To remain competitive in the CPG industry you must ‘win at the shelf.’ But does winning require a massive investment in a custom end-to-end mobile application platform? Or are preconfigured cloud-based apps now the obvious alternative?
Let’s consider some of the pros and cons of both options. With tailored enterprise apps you can ensure that field team processes are ‘baked into the cake’ and that features and functionality align with your strategies. But it’s often a costly, complex development process that can take 1-2 years. On the other hand, with a pre-built, cloud-based solution you might not get 100% of what’s on your wish list right out of the box (OOB), but you’ll have a reliable solution you can build upon and that you can deploy in the field in just 10-12 weeks. Also, you won’t have the expense of paying for resources to support internal development, support and maintenance.
TURNING AWAY FROM END-TO-END MOBILE SOLUTIONS
While tailored end-to-end solutions have been popular in years past and are still suitable for some enterprises, the ability to get apps in the field up to five times faster is what’s driving consumer goods companies to choose pre-built cloud-based solutions.
‘If anything, the trend seems to be towards breaking these [end-to-end] solutions up,’ says Jon Reed in a recent Diginomica report. ‘Mobile application development platforms used to be end to end solutions – they thought that was the way everybody wanted it. Companies rejected that.’ He explains that companies want control over the user experience but would rather subscribe to a leading cloud solution to hedge against a risky development venture with one vendor.
It’s not an isolated sentiment. Gartner recommends cloud-based or managed service offerings for companies with revenues less than $1 billion because the demands of developing highly customized apps is usually cost prohibitive. Meanwhile, a recent Gartner market guide encourages companies with over $1 billion in revenue to consider not only investing in a solution with custom functionality and capabilities but also consider cloud-based solutions as a viable option.
SPRING OFFERS CLOUD-BASED EFFICIENCY AND ONGOING CUSTOMIZATION
At Spring, we offer a great alternative to expensive end-to-end mobility solutions. As Gartner puts it, Spring has the ‘ability to meet user requirements out of the box or through configuration, but not requiring customization.’
With Spring, you get an amazingly intuitive user interface and a diverse array of consumer goods-focused features. You can also:
- Deploy your apps in about 10-12 weeks
- Start with the essentials and upgrade as you go
- Pay far less than you would for a tailor-made app
- Pay for only what you use while avoiding hefty capital expenditures up front
At Spring, we are continually optimizing our apps with new releases. We also work with a Customer Council that helps us plot out our product roadmap. It’s all part of our highly efficient approach to getting you precisely the application functionality your team needs to win at the shelf.