Sales operations are typically entrusted with improving the productivity of field sales teams. This tends to make a direct impact on the companies top line. Most often, Sales Ops leverage a combination of technologies and processes to improve sales efficiency. In recent times, it’s evident that sales efficiency can be dramatically improved by mobile enabling field sales teams.
The most common challenge Sales Ops teams face is the speed of the I.T. department. Many times, I.T. may not move at the needed pace. In those times, Sales Ops are forced to make a strategic decision in terms of mobile platform, hybrid vs. native, security, integrations : and the list goes on. These problems further delay the efficiency gains that could otherwise be achieved.
Problems With Outsourcing Mobile App Development
To get around this, most Sales Ops work around I.T. by outsourcing their mobile app development. A recent survey by Gartner indicates only 26% of enterprises develop their own mobile apps. 74% outsource their mobile app development, either in part, or in its entirety.
On the surface, outsourcing may seem an easy way to get around delays caused by an overburdened I.T. department. However, there are some really good reasons why Sales Operations should not outsource their mobile app development, especially B2E mobile apps.
5 Reasons Not to Outsource Mobile App Development
1. The first mobile app is only the beginning of your journey.
While consumer-facing mobile apps do not change much, employee-facing mobile apps require a lot of changes, especially after they have been rolled out. Changing business needs and constant requests from field sales to make the apps better and more productive, force iterations to even the most sophisticated apps.
Outsourcing mobile app development may sound good for the first app roll-out, but once the requests start coming in for either more apps or even changes to existing apps, it becomes very difficult to manage
2. Keeping consistency and control over your mobile apps.
It is important to keep control over your mobile apps, especially internal-facing apps. Constant changes, corporate data flow, integrations, and so forth demand internal control.
With an outsourced development model, developers change. Every new developer comes in with their own way of building an app. Sometimes the developers may also bring in flavors of technology they are most comfortable with. This causes a headache in maintaining the apps long after the original developers are gone.
3. Knowledge transfer and handover.
This is always a critical part of any project after the app development is completed. To take a hand-over and knowledge transfer from the developers, after the app development is completed, is a critical part of any project. The knowledge transfer may never be complete, and sales operations teams may not have the skill sets to take over maintaining the app.
4. Access to backend applications.
The Enterprise applications in the backend typically host sensitive data. Therefore, I.T. typically holds the keys to the kingdom. With an outsourced development model, Sales Ops may not get cooperation from I.T. when the app needs backend data, especially if they were not involved in the development process from the start.
5. Increased maintenance costs.
The cost to maintain the app, with the frequent changes, is always spiraling up in outsourced development models. The sales operations team is hostage to the outsourced development partner, forced to work with their availability and cost structure.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, any outsourcing development shop makes their money on resource utilization. The more their employees work on any project, the more revenue they generate. No matter how quickly an outsourced development partner’s turnaround time, sales operations teams can do it quicker and faster, if they have the right tools at their disposal.
A development partner may not necessarily be the best person to determine the right technology and fastest way to build and deploy apps. At the end of the day, the more time spent on development, the more they earn. Naturally, the inclination is towards keeping you as a life-long customer.
Outsourcing mobile app development, though, does have its advantages. Choose wisely as to when to outsource your mobile app development. If you want to explore tools and technologies that can enable sales operations personnel to quickly and efficiently build their own mobile apps in days without any programming, take a test drive of the appsFreedom Platform here.