From the birth of the Apple app store with 800 apps in 2008 to approximately 4 million apps in five major app stores in 2015, mobile application development has become an industry unto itself.
It is an ever-changing landscape. But applications don’t need to adapt merely to new OS versions. The user behavior and business needs drive their evolution just as relentlessly as the technological progress.
With this in mind, here’s our pick of current major trends (not only)for development of mobile apps integrated with Dynamics CRM.
Accelerating the development process
Over the years, people got used to finding an app related to their favorite business in the app stores. Therefore, one of the main objectives for mobile app developers is to reduce the time from the original concept idea to completion and launch. But to radically shorten the development lifecycle requires the right tools for the job. As a result, advanced rapid app development tools and frameworks are still gaining traction.
Resco has been helping developers build apps for over 12 years with Mobile Forms Toolkit. And with Resco Mobile Apps we’ve taken the ease of creating customer-oriented apps to a whole new level. The integration with Dynamics CRM allows you to make use of your established data structure. You build an app on the foundation of our tried and tested Mobile CRM app. And you can do it drag & drop style – without having to go anywhere near extensive coding.
Improving user experience via app analytics
The rapidly growing use of smartphones and tablets comes hand in hand with increasing demand to continuous improvement of the in-app user experience and functionality. To help bring improvements, data analytics is here to help the developers.
The data analytics in an app shows you how your audience engages with the application. How many times they’ve synchronized the application with the server? When do they use the app? Which functionality is used the most?
Creating your app with Resco Mobile Apps lets you effortlessly run a mobile audit to gain these insights. A single audit table stored in CRM can help you to make changes that influence the end user experience.
Location based services
Almost any industry, be it retail, tourism, hospitality, corporate, education, real estate, entertainment, advertising, etc. are leveraging location based services to enhance their business.
Think of a travel agency that offers its clients a mobile app. One of the app’s main features can be the ability to plan their trip visually on the map. For instance, travelers can immediately see the points of interest at their holiday destination and plan an individual route to visit the ones they want to see. Additionally, tapping on the pin can reveal detailed information about the place – such as a short description, reviews from other users or other related attractions in the area. The navigation can be initiated straight from the app, so users will always know how to get around.
This not only provides added value to the clients, but can also generate additional revenue by offering the option to be prominently featured among the recommended spots.
Web technologies in native development
HTML and related web technologies help to simplify the app development process. And developers still keep discovering new possibilities – from designing one-of-a-kind user interfaces to creating functionality which fulfills specific user requirements.
A retail chain can easily incorporate a calculator that accesses the price of the goods and calculates the monthly credit payment – built as an HTML page that interacts with your application via JavaScript Bridge. Utilizing HTML within Resco Mobile Apps also allows to extend the applications user interface completely replace the UI to reflect your brand’s image and personality.
It’s not only about customer oriented apps
As our experience and this year’s resco.next mobile conference tells us, more and more enterprises are looking to provide of partner-oriented apps as a way of improving collaboration and efficiency.
Whether to reinforce the information stream from independent distributors, provide a tool for external staff, or add a simple way to keep in touch with vendors and partners. From initially offering so called micro-moments of productivity, these apps are transforming into main communication channel between partnering organizations.
Visit www.resco.net/mobilecrm/mobile-apps.aspx and find out how you can leverage your Dynamics CRM and our expertise in mobility to create an app for your customers and partners.