The Business Value of a Mobile-First App in a Post-Desktop World

Mobile devices have replaced desktops in multiple scenarios for people from all walks of life. While most use smartphones for social media and browsing, we also observe the amalgamation of business with mobile devices increasingly to manage operations and streamline workflows.

A featured opinion by IBM states, “The global mobile workforce is set to increase to 1.87 billion people or 42.5% of the global workforce in 2022, up from 38.8% in 2016. As workers become increasingly mobile, so does their primary work device.”

The shift is visible in the demand for custom mobile apps, which makes it easier for businesspersons and employees to retrieve information and improve decision-making. Moreover, companies can leverage technology to optimize processes. So much so that even Google is preparing for mobile-first indexing.

Custom mobile apps allow the functioning of complex workflows and streamlining efficiency across the board. However, to experience this change, businesses need to invest in mobile app development. And the most efficient way to build enterprise applications is by building them on a rapid app development platform. Specifically, a low code app development platform like HokuApps can build and deploy custom mobile apps in days or weeks.

Here, businesses require a mobile-first plan of action to experience better productivity. Let’s look at the advantages of a mobile-first strategy.

Enterprise Mobile Apps in Context

The old normal was all about the desktop and the laptop, which is where enterprises concentrated by designing desktop-first applications. This was where businesses would experience the most traffic from.

This scenario created a movement where any business with the monetary and technological means would invest in a custom mobile app. Usually, investments were made only by large companies, while MSMEs lagged.

Then came the advent of the mobile for business use. Smartphones took to becoming more powerful, coinciding with investments in network connectivity. This is ‘the New Normal.’ A scenario where smartphones were replacing desktops.

The new normal creates a mobile-first strategy where rapid app development platforms can build enterprise technology quickly. Today, this is where most businesses experience traffic and brand visibility.

The advantages of a mobile-first rapid app development strategy include:

Speed of Development

The key advantage of rapid app development platforms is its low code app development characteristic. Think of it as a set of Lego bricks. Each set of bricks is pre-designed for a particular industry or workflow.

The most frequently used modules are:

Field service

CRM

ERP

HRM

Shopfloor automation

What HokuApps rapid app development platform does is, it customizes the module in focus to accommodate a business’s unique requirements. Industry-wise, think of customizing the workflow to construction, banking and finance systems, and retail industries.

Then each module is connected to pre-defined components like Asana, Airbrake, Freshdesk and GitHub. Because of its low code app development method, products are produced at rapid speed, bringing together modules and components at will.

Features and Quality

All Lego bricks and sets, i.e., modules and components are pre-checked to ensure the code doesn’t ‘break’ at any stage of the rapid app development process.

HokuApps also features a Design Studio featuring a user interface and layout platform. Additionally, the Design Studio features hundreds of templates that are designed based on numerous industries and workflows.

To give business administrators absolute control over the custom mobile app, HokuApps provides a web backend console. Here, the administration can comprehend all information on the Dashboard, collected automatically. They can set parameters to encounter the traffic to the mobile application, view sales data, averages and more.

Digital transformation results in creating an environment that is driven by full-stack quality apps that are affordable and 100% custom. Contextually, rapid app development platforms like HokuApps make it easy for MSMEs to build custom mobile apps and stay ahead of the competition.

Scalability

The difference between a desktop app and a mobile app is the space to maneuver. It isn’t straightforward to scale down a website to a mobile app. However, a low code app development platform can make it mobile-first by building a new app based on the website.

Besides, the app can be scaled in terms of functionality and storage as and when required. The platform’s RAD structure makes it easy to include functionality at a later stage.

On the storage front, good rapid app development platforms like HokuApps deploys custom mobile apps on Amazon AWS servers, which is the most secure storage platform there is. So, if a business wants to scale its data storage to meet its growing user requirements, this can be achieved safely and quickly.

Enterprise Mobile Applications – the New Normal

A 2018 survey informs us that 42% of small businesses in the US have a mobile app. It adds, “This is particularly true for small businesses that tend to have limited resources.”

To say the least, with rapid app development platforms like HokuApps, every MSME can build apps swiftly and without breaking the bank to streamline processes, increase customer outreach and create brand culture; a feat easier to achieve than in a desktop-driven market ecosystem.

Releated Links:

HokuApps Automation Platform helps Improve Efficiency for the Field Service Industry

HokuApps Redefines Enterprise Mobility for Roofing Southwest

HokuApps is the fastest growing rapid application development platform that empowers organizations to develop innovative technology solutions incredibly fast

Advanced Persistent Threat Work Against Cyber Terrorism

The Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) protection is one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity solutions. As digitalization brings a lot many threats along with it. This has resulted in the continuous emergence of data breaches and cyber terrorism affecting numerous sectors.

That is why it has become very important to get protected from the Advanced Persistent Threat. These protection solutions are largely used in financial and government institutions. The threat landscape is quickly evolving. And along with the APT protecting gaining a strong grip in the cyber world.

What do we understand by Advanced Persistent Threat?
We will try to understand Advanced Persistent Threat in a very simple way. The APT is a broader term that describes an attack by intruders who mines sensitive data from your network. They have a long-term presence in the network to slowly retrieve your data. These intruders mainly target government and large enterprises network.

What is the difference between APT attack and web application threats?
Advanced Persistent Threat is different from other web application threat. APT is a very intricate plan for attacking your network. They take more targeted moves. Basically, they are not dependent on hit and run attacks as most of the hacking is. Once an APT attack happens to your network, it will infiltrate most of the information.

They are not automated and are manually operated. APT attackers work in three steps that are infiltration, expansion, and extraction. The designers of the APT monitor their actions by altering its code to avoid detection.

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection: all what you should know
Not to get confused with the Advanced Persistent Threat we talked above, APT protection is a type of security solution. In order to get protected from Advanced Persistent Threat, many solutions have been developed. One of them is an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection. These systems help to secure the network and shield the records from getting misused. The APT protection system is used worldwide.

Offerings that are given by the APT protection system Solutions
The solutions that are being offered by APT protection actually collects security data from servers and network devices. Then examines the data stored to discover trends, detects threats. Thus it helps the organization to investigate any alerts.

Services
The services offered by the APT protection system ensure holistic 360-degree protection. It helps the corporations to resist APTs, and identify signs at early periods. These services monitor both real-time events and past data to gain visibility into security.

Different types of solutions available for Advanced Persistent Threat.
Advanced Persistent Threat protection provides various types of solutions. Some of them are sandboxing, endpoint protection, Next-Generation Firewall, Forensic Analysis, and many more.

Endpoint Protection
Endpoint protection is also called endpoint security. It is a system of protecting the network of your computer. It is especially important for those networks that are distantly bridged to the client devices. It ensures a definite standard of compliance to be followed by any device.

Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)
Next-Generation Firewall is a third-generation protection solution. It is very beneficial in monitoring the traffic of the network. It involves deep pocket inspection in order to have proper control over the application of any network. The firewall has far-reaching control of applications.

Sandboxing
Sandboxing is a software management system. It gives extra security to the system. Therefore, sandboxing prevents suspicious applications and malware that can have a negative effect on the system. It is also helpful in testing unverified programs.

Forensic Analysis
Forensic analysis also helps in improving cybersecurity. Thus it is used in Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection. Forensic data are widely used to identify the IP addresses of cyber attackers. Thus the suspicious IP address can be blacklisted accordingly. This eliminates the chances of future attacks by hackers.

What could be the consequences of these types of threats?
The motive of APT is to gain sensitive information illegally.
It is difficult to detect because they don’t clearly appear to be malware.
Sensitive information of any organization will be compromised.
Trade secrets can be revealed.
Who mainly use the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection?
The Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection is used in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI). There is an increased demand to secure sensitive data in this sector. Government and defense, IT, healthcare are some of the common sectors that depend on Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection to secure their sensitive data.

The bottom line
The Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection Market has been witnessing rapid growth due to increasing security breaches and cyberattacks. If you are worried about sensitive data, you must be aware of APT. APTs are one of the very prolonged cyberattacks with the intention of stealing some confidential. That is why protection from these Advanced Persistent Threat has become a matter of concern.

There are a variety of solutions and services that are being offered by APT protection. Some of the examples include sandboxing, endpoint protection, Next-Generation Firewall, and Forensic Analysis.it is widely used by BFSI, government organizations, and many other small and large enterprises.

How Automation can be used for faster recovery, revival and improved resilience in the wake of COVID

Practically every industry — CPG, manufacturing, Pharma, and Financial Services — is in pursuit of automation in the wake of COVID-19. It is the antidote to uncertainty, variability, unexpected breaks in business continuity, and the need for scale. In the short term, over the next 18 months, process automation in the form of RPA will be used not only to reduce costs and eliminate FTEs—as has been the key goal until now—but also to create recovery and resilience.

There have been two key pre-COVID-19 doctrines that have helped guide organizations regarding their automation strategy:

Drive efficiency/effectiveness: Make automation the new Lean—deploy it to eliminate waste of time and material, reduce turnaround time and scrunch costs
Improve employee experience/reduce errors: The goal was to automate manual processes that were repetitive, time-consuming and error-prone and thereby improve employee experience—freeing their time so their cognitive skills and intuition could be leveraged more gainfully
An example of this is the use of automation for activities that a supply chain planner is expected to perform. These include data collection and reporting, which define almost 80% of the role. These are rule-based activities and can be automated, allowing the planner time to think of unique ways to improve the supply chain, create resilience, and plan for future business needs. In other words, automation can be leveraged to augment human potential.

With COVID-19 changing many business priorities—and most of them permanently—there is a new role that organizations are demanding from automation. They want to inject automation into every process that allows the organization to withstand shock, drive revival, and build resilience.

There is always the risk of organizations hurriedly using automation to address the challenges placed before them by COVID-19. These will be short-term Band-Aid solutions. But the goal must be to extract long-term value from every dollar being invested in automation.

Automation leads to organizational IT optimization and lays the ground to right-set business—by re-baselining costs of IT operations, allowing businesses to optimize the current workforce and increase efficiency. There is therefore no need to reduce the headcount of an organization. Instead, employees can use automation to augment their capabilities, improving efficiency or re-skill themselves for newer roles. And as automation is used to fast-track development and testing, it allows the organization to grow.

As the pandemic spread, ITC Infotech’s operations, backed by Automation Anywhere’s Intelligent Digital Transformation platform, ran seamlessly across the world. For others, the pandemic triggered new ways to leverage automation. Some of the interesting use cases witnessed were:

Bots created to monitor employee devices and systems, leading to better use of resources when helpdesk workload went up.
A bot designed to address data privacy, a key challenge in the work from home (WFH) model. The bot masked data for WFH resources, ensuring continuity of service.
A retailer in Europe deployed a bot to manage back-end and customer-facing processes following a major spike in website traffic. The customer set up an Automation CoE, allowing them to create bots in three to four days.
Interest in automation has increased several folds. But major transformation initiatives have been paused. The urgency is to quell the disruption caused by COVID-19. To help do this—and do it fast—cloud platforms offer the convenience of accessibility and scale. These platforms do not require customers to add to on-premise infrastructure or install anything on their systems. Configuration, deployment, and bug fixes can be done remotely on the cloud platform.

Using automation has become easy. Almost any role in finance, operations, manufacturing, sales or distribution can create bots using drag-and-drop features. COVID-19 has accelerated the simplicity with which automation is implemented. It has also triggered wider adoption of automation. From here on, automation can be expected to become a top board room priority.