Enterprise Mobile Application Development Guide

Custom Enterprise Mobile App Development Process

Once you figure out what functionality and capabilities your future app needs, you can proceed with actual mobile application development. There are five stages of the development process if you are considering creating a custom app from scratch. From conceptualization to deployment, these stages provide a roadmap for transforming your vision into a functional and user-friendly application tailored to your specific business needs. 

1. Requirements Gathering and Analysis

At first, it’s essential to specify all the goals and requirements for enterprise app development with the help of business analysts or with your business team. This process defines scope and objectives, minimizes risks, optimizes resource allocation, and guides development decisions. 

1.1 Identify Business Objectives

Identifying business goals involves understanding the technology landscape within the organization. This includes assessing existing systems, infrastructure, and technical constraints that will impact the development of the enterprise app. 

1.2 Gather User Stories and Use Cases

During this stage, the development team must collaborate closely with stakeholders to understand user preferences. Technical considerations include identifying the platforms and devices that the enterprise mobile app will support, as well as assessing the feasibility of implementing specific features and functionalities. 

For instance, if the app needs to support offline functionality, incorporating technologies like SQLite for local data storage and synchronization with a backend server using RESTful APIs can be a viable approach.

1.3 Identify Functional and Nonfunctional Requirements

The next step involves defining the core features and functionalities of the enterprise mobile application and mapping them to technical specifications. This includes defining user interfaces, data models, and application logic. 

Nonfunctional requirements, such as performance, scalability, and security, also require careful consideration. Technical aspects include defining performance metrics, scalability requirements, and security measures, such as encryption protocols (e.g., AES) and authentication mechanisms (e.g., OAuth 2.0).

1.4 Gather Integration and Data Requirements

Shaping the app’s technical architecture comes next. The project team must identify the systems, databases, and third-party APIs that the enterprise solution will need to integrate with and assess their compatibility and interoperability. For example, integrating with enterprise systems like SAP or Oracle ERP may require using technologies like OData for data exchange and authentication protocols like SAML or OAuth.

Additionally, the team should define data storage and management requirements, including data migration strategies, backup and recovery procedures, and compliance with data privacy regulations using tools like Apache Kafka for data streaming and Apache Spark for real-time analytics.

2. Development Strategy and Budget 

Understanding how the development process will unfold is critical for effective project management. Simultaneously, a detailed strategy can help reduce additional expenses when outsourcing mobile app development. So, check the principal focuses below to have clarity around the development plan.

2.1 Prioritize Features

Prioritizing features in enterprise application development means aligning with business objectives and addresses specific needs. This optimizes resource allocation, facilitates early feedback through MVP releases, and mitigates project risks such as complexity and scope creep. To establish feature priorities, consider the following steps:

• Understand Business Objectives: Gain a deep understanding of the overarching business goals that the enterprise app aims to support. This involves collaborating closely with key stakeholders to identify strategic priorities and align app development efforts accordingly.
• Identify User Needs: Conduct comprehensive research to identify the customer needs, conducting user interviews, surveys, usability testing, and analysis of user behavior data. 
• Outline Must-Have Features: Based on the alignment with business objectives and user needs, prioritize must-have features for the initial release of the enterprise app. These functionalities typically include secure user authentication, offline access and synchronization, data security and compliance measures, customizable dashboards and reporting, task management, and document management. 
• Consider Additional Features: Identify additional features for an enterprise mobile application that can enhance the app’s functionality and user experience. These could include employee directory, training and learning management, expense management, project portfolio management, analytics and business intelligence, and workflow automation. 

2.2 Choose the Right Development Approach

There are different cases for different approaches (native, cross-platform or PWA) in enterprise app development. Let’s see what factors you need to consider when choosing one or another app type.

Сhoose native app development for:

• Performance-Critical Applications: A native enterprise app is best suited for providing high performance, intensive graphics, or complex calculations. 
• Platform-Specific Features: If an app requires access to platform-specific features or hardware functionalities (e.g., camera or GPS), native development is ideal as it provides full access to device capabilities.
• High User Engagement: For applications where user engagement and retention are paramount, native approach offers superior performance and user experience.

Choose cross-platform apps development for:

• Uniform User Experience: When consistency in user experience across different platforms is crucial, cross-platform development ensures that the app behaves similarly on all devices and operating systems.
• Less Complex Applications: Cross-platform approach is well-suited for less complex applications or those that do not require extensive platform-specific features. It’s a practical choice for mobile apps focusing on content delivery, productivity tools, or internal communications.
• MVP Development Cost and Time Efficiency: Cross-platform mobile app development is suitable for projects with limited budgets or tight deadlines as it allows enterprise app developers to write code once and deploy it across multiple platforms. 

Oleksandr Boiko

Delivery Director at SPD Technology

“When discussing MVP, cross-platform development often emerges as the optimal choice. However, we’ve encountered scenarios where the projects had to accommodate business growth and scale accordingly. In the case of rapid growth, the business owners are forced to invest anew in native application development. Nevertheless, as a both cost-effective and reliable solution, Kotlin Multiplatform presents itself as an alternative. With adept planning and architecture, we will only need to design the UI, and the rest of the code can be reused.”

Choose PWA development for:

• Reach and Accessibility: PWAs are ideal for modern enterprises aiming to reach a broad audience across different devices and platforms. They eliminate the need for app store distribution and can be accessed directly via web browsers.
• Offline Functionality: For enterprise applications requiring offline access, PWAs leverage service workers and caching mechanisms to enable offline usage. 
• Frequent Updates: PWAs allow for seamless updates without the need for app store approvals. This is beneficial for organizations that require frequent updates or iterations to their applications.

2.3 Estimate Development Costs

Your focus when considering mobile development costs should be on:

• Development Time: More complex features and functionalities will increase the development time and, subsequently, cost for enterprise app development services.
• Resources: The human resources required for the project, including enterprise mobile app developers, designers, project managers, and quality assurance specialists, and their level of expertise will contribute to the final price. 
• Technology Stack: The choice of technological solutions, including programming languages, frameworks, and development tools, also requires financing. Some technologies may require higher expertise or licensing fees.
• Third-Party Integrations: If apps need integration with third-party services or APIs, the complexity and cost of integration will vary depending on the APIs’ availability, documentation, and complexity. Some third-party services may require subscription fees or usage-based charges.
• Design Complexity: More intricate designs, animations, and custom graphics will require additional design resources and increase development time and cost.
• Scalability: Building scalable architectures with a large user base or significant information processing may require additional budget allocation for planning and infrastructure.
• Ongoing Maintenance and Support: Post-launch maintenance, updates, and support services are ongoing costs associated with app development. Their price can vary depending on the frequency of updates, user feedback, bug fixes, and platform updates.

2.4 Factor in Testing and Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is crucial to ensure that the developed mobile app meets quality standards, operates reliably, and delivers a positive user experience. While opting for mobile enterprise application development, you must include the following types of testing in the project scope:

• Functional Testing: This type of testing verifies if all buttons, menus, forms, and other elements of the app perform their respective tasks correctly. 
• Performance Testing: It evaluates how well the mobile apps perform under diverse conditions, such as different network speeds, device types, and user loads. 
• Security Testing: Crucial for identifying and mitigating potential vulnerabilities and threats, security testing involves assessing the enterprise mobile app for risks such as unauthorized access, data breaches, and malicious attacks. 
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): It involves testing the app with real users to gather feedback and ensure that it meets their expectations and requirements. 

3. Prototyping and Design

The subsequent phase involves crafting of a compelling, modern, and intuitive design. Here are our how-to tips for completing this stage successfully. 

3.1 Wireframing and Information Architecture

To kickstart the design process, we recommend starting with crafting low-fidelity wireframes. Utilizing tools like Adobe XD, Sketch, or Figma can be invaluable at this stage as they offer templates and components perfectly aligned with Android’s Material Design language for Android devices and Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for iOS. As you dive into structuring the enterprise app’s content, it’s crucial to prioritize clarity and hierarchy. Arrange UI elements such as navigation drawers, cards, and bottom navigation bars within the wireframes to sketch out the app’s layout and navigation flow.

Further, to ensure a seamless user experience, consider utilizing tools like Lucidchart or Miro to create flowcharts or diagrams that visually represent the logical organization of content and navigation paths within the app. 

3.2 Visual Design and Branding

As you transition from wireframes to high-fidelity mockups, use design software like Adobe XD, Sketch, or Figma to craft detailed screens with consistent typography, color schemes, and elevation effects. Floating action buttons, elevation shadows, and responsive layout grids are also needed to be taken into account. 

Integrating the enterprise’s branding elements is essential to maintaining a unified visual identity. Ensure that the organization’s colors, typography, and imagery complement Android’s Material Design or HIG palette. To streamline this process, employ tools like Brandfolder or Frontify to centralize brand assets and maintain consistency across the app’s visual elements.

3.3 Prototyping and Interaction Design

As you progress from static design mockups to interactive prototypes, the goal is to emulate the functionality and user interactions of the enterprise app seamlessly. Prototyping tools like InVision, Proto.io, or Adobe XD help add clickable hotspots and transitions.

During this stage, focus on refining the prototype’s usability, ensuring fluidity, and responsiveness. Concentrate on crafting intuitive and engaging interactions, defining animations, gestures, and transitions that enhance usability and provide a delightful user experience.

For more advanced animations and micro-interactions, leverage tools like Principle or Framer. These tools allow you to create intricate animations that contribute to a flawless user experience, making your enterprise app stand out from the competition.

4. Development

With the finalized design serving as a detailed blueprint, the dedicated development teams embark on transforming concepts into functionality. The whole process of development unfolds in five stages.

4.1 Set Up the Development Tools and Environment

The developers have to install and configure Android Studio (for Android development) or Xcode (for iOS development) and tailor these integrated development environments to project requirements. They ensure the installation of required SDKs and platforms, covering both minimum and target API levels specified for the enterprise application. They also configure emulators to simulate different device configurations and operating system versions, facilitating testing with different screen sizes, resolutions, and hardware features.

4.2 Implement Declarative UI and Navigation

4.2.1.Implement Declarative UI

In contrast to imperative UI programming, where developers specify explicit steps for creating and manipulating UI components, declarative UI focuses on defining the desired appearance based on the current application state. This approach prioritizes describing what the UI should look like rather than how to achieve it through manual manipulation of UI elements. 

Jetpack Compose for Android is an example of a declarative UI framework. With Jetpack Compose, Android developers can efficiently craft interactive, responsive, and visually captivating user interfaces compared to traditional Android UI development methods. It provides features like state management, layout composition, and animations, allowing developers to concentrate on delivering exceptional user experiences without being burdened by boilerplate code.

For iOS development, SwiftUI is Apple’s declarative UI framework. It enables developers to build user interfaces in a declarative manner, defining the structure and behavior of UI components based on the current application state. Similar to Jetpack Compose for Android, SwiftUI allows developers to focus on describing what the UI should look like rather than manually manipulating UI elements. 

4.2.2. Implement Navigation

Next, navigation between screens is implemented using activities and fragments. Activities represent individual screens or windows in an enterprise mobile application, while fragments are reusable UI components within activities. Your team defines navigation paths and transitions between activities and fragments to facilitate seamless user interaction.

4.3 Write Business Logic and Functionality

4.3.1. Write Code

Now it’s time to implement the mobile app’s business logic and functionality by writing code in Java (mostly used for Android legacy projects), Kotlin (for new Android projects) or Swift (for iOS projects). This involves defining classes, methods, and algorithms to perform tasks such as information processing, user authentication, and interaction with external services.

4.3.2. Utilize Built-in APIs and Libraries

Android and iOS provide a rich set of built-in APIs and libraries that allow developers to access device features. Thanks to them, the enterprise application development continues with integrations of these APIs into the code to interact with hardware components and utilize platform-specific functionalities. 

4.3.3. Implement Data Persistence

Data persistence is implemented to store and retrieve app data across app sessions. While SQLite is commonly used for local data storage on Android, iOS developers typically use Core Data, Apple’s framework for managing the model layer objects and persisting data in iOS apps.

However, developers can also choose alternative storage solutions depending on their specific needs and preferences. For example, on Android, developers may opt to use libraries like Room Persistence Library, which provides a higher-level abstraction over SQLite, similar to Core Data on iOS. This library simplifies database operations and provides additional features for managing data persistence efficiently.

On iOS, besides Core Data, developers may also consider using other alternatives such as Realm or directly interacting with SQLite using libraries like FMDB. These alternatives offer different trade-offs in terms of performance, ease of use, and flexibility, allowing developers to choose the best solution for their app’s requirements.

4.4 Integrate with Backend Services

4.4.1. Integrate with Backend Services and APIs

To supply enterprise apps with essential features, developers integrate the backend services and APIs. While Retrofit and OkHttp are popular networking libraries in the Android ecosystem, iOS developers typically use URLSession. These libraries provide convenient abstractions and tools for making HTTP requests, handling responses, and managing network connections. Thus, the mobile app can access and interact with data stored on remote servers, enabling features such as fetching dynamic content, submitting form data, and synchronizing user information.

4.4.2. Implement Authentication and Authorization Mechanisms

These mechanisms are implemented to secure access to backend resources and ensure that only authorized users can interact with sensitive data and functionalities. Developers employ industry-standard protocols such as OAuth 2.0 or JSON Web Tokens (JWT) to authenticate users and validate their identities. Role-based access control (RBAC) or permissions systems are also implemented to enforce authorization policies and regulate user access rights based on their roles or privileges.

In addition to these standard practices, the security of enterprise mobile apps is often enhanced with multi-factor authentication. 

Oleksandr Boiko

Delivery Director at SPD Technology

“Nowadays, nearly all mobile devices come with biometric authentication capabilities, so we see many projects dealing with passwordless authentication as well. Passkeys present a safer and more user-friendly option compared to traditional passwords. Users can utilize passkeys, leveraging biometric sensors such as fingerprints or facial recognition, PINs, or patterns to access apps and websites, thereby eliminating the hassle of remembering and managing passwords.”

4.5 Optimize for Performance and Battery Life

4.5.1. Optimize App Performance

Optimizing the app’s performance comes next. It is done by minimizing CPU and memory usage, reducing network requests, and optimizing battery consumption. This includes implementing efficient algorithms and data structures to minimize computational overhead, optimizing resource-intensive operations to reduce memory consumption, and implementing strategies such as caching and prefetching to minimize network requests. 

Additionally, developers optimize battery consumption by minimizing background processes, reducing screen brightness, and optimizing power-intensive operations.

4.5.2. Utilize Performance Monitoring Tools

To finalize the development process, the Android development team utilizes tools like Android Profiler and other performance monitoring tools to identify and address performance bottlenecks, including CPU usage, memory allocation, network activity, and battery consumption. 

iOS developers have access to tools and resources embedded in Xcode for optimizing app performance. Xcode includes a range of performance analysis tools (e.g. Energy Diagnostics tools and Core Animation Instruments) that allow developers to monitor aspects of app performance, including CPU usage, memory allocation, network activity, and battery consumption.

5. QA and Testing

Validation of the robustness and effectiveness of enterprise apps comes with testing. Let’s delve into three types of testing to understand its significance in enterprise mobile application development.

Functional Testing

This type focuses on verifying that the app’s features and functionalities perform as expected according to the specified requirements. For mobile apps, functional testing involves validating core functionalities such as:

• User authentication;
• Processing of data;
• Navigation between screens;
• Interaction with backend systems. 

Test cases are designed to cover different scenarios, including normal use cases, edge cases, and error conditions, to ensure comprehensive coverage of the app’s functionality.

Compatibility Testing 

Compatibility testing ensures that the app functions correctly across different devices, operating system versions, and screen sizes. QA engineers verify that the app displays correctly and operates seamlessly on different devices, including smartphones, tablets, and different screen resolutions. 

Security Testing 

This type of testing involves identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the app’s code, network communication, and data storage mechanisms. For the enterprise app development, security testing includes assessing:

• Data encryption;
• Secure authentication mechanisms;
• Protection against unauthorized access;
• Compliance with industry security standards. 

QA engineers employ several techniques such as penetration testing, code review, and security scanning tools to identify and address security risks before deployment.