Mobile Apps for Short-term Projects

I had the privilege of speaking before a group of service sector leaders this week in Chicago, Ilinois on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building.  During this event I had the opportunity to speak with many field services professionals about their operations and strategies.  Many of the challenges these folks face are the typical ones around change management, process re-engineering, mobile device selection and connectivity.  However, I also heard about the need to quickly develop mobile apps for short-term projects, a recurring issue in many construction, inspection and engineering related projects.

There is a significant segment of the "hard hat" market that needs project based mobile apps.  These apps must be quick and easy to develop as they may only be used for three months on a particular project.  The ROI needs to be a matter of days, not years.  During those three months, however, project management and the profitability of the project could realize great benefits from having real-time data collection, reporting and collaboration via mobile devices.

I think a project-based mobile app may need to include a quick data collection and reporting template that is pre-integrated with a database and reporting tool. Otherwise, the integration and report generation work might take longer than the project.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.