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More than half (56 percent) of companies spend between seven months and one year building a single app, and nearly 20 percent spend more than $500,000 on the development of each app, according to a report from Kinvey.
Fully half of the respondents said they think the process takes too long, with 24 percent citing the app development process as a source of frustration.
Additional reasons contributing to chief operating officers’ (CIOs) inability to advance their mobile strategy were 53 percent who claim their infrastructure was built for Web apps and not mobile apps, half who don’t have the right tools and skills in-house and around two-thirds (67 percent) who cited lack of budget.
With 71 percent of app development currently led by product lines or functions—such as marketing, sales, etc.–rather than enterprise IT, businesses face a future of skyrocketing costs and unrealized mobile potential, the report warned.
“There are a few stages to how mobile apps benefit the enterprise. Often, businesses start out building apps that supplement business processes–retail creating point-of-sale (POS) terminals that run on mobile devices is a good example,” Sravish Sridhar, founder and CEO of Kinvey, told eWEEK. “Next, many will try to use mobile to improve these processes, for example, tracking where in-store purchases are made most often and using that information to inform the salespeople.”
Sridhar explained that really advanced businesses will use mobile to create brand new business processes that drive new revenue streams or cut costs dramatically.
“Some retailers, for example, are using beacons in-store to push contextually relevant information, such as product sales, related accessories, etc., to their customers in real time,” he said. “These benefits aren’t just limited to retail–mobile can improve productivity across a variety of industries from manufacturing to health care.”
With so many CIOs frustrated by the time it takes to develop a single app, 63 percent say they’ll be turning to cloud solutions to address their needs.
In addition, 54 percent will be standardizing the development process and 42 percent will be consulting with external experts.
The top reasons cited by mobile leaders for moving to the cloud include supporting mobile projects (67 percent), efficiency (68 percent) and cost (71 percent).
However, 97 percent of CIOs have high hopes for what mobile can do for their businesses.
Around three-quarters (76 percent) said they want to leverage mobile to reduce costs and increase employee productivity and 64 percent want to create new revenue opportunities, and 12 percent are planning to use mobile to disrupt the market.
According to the study, one out of three companies does not have a formal strategy for mobile.
A little under half (46 percent) of CIOs say fragmentation is the reason why their mobile strategy lags behind, while 62 percent cite the challenging pace of change in mobile.
“Only 12 percent of CIOs and senior IT and mobile executives surveyed say their business goal is to disrupt their market with mobile,” Sridhar said. “I think they’re not dreaming big enough, and this new wave of connected devices, including Internet of things devices, will eventually disrupt even the most entrenched business models. If you’re not thinking about how to do that now, you’re already falling behind the curve.”