handle; let them be the
designer, give them the freedom to
customize at will and on the go. As
the proliferation of mobility continues
its path through the enterprise, user
interfaces need to be simple and
turnkey. Hand over the blueprint and
the foundation, enabling the user to
create a skyscraper of their choosing.
As mobility grows so does
performance in the cloud. Bringing
a solution to the cloud already
equipped with in-memory database
and application services accessible
by all will allow the user to rapidly
develop new apps or extend existing
ones with the tap of a finger.
As user experience improves
and mobility grows so does
performance in the cloud.

11.
Solving The Complexities Of Enterprise App Development
About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run
better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people
and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the
competition. SAP applications and services enable approximately 310,000 business and public sector customers to
operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information on UX and mobile services,
visit hcp.sap.com/capabilities/ux and hcp.sap.com/capabilities/mobile
About Enterprise
Mobility Exchange
Enterprise Mobility Exchange is an online community for global mobility professionals and business leaders who
are leveraging mobile technology and services to improve operational efficiency, increase customer acquisition
and loyalty, and drive increased profits across the entire enterprise.
At Enterprise Mobility Exchange we’re dedicated to providing members with an exclusive learning environment
where you can share ideas, best practice and solutions for your greatest mobility challenges.
You will receive expert commentary, tools and resources developed by experienced mobility professionals
and industry insiders. With a growing membership and global portfolio of invitation-only bespoke meetings,
Enterprise Mobility Exchange ensures you keep your finger on the pulse by delivering practical and strategic
advice to help you achieve your business goals.