Apps for Business

In this next article in our ongoing series on the future for application developers, we now turn to applications which are commissioned and made for business. The stereotypical image of a businessman with both his suitcase and email-enabled phone hastiled checking, reading and replying whilst on the go.

In more recent years this technology has evolved to include programs and applications which have revolutionised video conferencing – with meetings now taking place where none of the participants are in the same country, let alone the same room.

There has also been an increasing shift towards ‘24 hour working’ where business people are working as and when they can, rather than according to pre-set business hours. Businesses are run from people’s home offices, multimillion pound companies have only a handful of employees and it is becoming easier than ever to locate and work with partners and contractors across the globe.

A significant proportion of this rapid expanse and radical shift can be put down to the ever-faster (and indeed cheaper) broadband and 4G connections which we now have access to. It is also down to the fact that businesses are now challenging traditional concepts of ‘how it should be done’ and are instead trying new and radical means through which they can make money.

All application creators and developers are now in a position where they can provide a service to businesses that will soon become invaluable. Although some older and larger companies are still reluctant to give over control to new technology and to break away from traditional methods of communication.

Whilst this can seem to be counterproductive, it can often be due to the reasonable argument that there is simply not the ‘right’ application for that business or individual. This is where application developers need to step up and prove that they can indeed help improve the productivity of a business.

The way in which this is possible is similar to the reasons discussed in our previous article, Apps in Education, and is the ongoing theme of this series; namely that for developers to be able to succeed and to continue making a healthy profit – then a shift needs to be made away from mass market, free to download applications and into the bespoke market.

From the perspective a business owner, they want to be able to gain the advantage over their main competitors and they are unlikely to want to use the same software or applications as them. Instead, they will be significantly more attracted to the opportunity to commission and use an application which has been tailored to their precise needs.

As we have already suggested, the amount of potential end-users for such an application will of course be far smaller than the applications which developers have grown used to, however the financial rewards will be proportionally greater. When working with a business, and particularly where the application has been developed for use by that business, there is potential for long-term regulated income through Technical Support agreements.

Image Credits: © Vadim Sherbakov - unsplash.com