Building an App For Your Business That Creates 10X value
developers · juto · app development · product management
Building an App For Your Business That Creates 10X value
Thinking of building an app for your business? Given how much time you and your employees already spend on your devices, you would be crazy not to.
We use our phones everywhere, at home, at work, while where on the train trying to avoid awkward small talk. In fact, there is a 57% chance you are reading this on your mobile device right now.
- There are over 3 billion smartphones globally
- The average person spends almost 4 hours a day on their smartphone
- Most people check their smartphone every 10 minutes.
The last 10 years have seen a massive shift in the way we consume content and manage our daily lives. This had lead to the rise of the app economy. At first this growth was lead by consumer apps, but in recent years this growth has moved into the enterprise and business space.
A white paper from IBM suggest that over 75% of fortune 500 companies are developing mobility focused apps for their employees. Efficiency, productivity and reducing the cost of doing business.
Image source: _http://www.softprodigy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IBMWorklightWhitepaper.pdf__
While every business has its own objectives ( Improving employee workflow, customer engagement, increased sales), everything circles back to mobility, you need to be where your users are… on their smartphones.
Creating a 10x App For Your Business
“MOBILE IS BECOMING NOT ONLY THE NEW DIGITAL HUB BUT ALSO THE BRIDGE TO THE PHYSICAL WORLD. THAT’S WHY MOBILE WILL AFFECT MORE THAN JUST YOUR DIGITAL OPERATIONS – IT WILL TRANSFORM YOUR ENTIRE BUSINESS.”
- THOMAS HUSSON, VP AT FORRESTER RESEARCH
You may be thinking, “okay guys, we get it. Mobile is important. Let’s build an app!”. That is great news… but let’s first take a quick step back.
Before you start handing over your hard earned company dollars to make a shiny new app for your business, you first need to address the problem you are trying to solve and establish whether an app will provide a 10x solution to this problem.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/q8U1YgBaRQk__
It is not good enough to create an app just to tick the box and be up with current trends. You need to offer value to your users and address real problems if you expect to see an ROI on your business’s mobile app. By creating a great app you can help increase productivity and create happier and more engaged employees.
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Understand what problem you are trying to solve
Just like starting a business, you need to solve a real problem when creating an app for your business. If you are not addressing a real problem, then your business app will just be a cost on your balance sheet and your business will not see any return from the time and money you invested in the process. Before starting yourself:
- What is the #1 problem would you like your app to solve? For example: Are your employees days filled with inefficient admin work, meaning they can’t focus on their core responsibilities?
- How is this problem relevant to the business & my employees? How much time is spent each week manually creating, filling and storing manual paperwork? Can this time be spent elsewhere. Are your employees frustrated by the current processes? Is this affecting my employee/contractor churn rate?
Talk to your people
As entrepreneurs and business owners, it is easy to think we know and understand every part of our business, including the inefficiencies. However, you would be amazed at how much value you can get from simply talking to your team and understanding the challenges they face on a day to day basis. After all, they are the ones who will be using your app each day.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/W7aXY5F2pBo__
When you are in the planning stage of your app, we can not stress highly enough the importance of involving your people in this process to better understand the areas your app can add the most value.
This should include everyone from senior leadership positions, through to your junior staff. You can two this one of two ways. We suggest both:
- Qualitative Interviews: This is nothing like a job interview. This process needs to be framed to your employees as a way to speak candidly about their day-to-day workflows. If your employees feel like they can’t fully open up, you will never uncover the true pain points that your app can help resolve.
Rather than a Q&A, this meeting should be more of a conversation, using a few questions as a guide. For example, “Tell me about a few of the pain points you experience each week” “how much time do you spend on admin related tasks in a normal work day”
We suggest a simple 30 minute coffee meeting with 5-10 employees across different roles/seniority. To learn more about interviewing techniques, check out this guide here for more great content. - Quantitative feedback through surveys: Surveys can be a great way to quickly get feedback from your employees. Just like qualitative interviews, it is important to frame your survey as a way to give honest and direct feedback.
Some of the tools we love using for surveys are Typeform and Survey Monkey. With both of these you can use predesigned templates to quickly create and send feedback surveys to your employees.
It is important to note that while surveys are great for getting quick company wide feedback, they will never match the value gained from one-on-one conversations and should not be used as a sole source of feedback.
ROI Is More Than Dollars
When we think of a Return on Investment (ROI) our brains often lead straight to dollar sums. If you are thinking of building a mobile app for your business, you need to adopt a holistic approach and look at the areas of your mobile app can have the most impact and deliver 10x returns. For example:
- Lower overheads by reducing admin time
- Increased employee satisfaction by improving their workflow
- Improving regulatory compliance by replacing paper work with digital records
- Closer engagement with your employees and contractors
Image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/OApHds2yEGQ__
Let’s take a quick look at a case study from one of our users who runs a freight company and used Juto to create a mobile app to optimise their employee workflows and achieve a >10x result with both a huge ROI on money saved, but also a huge uplift in workflow efficiency and employee satisfaction by reducing the volume of manual paperwork.
Their problem:
The companies drivers and contractors had multiple manual processes for tracking hours, incident reports, and vehicle inspections leading to massive inefficiencies, sunk costs and employee frustration.
The Solution:
By deploying their app using the Juto Platform, the company was able to create a completely custom automated workflows for their employees to track their hours, lodge their incident reports and vehicle inspections, all through their smartphones.
The Result
In addition to the increased employee satisfaction and efficiency that came with simplifying their processes and reducing manual paperwork, the company was able to directly save $90,000/year in administration costs.
Building Your Own 10X App Using The Juto App Builder
Juto App Builder is a world first solution for business owners who want to quickly and efficiently deploy an app to improve their business operations.
The platform enables business owners to completely customise the functionality, design and workflows of their app in our easy to use App Builder without any prior IT experience, then launch to the App Store and Google Play. All with just a few hours of work.
Creating a custom app like that of the Freight company in our example above, using an agency would cost you $100,000+, take 4-6 months to complete and would be prone to errors and bugs as the agency will fail to fully understand your requirements and workflows. This does not factor in the ongoing maintenance and upkeep costs of the app.
Using Juto, our clients were able to create their app according to their own requirements in a matter of days and have complete control to modify as their requirements change… all at a fraction of the cost, leading to over $90,000 in immediate savings to the business from unnecessary administration costs.
To learn more about Juto, organise a demo, or simply get feedback on areas in your business where an app could add tremendous value, please contact us here.