Mobile App Development for Businesses: Benefits, Challenges & Case Studies

Mobile apps are now an indispensable part of everyone’s life. Consumers or businesses, everyone relies heavily upon mobile applications. Apps are not only for gamers and online shoppers. Rather, mobile app development for businesses is also a growing demand due to its myriad of benefits. 

When deciding to create an app for businesses often face a lot of confusion. They are often unsure of digitalising and automating business processes. Behavioural, educational, or psychological, there may be any reason behind the chaos. 

However, this blog will help businesses explore the benefits and challenges of mobile app development. Using real-life case study examples, this blog will uncover how technology can make business processes much easier to execute. So, let’s begin!

Mobile App Development: A Growing Trend in the Business Industry! 

In a recent study by Vodafone Business, mobile apps were found extremely crucial for businesses. Vodafone’s study revealed surprising stats about the importance of mobile apps for businesses. The study found:

•  Today, around 97% of traders believe that mobile apps are like ‘office in the pocket’. 
•  79% of the traders also admitted that they would land into trouble in the absence of mobile apps.
•  Surprisingly 9% of the respondents admitted that they feel like they would ‘lose potential clients’ in the absence of mobile apps.
•  46% Believe that ‘communication’ is the core business area that requires a mobile app.
•  Around 62% of businesses have accepted that today, mobile phones are more important than computers for work.

These stats are really eye-opening. But why mobile apps have become so popular among businesses? Let’s try to discover the reasons in the next section.

Why Businesses Are Depending Heavily Upon Mobile Apps These Days? 

The digitalisation of business processes has varying benefits for the business. In this blog, we are focusing more on internal business process automation than B2C mobile apps.

Therefore, keeping HR, sales, digital marketing, accounting, and business planning automation, we can count on the following benefits of mobile apps:

1. Completing Tasks 10x Faster

Using mobile apps, businesses are able to perform their tasks 10 times faster. Mobile apps are Artificial Intelligence driven. Without any fatigue, they can perform business tasks uninterrupted.

As a result, mobile applications when used in business process automation, increase productivity.

Since mobile apps are not ‘humans’, so they are free from tiredness and ‘burnout’. This helps businesses complete more tasks in less time.

2. Less Staff, More Work Access

Mobile apps can dramatically finish more tasks than human workers. However, ‘human intelligence’ will always remain superior to the ‘artificial intelligence’.

But when it comes to ‘capacity to work’, machines have an edge over human bodies.

This way, with mobile apps, businesses can deploy their staff in more specific business areas that need real human intelligence like problem-solving, strategy making, and decision-making.

Apparently, less staff or no staff is required for clerical tasks like calculation, documentation, record keeping and more. 

3. ‘Pocket Office’ Anytime, Anywhere

As of 2024, nearly 94% of the UK’s population, today owns a smartphone. According to reports, 67% of smartphone owners have access to 4G networks while 25% have access to 5G.

Therefore, using smartphones with an amazing user experience is a ‘norm’ in the United Kingdom today. So, mobile apps for businesses are like ‘pocket offices’.

The business owner or responsible employees can have access to their business tasks at any time from anywhere. Suppose getting stuck in the traffic, but not getting late for work? Isn’t that a boon?

4. Useful User Data Collection

Every mobile application uses ‘cookies’ and collects user data to enhance user experiences and support the business strategies of the owner.

Collecting user data is often a debated concept among users. But, data sharing is unavoidable when using any kind of software program.

However, businesses have to ensure that they would use the data ethically only. Data collection has its own benefits for the business. In the case of B2C apps, the benefits are uncountable. 

Focusing on B2E apps (Business to Employee applications), tracking employees’ locations and vouchsafing his/her activities with a mobile app becomes much easier.

This discourages employees from unfair activities like sharing crucial business data with competitors and more.

When the employee knows that his/her activities are under surveillance, he/she will surely refrain from such activities. 

5. Improves Employee Efficiency

Furthermore, mobile apps clearly elevate employee efficiency. When a mobile app performs calculative and documentative tasks for humans, they are able to focus on other crucial areas of work.

This increases productivity at work and helps the employees work from anywhere at any time. It reduces the fatigue of the workers and keeps their minds fresh. When the workers are away from the fatigue, they work with more efficiency.

To prove the above claims, we have real-life examples. Let’s dive into the following real case studies and discover how did businesses benefited from a personalised mobile app for their business. 

Proven Benefits of Mobile App Development for Business from Real-Life Case Studies!

Following are some case studies that underline the benefits of mobile app development for businesses. Let’s hear it straight from the clients what was their experience, what benefits they derived from the app, and what challenges they faced afterwards. We will discover 3 case studies here!

Case Study 1: How A Hybrid Workplace Leveraged Location Tracking & Data Analysis for Attendance Management?

About the Product 

This case study is about a Mobile Application developed for Human Resource Management. Our team utilised location tracking and data analytics to help the client.

About the Business

Let Us Code is a Software Development Agency with remote, on-site, and hybrid work setups. It has a large team with 200 employees strength working in hybrid, remote, and on-site setups. 

What Problems Was The Business Facing? 

Due to the variety in work mode setups, the client used to face the following challenges: 

• The office had a punching system for on-site employees.
• For remote employees, no punching system was missing.
• Hybrid employees were marked absent by the existing system on the days they worked from home.
• The business also had flexible timings due to which team co-ordination was suffering.
• Employees used to lose the official ‘holiday’ document provided digitally and in print.
• This too was creating chaos regarding holidays. 
• Overall, the HR department was facing a lot of issues.

How A Mobile App Benefited Them? 

Let Us Code decided to get a personalised Human Resource Management System. The business decided to have a hybrid mobile app that worked on Android, iOS, Windows, and MacOS systems so that the employees could have an ‘eco-system’. A Bespoke app development helped the business in the following ways:

• Using GPS tracking technology, remote and hybrid employees got a mobile punching system.
• This feature on the app helped employees mark their attendance from their homes.
• Additionally, the HR department could track employee’s location to ensure that they are not roaming here and there after marking their attendance.
• The mobile app had two versions, the employee version and the admin version.
• On the admin version, the registered HR employees and the business owner got access to employee data like leaves, punch-in time, punch-out time, working hours and more. 
• With this employee data, the admin version had a feature to auto-calculate the salary and leave balances. This reduced the clerical burden of the HR department.
• Moreover, the app was a mix of HRMS and Task Manager (as it was a bespoke app).
• So, with the help of this app, employees working in flexible hours used to schedule and report their work on the app. 
• This improved internal communication by decreasing dependency on each other. 
• The HR department also got an option to upload a Holiday List on the app that everyone could view at any time.

This way, developing a mobile app optimised workflow and HR management at the client’s workplace and improved internal communication in the organisation. GPS technology allowed the admins to monitor the activities of employees. Overall, the app increased their efficiency by 10x.

What Challenges Did the Business Face With a Mobile App?

Implementing a digital tool to automate HR processes was not free of challenges. Rather, the business also faced some difficulties. To list a few, these were:

• Cost: Getting a hybrid app proved an expensive decision. The business had to reset its quarterly budget again to make room for app development services.
• Training: The next issue was training employees to use the HRMS application. Not all employees are equally enthusiastic towards learning and adapting. Therefore, it took 2 weeks to the entire organisation to get accustomed to new ways of HR management.
• Privacy Concerns: Certain employees were feeling offended to know that the app tracks their location. Convincing them that it was for their good was really a tough job.

Now What The Client Says?

However, the business faced certain challenges, but the overall outcomes of digitalising HR management with the help of a mobile app were satisfactory to the business.

According to the spokesperson of Let Us Code, “The mobile app has surprisingly increased our productivity and efficiency. There was much chaos in HR management. But now our entire problem has gone.

Certainly, if we had not adopted a mobile app, working as a hybrid workplace with flexible timing would have remained a dream only for us. The decision to digitalise was absolutely right!”

The spokesperson further adds, “We are now also planning to digitalise other processes like Project Management, Sales, and even Accounting with a mobile app. We are confident that this way our valuable resources will be able to focus more on problem-solving and decision-making.”

Case Study 2: How A Restaurant Owner Automated Order Placement & Billing Procedures with a QR Code Scan?

About the Product

This case study is about a Restaurant Management System (RMS) that help automates order management, table management, and billing processes.

About the Business

Hóng’s Kitchen & Bar is a small bistro based in Thailand. The business is famous for its Chinese food and breweries. So, far the business is based in Thailand only, but it is looking forward to expanding business in the neighbouring countries as well. 

What Problems Was The Client Facing? 

Hóng’s Kitchen & Bar is a one-location bistro only, but the crowd is always over-flooding due to its exceptional taste and services. Thanks to the population of China!

Especially, the wines and vodkas made in-house are the main centre of attraction for the Chinese population.  Due to disharmony between the size of the crowd and that of the staff, the bistro was facing the following issues: 

• Poor Management: Overall, the management was getting worse day by day. As the bistro was always full of people, the staff was always up and doing. This was causing employee burnout, but still, the crowd was unmanageable. 
• Order Mismanagement: Handling large crowd was also leading to order mismanagement. It had become very common to serve the food of one table to other in confusion. 
• Long Billing Queues: The billing queues were getting longer and longer. It was causing trouble to the customers. Especially in case of drinking population, fights were getting more frequent. It was an alarm for our reputation. This was hindering customer loyalty. 
• Compromise in Consumer Journey: Even after hiring more staff, the business was not able to cater to everyone with equal hospitality. Anyhow, the business was compromising on the consumer journey. 

How A Mobile App Benefited Them? 

Hóng’s Kitchen & Bar decided to automate billing and table management with a mobile app and approached a custom mobile app development company.

The development team suggested the business to also leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technology for smoother management. The automation process was as follows: 

• Order Placement with QR Code Scan: The business decided to drop manual ‘order taking’ and embraced place orders by scanning a QR code option. Using the QR code, diners could view the menu and place orders. With the same QR code, the business owner can edit/update the restaurant menu. 
• Kitchen Staff Receives Notification: As soon as the customer places an order by scanning the QR code, kitchen staff receives a real-time notification to prepare the order on a smart screen installed in the kitchen. This speeds up the table-to-kitchen journey. 
• Catering Staff Receives Notification on Mobile Device: As soon as the kitchen staff prepares the order, the catering staff receives a real-time notification on their mobile device. They can view table numbers in the notification and serve right without confusion. 
• Generate and Pay Bill: The app also generates the bill automatically adding all the taxes and service charges. Customers and bistro staff both can view the billing amount on their smartphones and pay bills online without having to stand in long queues. 

What Challenges Did the Client Face With a Mobile App? 

Just like Let Us Code, Hóng’s Kitchen & Bar also faced some challenges in its digital journey. These challenges included:

• Network Issues: Everyone uses a different broadband service. Not all broadbands provide strong networks. Therefore, initially, due to network issues, the implementation was not going smoothly and user-friendly. However, the installation of WiFi improved the condition a lot.
• Smart Device Compatibility: Some of our catering staff members were not using smartphones. While some others had smartphones but they were not running smoothly. So, we had to gift our staff members with new Blackview smartphones to elevate user experience. 
• Installation of Smart Screens: Similarly, we had to install smart screens for the kitchen staff to view orders and update order status. 
• Time-Taking Process: Overall, it was not only a time-consuming but also an expensive process. It took us around 1.5 months to fully enjoy the digitalisation. 

Now What The Client Says?

However, the journey was time-taking and expensive, the end results prove that it was worth having. According to the catering manager of Hóng’s Kitchen & Bar, “Now, I don’t see any queues fighting and getting irritated around. My catering staff is equally happy. And now it seems like I am working in the hospitality industry when I see smiles on everyone’s faces. Otherwise, earlier I used to feel like I was working in a hospital where everyone is tense”

The manager continues, “However, unfortunately, the mobile app could not cure the drinking customers!” He laughs jokingly and continues, “Opting for mobile app development for our business was the right decision. It reduced our burden to a great extent and made the consumer experience far better! We will also consider adding loyalty programs in the QR scan feature itself.”

Case Study 3: How A Small Travel Agency Optimised Taxi Fare with Real-Time GPS Tracking?

About the Product

This case study is about a taxi booking mobile app that utilises route and traffic APIs and predictive analysis to forecast real-time traffic conditions and calculate Fares smartly. 

About the Business

Taxi Sebastien is a small travel agency that provides online cab booking services like Uber and Lyft. However, Taxi Sebastien has its own user-base and personal drivers for the users unlike Uber and Lyft which offer random drivers to the riders. 

What Problems Was The Business Facing?

The business was facing issues in fare calculation for the rides. As the business model focuses on ‘personalisation’ by providing a ‘known’ driver, fare calculation was also becoming a major subject to bargaining. To elaborate further, the problems were as below: 

• Riders Bargaining Fares: Due to familiarity, riders were often demanding heavy discounts on the rides. To keep pricing competitive, the business had to offer discounts. However, during the peak traffic hours, rides were not able to generate a fair fare. 
• Poor Fare Estimation: Heavy traffic leads to higher fuel consumption. Which also increases the taxi fares. However, in the absence of traffic APIs in a mobile app, the business was not able to analyse the traffic conditions. 
• Unpredictable Traffic: Due to the unpredictability of traffic, not only fare calculation was difficult but also scheduling rides to drivers was troublesome. Suppose scheduling 3 rides on fixed timings to one driver but the driver fails to reach on time due to traffic.

How A Mobile App Benefited Them? 

The business when discussed its issues with a mobile app development company, the development team suggested getting a cab booking app with Google Maps API that provides real-time traffic updates.

The app was beneficial to the business in the following ways: 

• Real-Time Traffic Updates: The mobile app provides real-time traffic updates on the roads. It gives personalised route recommendations and auto-selects the smoothest route for the ride. 
• Fair Pricing: Based on the traffic conditions, the app also calculates the ride fares accordingly. 
• Fixed Prices: Furthermore, the app calculates the fair in advance analysing the traffic. Also, both the riders as well as the drivers get the fare calculated in advance. So, there is no scope of bargaining this way. 
• Streamlining Rides: With the GPS tracking system, the admin can monitor the drivers and schedule rides accordingly. No more mismanagement!
• Tracking Drivers: The app helps the business owner to track all his drivers and monitor their activities. This helps the owner maintain passenger safety. 

What Challenges Did the Client Face With a Mobile App? 

Taxi Sebastien too faced challenges during its digitalisation. The challenges were as below: 

• Network Issues: During the rides, the network sometimes breaks. So, the 100% tracking is not possible. Every time, the app stops giving updates to the driver, ultimately, the business calls the driver and takes updates. So, in the end, relying on the drivers is the only solution. 
• Training Drivers: Not all drivers have a good taste for technology. As a result, training them was challenging for the business. 

Now What The Client Says?

The business owner told our team that “However, we are not able to track the drivers completely due to inconsistency in networks while traveling, but our major problems of fare calculation has gone. We are glad that now prices are fixed and fairly calculated.” 

The business owner further adds, “Being a local taxi service provider, we never focused on ‘branding’. But as we worked on our mobile app, we also got an opportunity to brand ourselves.”

Overall Pros and Cons of Choosing Mobile App Development 

So, mobile app development for small businesses actually proved a boon, as evident from the above case studies. Small to large, every business today leverages mobile app development for its own good.

However, choosing mobile app development services has its own pros and cons for the business. Based on the case studies above, we can conclude the following advantages and disadvantages: 

Pros

• If you decide to go digital with a mobile app, your business efficiency will increase for sure. 
• A mobile app reduces the workload of the employees. Business tasks that require less caliber like calculations and documentation often exhaust the workers. As a mobile app automates these processes, the workers get assistance. 
• Mobile apps are not subject to fatigue. Therefore, a mobile app can work more than human employees. As a result, productivity increases.
• Apps are like ‘pocket office’. The employees can access their business tasks at any time from anywhere. 
• Moreover, as you decide to get a mobile app, you also get an opportunity to brand yourself. 
• Or if you already have a good brand image, a mobile app elevates it and enhances business reach very easily. 

Apart from these benefits, planning to launch a mobile app can also be challenging in certain ways. So, let’s once discuss the challenges as well for more clarity. 

Cons

• Mobile app development is often expensive. Therefore, it puts a financial strain on the business in the beginning.
• Additionally, training the end users, on using the mobile app can also be challenging. As all the users have different attitudes towards learning and adapting to a new way of working.
• Data privacy is also bothersome for some of the employees. When using GPS tracking and device tracking to ensure compliance among the employees, some employees may not like the idea and create havoc. 
• Technical glitches are also a consideration when going digital with a mobile app. The app may troubleshoot occasionally, interrupting business.  
• Mobile apps also require time-to-time maintenance, updates and bug fixes. It is the best practice that the company that develops an app, also promises to maintain it. 
• However, choosing a reliable software development partner can often be challenging as not all companies are worth relying upon. The business has to choose a software partner carefully and must do thorough research before finalising the project. 

Overall, getting a mobile app for your business may be time-consuming, costly, and also tiring! You will need to develop a comprehensive ideation to explain to the development team. 

Certainly, you will need to have a clear ideation of what functions will the app perform and what features it is going to have. 

Some Tips to Follow When Taking Mobile App Development Services 

So, getting business apps has its own advantages and challenges. However, the advantages are more profound in comparison to its challenges. The advantages listed above prove that these challenges are worth taking.

And you can face these challenges smoothly if you follow certain tips. Here is how you can overcome the challenges while getting a mobile app developed for your business:

Expensive Development

However, app development services are expensive, but you can control and optimise the cost by following some basic tips: 

 

• Do not focus much on animations and fancy elements in the mobile app. 
• The fancier the app, the higher the cost.
• Keep customisations under control and avoid being too rigidly specific in the UI/UX design. 
• Rather, choose a simple and trendy UI/UX design which is easy and fast to develop. 
• Also, choose cross-platform app development to get a single codebase that works on both Android as well as iOS devices.

Lifelong Maintenance 

• For lifelong maintenance, maintain a yearly budget which is 10% of the total cost to development. 
• However, not every time you will need to spend on maintenance so there is no need to worry.
• The best practice is to choose a reliable software development company which is at least 8-9 years old and has at least 3 international locations.
• It is because a new company may or may not survive for long. If it shuts down, you will need to approach another company. 
• And we are sure that the new company will re-engineer your product the way its team recommend.
• So, choose your software development partner carefully. 

Data Privacy Concerns 

• Privacy concerns have to be handled from two aspects, one is the development team and the other is the end users. 
• First of all, you need to choose a reliable development team well-versed in strong encryption and data privacy law compliance. 
• Secondly, you will need to educate the app users and make them believe that no sensitive data will be disclosed to any third party. 
• By choosing an expert team and educating the users, you will overcome the data privacy concerns. 

Attitude Barriers Among Users 

• While digitalising business through a mobile app, the users may demonstrate a reluctance to adapt to new ways of working. 
• Also, some users may not like the idea of being monitored and tracked. 
• To overcome this situation, companies must educate their employees and provide sufficient training.
• The organisation must not ‘pressurise’ the employees to learn fast and be perfect with the app. Rather, give them sufficient time to adapt. 
• Tell the employees that ‘tracking’ and ‘monitoring’ are for their good and not for the bad. 
• Rather than promoting that the ‘app’ will track employees' location to ‘ensure that employees are not roaming here and there’, promote that the app monitors your location for your ‘safety’ and ‘device tracking’. So, that if a wrong person steals or accesses the device, it may be tracked immediately. 
• Similarly, rather than emphasising that the company will monitor employees’ activity to maintain compliance, you can emphasise that we will monitor your activities to save you from entering fishy sites!
• This way, you can leverage diplomacy to overcome the attitudinal barriers. 

Wrapping Up 

Mobile app development for businesses is really important to boost brand recognition and simplify business processes. A mobile app is not only to enhance the business reach or for the e-commerce. Rather, to automate the business processes as well, a company may lean on a mobile app. When you automate trivial tasks with mobile apps, you can focus more on customer satisfaction and making strategies. However, getting a mobile app developed for business has its own pros and cons. But in the end, it has more benefits than challenges. Also, mobile apps are now a necessity and digitalisation is the only future! So, follow the tips provided above to combat the challenges and embrace mobile app development as soon as possible. To share any further doubts and queries, do not hesitate to contact us.

FAQs

1. How much does it cost to create a mobile app in London? 

The cost of creating a mobile app depends upon various factors like the app’s complexities, number of features, functions, UI/UX design, and also the brand image of the chosen app development company. There is no fixed cost. You can share your project with the development team and get a price quote.

2. How long does it take to create an app?

Just like the cost, the duration to create a mobile app also depends upon the app’s complexities. The higher number of features and functions makes the app more complex. The more complex the app, the longer it will take to develop the project.

3. What is bespoke app development?

Bespoke app development, aka, custom software development is the technique in which a software development team develops a mobile app from scratch. In bespoke development, you as the client can choose the colour theme, UI/UX Design, and the entire look and feel of the app.

4. Which technology stack is ideal for cross-platform app development?

The best development framework for developing cross-platform apps is React Native. It is an open-source development framework that provides a ready-to-use code library and exciting UI/UX elements that give a native-like user experience.