Businesses Are Failing To Get The Most Out Of Their Mobile Apps

Businesses from all industry areas are not making the most of the wealth of benefits offered by building and maintaining useful and functional mobile applications, a new report has found.

That’s according to Accenture, which found that nearly half of companies looking to include apps in their business operations are failing to test and ensure their products are up to scratch.

This is despite an overwhelming majority of businesses (82 percent of those questioned) saying that the use of apps was ‘integral’ to their operations, according to the Growing the Digital Business: Spotlight on Mobile Apps report.

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Accenture’s report, which questioned nearly 2,000 senior IT decision makers in 15 countries around the world, also found that only just over half (52 percent) of businesses were employing a testing program that includes user feedback on their apps, meaning they could be hugely missing out on what aspects their users really need.

However, the security of these apps was also mentioned as a particular issue, with nearly half of the survey respondents (49 percent) citing security as the greatest challenge faced in managing and developing mobile apps.

And this challenge extends to the actual running of the apps themselves, as despite nine out of ten respondents saying that they saw high customer demand for effective mobile apps, only half of respondents reported that they felt these apps could not be appropriately secured for business purposes, and only 45 percent of them have crash reporting in place.

The other major challenges cited were performance issues (37 percent), such as crashing and bugs, although over half had implemented some kind of bug fixing or tracking system.

“We found that too many companies are neglecting to continually improve their existing apps,” said Abhijit Kabra, mobile applications practice lead, Accenture Digital – Mobility. “So, they risk wasting their investment.”

“To get the best results from apps, businesses must do rigorous testing before launch and robust app management once deployed. Not only does this help to provide the best possible user experience, but it will also help make sure that security challenges are addressed as an ongoing priority.”

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