We’d like to share some of Time Management expert Laura Vanderkam’s strategies for prioritising your personal and professional lives to help you find more time for what matters to you.  

• Create your end of year Business and Personal Reviews at the the beginning of the year – set your goals
• Treat your priorities by putting them in your schedule first,  giving equal priority to career, relationships and stuff!

Subscribe to our Tips and Tricks and YouTube channel for efficiency and productivity advice and see why 2016 has been ‘The Year of the Mobile App!’

On behalf of Richard, Gwen, James, Craig, Viki, Brett, Rob and Mike, may we wish all our valued clients and partners a Joyful Christmas and Successful 2017.

The post How to Define your New Year Resolutions for Home and Work appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

Rapid mobile app development (RMAD) utilizes code-free programming tools to speed the process of creating applications for mobile platforms, and as the demand for mobile apps accelerates, the use of RMAD should also logically increase. And mobile app development is getting faster, easier, and cheaper for enterprises to achieve.

“Demand for mobile apps in the enterprise is growing, but the urgency to scale up mobile app development doesn’t yet appear to be a priority for most organizations,” said Adrian Leow, principal research analyst at Gartner. “This must change, particularly given employees often have the autonomy to choose the devices, apps and even the processes to complete a task. This places an increasing amount of pressure on IT to develop a larger variety of mobile apps in shorter time frames.”

The majority of enterprises are focused on developing custom mobile apps, a logical extension of the fact that most development teams use custom app development for all of their apps.

RMAD adoption is growing in the enterprise, because it has the potential to “unleash app dev in a big way,” says Jason Wong, principal research analyst at Gartner.  He explains that this is become modern mobility is “a user-centric approach to the mobile experience and takes into account context across multiple channels and interaction surfaces. Many people say that mobile [experiences] will become embedded into applications, but I see it as modern mobility being so essential that it is immediately noticeable if not done right, such as still have app silos or the inability to deliver insights at the right moment.”

Gartner predicts that 70 percent of enterprise mobile apps will be developed with no IT involvement by 2020. IT will serve only as an enabler, not as a creator, of these apps. And when IT embraces RMAD, it can unleash app development in a big way, using micro apps across departments to achieve the company’s goals.

Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst John Rymer told Tech.co: “If we rely solely on coding, we’re going to fail. It’s too slow. It’s too inflexible.” Data from a recent study by Standish Group found that 94 percent of large IT projects fail, over-shoot the budget and schedule, or deliver below expectations due to various factors. That means that many enterprises are reluctant to invest time and dollars into app development that might have risky returns.

So what does this mean for enterprises hoping to break into the mobile app arena?

1. First, adoption of RMAD can help make the most of your investment dollars, allowing IT departments to meet their project deadlines, while improving their overall quality; focus on projects most likely to help the enterprise grow; and help company executives can better communicate with IT, empowering more IT projects to be successful, all at an investment level that is sustainable. And using RMAD, companies can use low-code or no-code platforms to prototype apps, and if the idea is good, the app can be created through mobile developers.

2. Second, it allows enterprises to circumvent the scarcity of developer talent and its correlating expense that have kept many organizations from building their own apps, a burden that RMAD platforms can help lighten.

3. Third, now is the time to reprioritize and adopt RMAD practices in order to further your brand. The RMAD approach is an easy way to allow players in the enterprise to quickly manage apps and bring critical business elements mobile, particularly seasonal apps that might be time sensitive or have a short shelf life.

4. And lastly, once you have created your RMAD program, development of an enterprise app store can also help reduce app management fragmentation and rogue apps. Gartner’s study found that, on average, organizations have 26 mobile apps in their own enterprise store.

Let Smarter Business Processes  help you leverage RMAD to create powerful mobile apps to drive your business.

The post New Gartner Study Finds Opportunities Ripe For Rapid Mobile App Development in 2016 appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

Fast Forward Technology is a fast growth  IT Solutions and Service company, dedicated to helping businesses keep pace with the ever changing world of Information Technology.

The Challenge

Fast Forward urgently needed a cost effective mobile app solution that their field engineers could use to log work done, track time but more importantly capture signatures and be used offline.

The Solution

Drawing data from Fast Forwards’ existing Smartsheets,  Smarter Business Processes quickly created a mobile app which gives them the signature capture /proof and offline capability they were lacking.

The Benefits

Having a visual and intuitive low cost mobile app that enables their field engineers to source and capture data has vastly improved visibility, streamlined communication and reduced administration time for reporting and billing.

Managing Director Dean Hall said, “Having already built our Smartsheet Workflow solutions, The AppSheet Mobile App Smarter Business Processes have now created for us which draws data from our existing Smartsheets now provides us with client signature capture and offline working capabilities, further improving efficiences and communication. Thank you Richard and team, we’re loving our new Mobile App!”  Dean Hall – Fast Forward Technologies

See more about our AppSheet Mobile App solutions

The post Low Cost Mobile App saves IT Engineer time and money. appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

The Challenge Could we create an easy to use system for Drivers handling vehicle breakdowns to quickly record details of:

• Client and vehicle records
• Issue, Resolution, time taken and parts used
• Maybe, a photocopy of documents, or photo of the scene, or  damage

The Solution We chose a Smartsheet Form that is accessed by iPhone, Android and tablets that asks the above questions. When the driver/repairer has filled out the form on his remote device, then pressed the send button, the data instantly appears on a Smartsheet/Spreadsheet in front of the controller back at HQ. From that Smartsheet/ spreadsheet  the controller can then manage the client account with up to date info and share a “To Do” with accounts for invoicing. The Benefits Instantly available detail, as soon as the breakdown is concluded safely fired back to HQ, saving the driver paperwork time, and minimising the risk of lost or incomplete data.  The controller has instantly available information, saving him time to focus on the clients and the next job, knowing the records are in place.  Job Done! What did the client say afterwards? This app has made the problem of logging breakdowns and outstanding repairs a thing of the past. Great, recommend it to anyone with mobile workers. Cheers,  Brian O’Loughlin – O’Loughlin Commercials Ltd

The post Breakdown & Recovery APP gets Transport firm moving appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.