Do Companies Keep on Updating Mobile Apps? Not Really

The latest Forrester report reveals that marketers find it challenging to update business apps on a regular basis. The blog answers why it is challenging for them and how to get rid of obstacles in a way of business apps’ periodic upgrade.

Nowadays, making user-facing apps becomes a necessity for effective marketing of products and services. Companies are keen to strengthen their online presence and to reach a vast audience through customer-centric mobile business apps. But, when it comes to their periodic maintenance and upgrade, most of the companies find it hard to match up.

Latest findings of Forrester Survey

According to the recent research report by Forrester Research, business professionals who develop apps for marketing and making their business more customer-centric, find it difficult to update apps on a regular basis.

Only 25 percent of professionals are satisfied with their efforts to update mobile apps in order to meet both business and customer requirements.

In addition, only 20 percent of professionals upgrade their apps for fixing bugs and addressing various OS updates.

Factors Refraining Companies to Update Apps

Apart from budget constraints, several factors are responsible for creating hurdles in a way of periodic updates of business apps:

• Infrastructure: As per Forrester Research report, companies fall short of building up-to-date mobile app infrastructure services for regular updates. In the absence of necessary infrastructure, the update frequency is negatively affected.
• Lack of resources: Limitations of IT infrastructure is accountable for a lack of resources. It is truer in the case of apps that support multiple platforms. As per the report, about 35 percent business professionals accept that they face a lack of resources to keep up.
• Third-party dependence: As per Forrester’s report, less than 50 percent of business professionals develop in-house native apps. That means, more than half surveyed business professionals largely depend on developers to fill the gap between budget and resources.
• Select multiple platforms: In the era of cutthroat competition, companies are forced to opt for mobile apps that support multiple platforms. According to Forrester’s report, supporting multiple mobile platforms and devices makes update process slow, and companies may not find it feasible in future.
• Cutting-edge features: Latest iPhones and iPads support fingerprint-based unlocking. If the users of such devices ask for the same feature in customized iPhone or iPad apps, then it is certainly not possible for the companies. The reason behind it is they require either multiple versions of the same apps or inclusion of a conditional logic.
• More than three apps: A surprising fact that came up in Forrester’s report says that approximately 9 percent of professionals have more than 20 apps. In the mobile app domain, more is not always better, as companies need to hire more developers, perform more testing, and maintain more codes.

Solutions for Companies’ Hurdles

When companies face difficulties in budget, resources, infrastructure and technical assistance while updating customized business applications, they can consider following solutions to get rid of them:

• Opt for in-house development: These days, many online app development platforms are available. Such platforms are rich in resources and offer the infrastructure to develop tailor-made applications. Companies can use them to develop business applications with all required features. In-house app development is always better as companies need not to depend on third-party for both development and maintenance.
• Maximum three apps:It is better to have one or two fully-functional apps than having more than three applications with hassles in operating them. Companies can readily add desired features through automated app development platforms, and make customer-centric applications.
• Go for native apps: Native applications perform excellently, and when it comes to a modification, companies can modify such applications with ease. In addition, complex multi-platform applications require more attention while native applications are easy-to-use and easy-to-optimize.

In brief, we can conclude that companies must update business applications periodically in order to maintain their efficiency and ability to entice users.