Forem: Invonto

Unleashing Generative AI Capabilities: The Power of Large Language Models Explained

Invonto — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 17:26:53 +0000

While Generative AI is not a new technology, the launch of Generative AI solutions like ChatGPT, Bard, and Midjourney has spiked interest in leveraging Generative AI applications for enterprise and industry-specific use cases. However, the AI models leveraged by these Generative AI applications are trained as general-purpose utility and lack business and industry-specific knowledge. Companies trying to capitalize on the current trends and transform their business through their emerging AI capabilities are required to take a hybrid approach with their AI strategy to partly leverage existing solutions for general-purpose activities and create their own custom AI solutions specific to their business needs.

For companies to create custom Generative AI solutions, they will need to prepare their own language models, trained with proprietary business data. The custom Large Language Models (LLMs) will help companies unleash Generative AI capabilities for their business and provide them a competitive edge.

What is a Large Language Model?

A Large Language Model (LLM) is like a smart computer program that understands and creates human-like language. It learns by reading a massive amount of text from the internet, books, and other sources. The more it reads, the better it becomes at understanding and generating written content. LLMs have many internal settings (parameters) that help them figure out the language structure.

For example, OpenAI’s GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models are a type of LLM. They’ve read billions of sentences, making them good at tasks like talking with people, creating content, and even translating languages. These versatile models can be used in different ways to make computers better at understanding and generating human language.

LLM relies on deep learning techniques and neural networks, trained with billions of parameters. These parameters allow the model to capture complex patterns and structures in language. GPT-3 model released by OpenAI in June 2020 has 175 billion parameters that generate text and code with short written prompts up to 1500 words. Compared with that, the GPT-4 model launched in March 2023 has 1.76 trillion parameters and supports prompts up to 25,000 characters.

Numerous Language Models (LLMs) are accessible, including well-known ones like GPT, Gemini, Claude, LaMDA, and PaLM. In addition to these models, various open-source LLMs, including Meta’s LLaMa and MosaicML’s MPT-7B, contribute to the expansive array of language models, each trained on distinct datasets.

“Choosing the optimal language model involves assessing tradeoffs in factors such as out-of-the-box task performance, inference speed, cost, fine-tune ability, and data security.”

LLMs offer benefits such as natural language generation, text completion, and expansion. They excel in conversational agents, chatbots, and question-answering systems, enhancing user interactions. LLMs contribute to content summarization, code generation, and translation services, improving efficiency and accessibility. Their creative capabilities make them valuable for artistic content generation. LLMs play a key role in personalization, tailoring user experiences based on individual preferences.

Organizations can choose to use an existing LLM, customize a pre-trained LLM, or build a custom LLM from scratch. Using an existing LLM provides a quick and cost-effective solution but may not have a business or industry-specific output. Customizing a pre-trained LLM enables organizations to tune the model for specific tasks and embed proprietary knowledge. Building an LLM from scratch offers the most flexibility but requires significant expertise, resources, and investment.

Importance of LLM in Generative AI Applications

Large Language Models play a pivotal role in Generative AI applications. LLMs have the potential to broaden the reach of Generative AI applications across enterprises and industries. LLMs such as GPT, Claude, LaMDA, PaLM, and Stable Diffusion are the foundational models behind Generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, Dall-E, Bard, and Midjourney. LLMs enable a new phase of research, creativity, and productivity for companies through custom Gen AI solutions.

LLMs are specifically tailored for language-related tasks, showcasing their unique role in the generative AI landscape. LLMs coupled with other generative AI models can generate original, creative content such as images, video, music, and text. For example, a generative AI model trained on a diverse array of movies can be elevated by integrating an LLM with a deep understanding of storytelling structures, film genres, and cinematic language. This specialized LLM can contribute to the generation of detailed scene descriptions, dialogues, and plot analyses, enriching the quality and coherence of the movies.

Utilizing both generative AI and LLMs allows for expert personalization of content for individual shoppers. LLMs decipher shopper preferences, generating personalized recommendations, while generative AI crafts tailored content, including targeted product suggestions, personalized material, and advertisements for items aligning with individual interests.

By integrating large language models with generative AI models designed for various modalities like images or audio, it becomes possible to produce multimodal content. This enables the AI system to generate text descriptions for images or develop soundtracks for videos, enhancing content creation capabilities. The synergy between language understanding and content generation in AI systems results in the creation of more engaging and immersive content that captures attention.

“Overall, their versatility in understanding, generating, and manipulating natural language text makes LLMs crucial for Generative AI applications across domains and industries.”

How do Large Language Models work?

Large Language Models (LLMs) are like smart assistants for computers that learn by reading a massive amount of text from various sources. They understand how language works—how words and sentences fit together. Users interact with an LLM by giving it prompts, which are specific instructions or questions. When you interact with LLMs by providing a prompt, they use what they’ve learned to generate content. LLMs become better at understanding and responding through unsupervised and reinforced learning. The more you use LLMs, the better their output can be.

Creating a good prompt is important because it affects the quality of the model’s response. It involves choosing the right words and format to guide the model in generating high-quality and relevant texts. For instance, if you want the LLM to write a detective story, your prompt could be: “Create a short story about a detective solving a mystery in a small town.” The LLM will use this prompt to generate the story or provide related information. With the increased use of LLMs for enterprise use cases, prompt engineering is emerging as a new role at most companies.

What are the business use cases of custom LLMs?

Most use cases of LLMs and Generative AI applications remain general purpose such as chatbots, copywriting, image, and video creations. But, companies can benefit from creating custom LLMs that can address specific challenges and improve processes. For example, Bloomberg created BloombergGPT, a custom LLM solution for financial data with 50 billion parameters using GPT as the foundational model. In fact, the major growth area for Generative AI is in addressing business-specific use cases with custom LLMs.

In the pharmaceutical industry, LLMs can analyze vast amounts of scientific literature, research papers, and clinical trial data to aid researchers in drug discovery. They assist in extracting relevant information, identifying potential targets, and summarizing findings.
In healthcare, LLMs aid in automating the generation of clinical notes and documentation, reducing the burden on healthcare professionals. They can enhance the accuracy and efficiency of patient records, allowing for more effective patient care.
LLMs can help greatly in supply chain optimization for manufacturing and logistics companies. LLMs can be employed to analyze and interpret unstructured data related to supply chain management. This includes historical business data, recent trends, market reports, and geopolitics data, helping businesses make informed decisions and optimize their supply chain.
LLMs can contribute to improving fraud detection and perform early risk assessment in financial services by analyzing key factors in financial and research data. They enhance decision-making in risk management.
In the construction industry, LLMs can assist in generating accurate and comprehensive project documentation, forecast trends, and prevent issues on construction projects. This can improve ROI on construction projects and shorten delivery timelines.
Packaging companies can improve packaging design and come up with innovative packaging solutions using LLMs. LLMs can contribute to the creative process by generating ideas for packaging design based on input criteria and consumer preferences. They can also assist in analyzing market trends and consumer feedback to suggest innovative packaging solutions.

These use cases demonstrate a huge potential for leveraging custom LLMs in various industries, showcasing their potential to enhance efficiency, decision-making, and communication.

Limitations of Large Language Models Explained

Large Language Models (LLMs) come with inherent limitations. Firstly, they lack access to up-to-date data and cannot independently connect with the outside world, making their information static and potentially outdated. Secondly, LLMs do not possess specific knowledge about your particular data or context. Additionally, they are not well-suited for advanced reasoning tasks, particularly in complex mathematical domains.
LLMs are more geared towards general reasoning rather than possessing specialized knowledge. To perform effectively, LLMs rely on users to supply them with relevant and current information.

LLMs can generate false information (“hallucinate”) when they don’t know the answer to a question. Instead of saying they don’t know, they might generate a response that sounds confident but is incorrect. Hallucination problems can spread false facts, so should be taken into account when using LLMs for tasks that require accurate information.

LLMs can show bias in their answers, often creating content that relies on stereotypes or prejudices. This happens because they learn from big datasets that might have biased info. Even with safety measures, LLMs can still produce content that’s sexist, racist, or homophobic. This is an important concern when using LLMs in things like consumer apps or research, as it can spread harmful stereotypes and biased information.

Similar to how our brain possesses vast potential for learning and understanding, the LLM exhibits remarkable general intelligence. However, like the brain, the LLM requires specific knowledge and training to excel in particular tasks. To perform the task at a good level it requires specific information and skills.

The simplest way to supply LLM with specific information is to provide a context. For example, compare GPT-3.5 responses. Here by adding day and location, GPT-3.5 concluded that right now it is autumn.

Without context

With context

Problem of hallucination and AI biases can be addressed to some degree by supplementing LLMs information stack with recent and accurate information. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is an AI framework for improving the quality of LLM responses by grounding the model on external data sources of knowledge to supplement the LLM’s internal information. Implementing retrieval-augmented generations has two main benefits: it ensures that the model has access to the most current facts, and that users have access to the model’s sources, ensuring that its claims can be checked for accuracy and ultimately trusted. RAG can help reduce, if not eliminate, the hallucination problem.

The maximum size of large language models’ (LLMs) input is limited, and it’s referred to as the “context window.” For GPT-3, the context window is set at 4000 tokens (approximately 3000 words), and since pricing is determined per token, incorporating more context into the model results in increased costs. However, the context window is continuously expanding, and in the latest GPT-4 versions, it has been extended to 8000 tokens (around 6000 words).

Generally, there are three ways to provide information to the Large Language Model (LLM): retrieving context from a larger document corpus, increasing the number of LLM calls (using chains), and supplementing with external sources.

Retrieval-based models for context windows commonly employ a question-answering pattern. They start by formulating a question, identifying a document in the corpus that might contain the answer, and incorporating this document or a portion of it into the context window. Afterward, they make a call to the Large Language Model (LLM) to answer the question. However, a significant limitation of this approach is its reliance on the retrieval system; if the required information is absent from the retrieved documents, the model may struggle to provide an answer.

Chaining sequencing language model calls involves using the output of one call as the input for another. One illustrative application is the process of summarizing a substantial corpus, which resembles a map-reduce approach. In this method, independent LLM calls are made to summarize individual documents, and subsequently, the summaries are summarized.

Building context for language models to answer questions can involve using a search engine or giving them access to APIs and outside tools. For instance, a Google Search chain (LangChain package) involves searching Google for an answer, getting the top result, and summarizing the content for the user. Examples of tools for language models include archive search, Python interpreters, and SQL query execution links.

Guiding Factors for Utilizing LLM in Your Business Projects

Accuracy Requirements
Incorrect project outputs can pose risks, incur costs, carry ethical implications, or result in user dissatisfaction. It’s essential to recognize that project expenses typically increase proportionally with accuracy requirements

The experts recommended comparing metrics that assess the level of risk associated with mistakes made by an LLM-powered application to human performance on similar tasks. If the LLM’s performance falls below that of humans and mistakes carry significant risks, it may not be suitable for the application. Conversely, if the LLM demonstrates super-human performance, it could potentially replace human involvement. For performance levels in between, various degrees of LLM-powered app assistance may be appropriate.

Furthermore, if the LLM’s potential mistakes are worse than those made by humans, it should be controlled by humans. However, if the LLM’s performance closely aligns with human capabilities, it can expedite tasks. It’s important to note that, for most tasks, user involvement remains essential, making the user interface a critical component of the system.

Image credits: Slide from the lecture by Sergey Karayev and Charles Frye. Published May 9, 2023

Latency requirements
Latency, defined as the time taken for a request to undergo processing and receive a response, is primarily shaped by two key factors: the specific model in use and the number of tokens being generated during the process. Trade-offs exist between the speed and the quality of content generated by different LLM models. For example, high-performance models like gpt-4 offer intricate but slower responses, and models like gpt-3.5-turbo provide faster responses but may be less precise. The majority of latency concerns for a particular model are centered around the token generation step. For instance, commonly used GPT models gpt-3.5-turbo exhibit latency times typically falling within the range of 10-20 seconds.

The ChatGPT playground enhances user experience by implementing streaming requests, allowing the model to return tokens as they become available, rather than waiting for the entire token sequence to be generated. This adjustment does not affect the overall time to obtain all tokens but notably decreases the time it takes to receive the first token. This improvement is particularly beneficial for applications where showcasing partial progress or interrupting generation is a priority.

Privacy and security
Implementing language models in production, including LLMs, presents various risks.

Data leakage
Data leakage vulnerabilities can occur when LLMs accidentally reveal sensitive information, proprietary algorithms, or other confidential details through their responses. When using large language models, it’s common to provide some context or prompt to guide the model’s response. However, if the prompt contains sensitive information that should not be disclosed, there is a risk of leakage. The model might generate or infer sensitive details from the provided context and include them in its future outputs. Anything that you share with ChatGPT is retained and used for further model training. To protect clients’ privacy companies should use techniques like data anonymization and differential privacy when processing data for the LLM to protect sensitive information.

Prompt injection
Prompt injection is a security vulnerability that can exploit large language models (LLMs) by manipulating the input prompt text. This can lead to unintended or malicious outputs and poses various risks. Attackers could inject malicious code into the prompt, which the LLM may execute. This can result in data theft or the display of harmful content. For instance, a translation prompt could be altered to execute JavaScript code in the user’s browser. Also, attackers may inject commands into the prompt, which the LLM executes. This can result in taking control of the user’s device or causing the LLM to crash. Companies should use safeguards to prevent prompt injections. This includes securing APIs, controlling access to the model, and monitoring usage patterns for potential threats. Cyber security remains one of the major concerns with the broader implementation of AI technologies and them potentially falling into the hands of bad actors.

Possible harmful output
LLMs can sometimes generate inappropriate or harmful content. Companies should implement mechanisms to filter or moderate the model’s output to prevent negative consequences.

Process of the LLM-powered application development

Planning and project setup
During the initial stages of project planning, it is crucial to pinpoint high-impact issues suitable for Language Model (LLM) applications, addressing challenges like product friction, automation of manual processes, and meaningful text generation.

Many successful real-world applications function as assistant tools, allowing users to review the generated output. Notable real-world applications include chatbots like ChatGPT, and autocompletion tools such as GitHub Copilot, and Grammarly, all utilized for tasks like auto-completion and grammatical error correction, with outputs subject to human review. Additionally, Google Search and Bing Search share the goal of providing summarized answers at the top of search result lists, while Google Translate specializes in translating text across over 100 languages.

In the process of setting up an LLM project, a crucial step involves engaging with stakeholders to define specific requirements and project goals. The key considerations include:

Risk Assessment: Evaluate the level of risk associated with mistakes made by the LLM-powered application, recognizing that project expenses tend to increase proportionally with accuracy requirements.
Latency Requirements: Assess the time taken to receive a response, defining latency requirements as an essential aspect of project planning.
Data Privacy and Security: Give due consideration to data privacy and security, addressing the necessary measures and safeguards to protect sensitive information.
Ethical Implications: Carefully evaluate ethical implications to ensure the project is conducted ethically and responsibly.

This collaborative effort with stakeholders helps align the project’s objectives with the expectations and needs of all involved parties.

LLM application stack
LLM applications are constructed with various key components, comprising:

Foundation Model: Serving as the core, this component is pivotal, as it defines the performance of your LLM application.
ML Infrastructure: This includes the provision of computing resources through cloud platforms or the company’s proprietary hardware.
Additional Tools: Various supplementary tools, encompassing data pipelines, vector databases, orchestration tools, fine-tuning ML platforms, and model performance monitoring tools We’ll provide a brief walkthrough of these components to enhance your understanding of the toolkit required for building and deploying an LLM application.

Selecting foundation model
Most companies use pre-trained LLM models because training such a model from scratch is a timely and very costly process that is beyond the capabilities of most companies. For example, it costs OpenAI approximately $100 million every time they train their model. Google’s Gemini model comes in different sizes including a Nano size with less than 2 billion parameters making it cheaper to train and easier to deploy on low memory devices. There are several pre-trained models available on the market. Here are several factors to consider when choosing a foundation model for your LLM application

Choose between proprietary and open-source models for your language model needs.

Proprietary models, owned by a single entity, are typically accessible for a fee. Examples include GPT models by OpenAI, Claude models by Anthropic, and Jurassic models by AI21 Labs. On the other hand, open-source models are generally available for free, although some may have usage limitations, such as being restricted to research purposes or specific company sizes for commercial use. Notable free-to-use language models include Llama models by Meta, Falcon models by the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi, and StableLM models by Stability AI.Proprietary models, typically more extensive and capable than open-source counterparts, allow interaction through API calls without the need for separate deployment servers. However, their code lacks transparency, posing challenges for debugging and troubleshooting. In contrast, open-source models receive fewer updates and less developer support. Deploying them on servers with expensive GPU cores for LLM processing is necessary. The key advantage of open-source models lies in the control over data flow, making them suitable for applications demanding high security.

Choose the size of the model.
When choosing a language model, various versions are often available, differing in the size of tunable parameters, training methods, and datasets used. For instance, GPT has versions like GPT-4 and GPT-3.5-turbo. The selection of a model size involves trade-offs between size, performance, and computational efficiency. Larger models, like GPT-4, are adept at knowledge-intensive tasks but come with higher computational costs and potential delays in response times. Consider these factors to strike a balance in meeting specific task requirements.

Set up ML Infrastructure
The choice between proprietary and open-source models significantly influences the required ML infrastructure. Open-source models demand allocated resources for deploying and running Language Models (LLMs), with resource needs determined by the model’s size, complexity, intended tasks, and the scale of business activity. Various cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure, offer services facilitating LLM deployment with features that streamline the process. In contrast, proprietary models may not necessitate resources for deployment, but attention must be given to wrapping the application around model API calls.

Augmenting Processes with Tools
Data pipelines
In integrating your data with your Language Model (LLM) product, the data preprocessing pipeline becomes a vital component of your technology stack, resembling its role in the traditional enterprise AI stack. This pipeline includes connectors for data ingestion from various sources, a data transformation layer, and downstream connectors. Leading data pipeline providers such as Databricks and Snowflake, simplify the process for developers to direct extensive and diverse natural language data, such as PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, chat logs, and scraped HTML, to a central point of access. This facilitates utilization by LLM applications, streamlining data management.
Vector databases
Large language models face limitations in processing extensive documents, restricted to handling a few thousand words at a time. To overcome this constraint and effectively process large documents, vector databases are used. These databases store structured and unstructured data, like text or images, along with their corresponding vector embeddings. Vector databases play a crucial role in generating quick responses in scenarios demanding real-time user interaction, such as chatbots or virtual assistants. These databases, like Pinecone, and open-source options such as Chroma and SeMI, facilitate quick retrieval of relevant context or information represented as vectors, ensuring seamless engagement with users.
Orchestration Tools
When users submit queries to your Language Model (LLM) application, like customer service inquiries, the application must generate a sequence of prompts before presenting the query to the language model. The ultimate request to the language model usually consists of a developer-hardcoded prompt template, essential data fetched from external APIs, and pertinent documents obtained from the vector database. Orchestration tools from companies such as LangChain or LlamaIndex can enhance efficiency in this process, offering pre-configured frameworks for prompt management and execution.
Testing and evaluation LLMs
Testing and assessing Language Models (LLMs) involve addressing two fundamental questions: the choice of data for testing and the selection of appropriate metrics for analysis. When developing LLMs, it is advisable to construct evaluation sets incrementally, starting from the early stages of model prototyping. To aid in the construction of evaluation sets, labeling tools like Label Studio, LabelBox, and Tagtog may be necessary.

The metrics used to evaluate language models largely depend on the availability of certain reference points. In cases where a correct answer exists, metrics such as accuracy can be employed. When a reference answer is accessible, it is more appropriate to utilize reference-matching metrics like semantic similarity and factual consistency. In situations where a prior answer is available, a different language model can be consulted to determine the superior response. If human feedback is at hand, it is crucial to assess whether the model’s answer incorporates this feedback effectively.

In cases where none of these options are applicable, it becomes necessary to verify the structural integrity of the output or request the model itself to assign a grade to the answer. While automated evaluation processes are desirable for expediting experimentation, it is important to acknowledge that manual checks continue to play an indispensable role in the evaluation of Language Models.

To help evaluate LLMs, tools like HoneyHive or HumanLoop have emerged.

Deployment and monitoring
The deployment and monitoring of LLM-powered applications are critical steps in ensuring their effectiveness. Deploying these applications involves a process that requires careful planning, extensive testing, and a keen focus on user experience and data security. A successful deployment not only ensures seamless user interactions but also enhances the overall functionality of the business’s website. Integration can be approached in three ways: through API integration, plugin or module integration, or custom code integration.

Monitoring LLMs post-deployment is equally important. It entails assessing user satisfaction, establishing performance metrics such as response length, and identifying common issues that may arise in production. These issues can encompass problems related to the user interface, latency, accuracy of responses, verbosity in replies, and safeguarding against prompt injection attacks. There are tools for monitoring LLMs emerging, such as Weights & Biases, Whylabs, and HumanLoop.

To continuously enhance LLM performance, user feedback plays a pivotal role. By identifying and addressing recurring themes or issues based on user input, improvements to prompts can be made. The iterative process involves an “outer loop” where, after deploying the model into production, its performance in real user interactions is measured. Real-world data is then leveraged to refine the model, creating a data flywheel that drives continual improvement. This holistic approach ensures that LLM-powered solutions remain effective and responsive to evolving user needs.

Conclusion

Exploring Large Language Models (LLMs) reveals the transformative impact they can have across diverse industries. LLMs, such as GPT-4 and its successors, with their massive parameters, excel in understanding and generating human language, showcasing proficiency in tasks ranging from content generation to code understanding.

The importance of LLMs in Generative AI applications is underscored by their versatility, offering benefits such as natural language generation, code completion, and conversational capabilities. From content summarization to personalized experiences, LLMs contribute significantly to enhancing efficiency and accessibility in various domains.

As enterprises race to keep pace with AI advancements, identifying the best approach for adopting LLMs is essential. Foundation models can help jumpstart the development process. Using key tools and environments to efficiently process and store data and customizing models with business and domain-specific knowledge can significantly accelerate productivity and advance business goals.

In summary, LLMs represent a powerful tool for businesses seeking innovative Gen AI solutions. As technology advances, the responsible and strategic integration of LLMs holds the potential to revolutionize industries and enhance user experiences across a wide range of applications.

At Invonto, we help companies from strategy through the launch of innovative and custom applications leveraging AI. Our team has created solutions for packaging, logistics, consumer products, pharma, financial services, and the construction industry. Reach out to us to speak with our AI experts and explore leveraging LLMs for your business.

How To Develop A Successful Enterprise Mobility Strategy

Invonto — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 23:21:49 +0000

Mobility solutions are a huge part of our everyday lives. In the U.S. alone, consumers are spending 5 hours per day on mobile devices. In 2010, a fourth of internet traffic was from mobile devices. Today, over 70% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices.

Growing investments and advancements in mobile technology make it the preferred platform for accessing and sharing information. Regardless of industry and business, the opportunities mobile solutions can create are infinite. This presents new opportunities and challenges for business leaders.

The long-term success of the modern enterprise depends on developing mobility solutions. Today, more CIOs are considering a mobile-first approach for their digital transformation strategy. However, few businesses are prepared to create and implement their strategy.
The idea of incorporating mobility into your company’s digital roadmap can feel daunting without the right expertise. In this comprehensive guide, I will show you how to develop an effective enterprise mobility strategy, for success during your digital transformation journey.

So what is Enterprise Mobility?

Enterprise mobility is the deployment of mobile solutions across an organization. It leverages mobile tech to connect people, processes, and data. Enterprise mobility improves how consumers interact with products and services of an enterprise.

“An effective enterprise mobility strategy is not about determining pros and cons, rather embracing the overall impact that new mobile technology will have on the future of your business.”

Enterprise mobility solutions can:

Provide customers with the ability to self-provision services
Create new user experiences that are simple, personal and smart
Remove complexities from internal processes
Build new revenue systems around data

Of course, enterprise mobility is ineffective in a silo. Enterprise mobility is part of an overall tech narrative. It works with other digital initiatives within your business.

Benefits of an enterprise mobility strategy

Consumers will benefit from a mobility strategy. But what about your business and employees? Businesses centered on mobile apps can reap greater benefits.

An enterprise mobility strategy will:

Improve security
Increase productivity
Reduce operational costs
Make Informed Business Decisions
Prevent Data Loss
Improve employee retention

Recent Enterprise Mobility Solutions Trends

Enterprise mobility solutions vary widely by industry. However, every business must have an enterprise mobility strategy that is:

Unique to its own industry
Addressing its specific business needs
Based on its current stage of mobile adoption

Below are some examples of mobility solutions that have disrupted several industries:

FinTech

Mobile payment solutions are advancing quickly. They offer consumers easier ways to pay with their mobile device. Only 3% of payments being made via smartphone in the U.S. As a result, tremendous opportunities exist in FinTech.

Construction

Mobile is transforming the real estate and construction industries. For example, augmented reality for mobile devices allows anyone to visualize a space. Builders can overlay BIM models on the construction site. Architects can present architectural models in 3D. Home buyers can "walk" into their new home miles away without leaving their living room.

Retail

Mobile apps are capable of providing a richer in-store customer experience. Consumers can receive notifications about sales as they walk through store aisles. Regular customers can enjoy the benefits of a loyalty program. A perfect example of this concept in action is the Target mobile app. Users can access the Target app to locate products at their preferred store. Users can plan grocery lists in advance and purchase items for pick-up. Users can also scan in-store items for additional savings and rewards.

Logistics

Enterprise mobility solutions are moving the supply chain with apps for fleet tracking, inventory management, and order fulfillment. In logistics, the advantages of working smarter with mobile apps are apparent.

Healthcare

Mobile is making an impact on telehealth and telemedicine. Healthcare providers can provide remote digital healthcare services. They offer their patients convenience, choice, personalization, and control. According to the American Telemedicine Association, more than 15 million Americans received remote medical care last year. In contrast, almost 40% of tech-savvy consumers still don’t know about telemedicine. Over the next few years, we can expect more consumers to utilize remote medical care services. The benefits of mobile solutions are infinite. With all these opportunities, you might ask, “why isn’t every business focusing on enterprise mobility or have an enterprise mobile strategy?”.

In our years of experience, we’ve discovered the same pain point. Most businesses don’t know where to begin. Implementing a mobility strategy can be a daunting task. Below we show you how to develop an effective enterprise mobility strategy.

Key Steps for Your Enterprise Mobility Strategy
An enterprise mobility strategy is a part of your digital transformation strategy. Drafting a strategy for any organization can be overwhelming. However, if done right, your enterprise mobility strategy can scale business growth. You can evolve with the changing tech landscape and growing business needs.

An enterprise mobility strategy can:

Increase market share
Improve staff productivity
Reduce operational costs
Provide real time access to data
Enable multi-channel collaboration
Identify the unique selling proposition (USP)
Level the competitive landscape

There are six steps to create any successful enterprise mobility strategy. Let’s get into discussing these steps.

Defining Your Business Needs

Enterprise mobile initiatives can solve your business problems, find you new customers, and help create innovative solutions to grow your business. Before you start, you need to establish your business needs.
Ask yourself:

What are the enterprise mobility trends in your industry?
What are the core products & services of your business?
Where do you see your business in the next 3, 5, and 10 years?
Conducting Competitive Research
Search competitor websites and online mentions. If they have applications, you can learn more about them on the app store. Once you identify mobile solutions based on your competitive research, answer these questions to fine tune your enterprise mobility strategy:
What mobility solutions have your competitors built for their employees and customers?
Will this app solve any business problems or create value?
What impact new mobile apps will have on your business processes?

Setting Strategic Goals And Objectives

The first two steps in our strategy guide help you identify your needs. Next, we want to prioritize your needs with goals and objectives.

Important questions to ask:

Which apps will have the most impact on your business, employees, and users?
Is your business ready to support this app?
Is mobility the right channel to deliver the solutions the solutions your business needs?

Take as much time as you need to drill down into your goals and objectives. Outline your desired business outcomes carefully. This will make it easier to measure key metrics for future success.

Choosing The Right Mobile Experience And Platform

There are two recommended approaches for delivering mobility solutions:

Native Mobile Apps
Native mobile apps are built specifically for iOS or Android. Users must download them from the app store to a mobile phone or tablet.

Mobile Web Apps
Mobile web apps are websites accessed from a mobile browser. Mobile web apps are responsive and can look like a mobile app.

Choosing the right mobile platform is essential to the success of your enterprise mobility strategy. Once you make this decision, it can be difficult and costly to reverse it.

These questions will guide you in the right direction:

What mobile platform will your app support: iOS, Android, or both?
How do users interact with your applications?
Will your app need access to a device feature like camera, speaker, GPS, accelerometer, or bluetooth?

Creating A Plan For Continuous Delivery

In mobile app development, you will need to continue supporting your apps to address bugs, new features, and security vulnerabilities.
These questions will help you create your agile development plan:

What apps and features will be of most value to users?
Can you prioritize your app features in high, medium, and low categories?
What new services will your business be introducing in the coming years?

Outlining A Security Strategy & Incorporating Governance Policy

Last and certainly not least, you must outline your security strategy and internal governance policy.

Your governance policy should address:

The development processes
Device provisioning
Data access and security
Interruption coverage / disaster recovery
Mobile application management
Ongoing infrastructure improvement needs.

The following questions will help you establish a good governance policy:

Who are the different stakeholders/personnel involved with your mobile initiatives?
What BYOD, CYOD, and COPE device policy will you need?
How will you secure your APIs?
What security solution will you use to ensure data security?

Conclusion

A successful enterprise mobility strategy needs sufficient planning and coordination within your business. But, it can become a cornerstone of your company’s digital transformation journey.
What is your organization doing for enterprise mobility?
I’d love to hear what questions you may have about your company’s mobility initiatives and digital transformation. Post in the comments!

Mobile App Development Process: Step-by-Step Guide

Invonto — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:29:22 +0000

In 2022, mobile apps are projected to generate $693 billion in revenue via app stores and in-app advertising. What’s more, enterprise mobility is estimated to be worth $510.39 billion in 2022.

While many companies are trying to take advantage of this trend, many do not know how to create an app successfully. Success within the competitive landscape of these growth projections can become a reality—but only if supported by a precisely cultivated mobile app development process.

An effective app development process flow spans over six key phases. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at each one in-depth.

1. Strategy

The first phase of the mobile app development process is defining the strategy for evolving your idea into a successful app. You may include a more significant part of this in your overall enterprise mobility strategy. As one app’s objectives may differ from another, there is still an app-specific impact to the mobility strategy to address during the development process.
In this phase, you will:

Identify the app users
- Research the competition
- Establish the app’s goals and objectives
- Select a mobile platform for your app

On average mobile apps cost $150,000 - $200,000 and can take anywhere from four to six months to develop. Your strategy helps focus your vision on a clear picture of your app idea. From here, you can go deeper into the next phase of the mobile application development process.

2. Analysis and Planning

Analysis and planning begin with defining use cases and capturing detailed functional requirements. After you have identified the requirements for your app, prepare a product roadmap. This includes prioritizing the mobile app requirements and grouping them into delivery milestones.

3. UI / UX Design

The success of a mobile app is determined based on how well users are adopting and benefiting from all its features. The goal for mobile app UI / UX design is creating excellent user experiences making your app interactive, intuitive, and user-friendly. While polished UI designs will help with early adoption, your app must have intuitive user experiences to keep app users’ engaged.

Information Architecture & Workflows
Wireframes
Style Guide
Mockups
Prototype

4. App Development

Planning remains an integral part of this phase in the mobile app development process. Before actual development/programming efforts start, you will have to:

define the technical architecture,
pick a technology stack, and
define the development milestones.

A typical mobile app project is made up of three integral parts: back-end/server technology, API(s) and the mobile app front-end.

Back-End/Server Technology

This part includes database and server-side objects necessary for supporting functions of your mobile app. If you are using an existing back-end platform, then modifications may be needed for supporting the desired mobile functionality.

API

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a method of communication between the app and a back-end server/database.

Mobile App Front-End

The front-end is the native mobile app an end-user will use. In most cases, mobile apps consist of interactive user experiences that use an API and a back-end for managing data. In some cases, when an app needs to allow users to work without internet access, the app may utilize local data storage.

5. Testing

Performing thorough quality assurance (QA) testing during the mobile app development process makes applications stable, usable, and secure. To ensure comprehensive QA testing of your app, you first need to prepare test cases that address all aspects of app testing. A best practice approach is involving your QA team in the Analysis and Design stages. Their familiarity with your app’s functional requirements and objectives will help produce accurate test cases.

Your app should undergo the following testing methods, to deliver a quality mobility solution.

User Experience Testing
Functional Testing
Performance Testing
Security Testing
Device and Platform Testing

Testing is imperative to an app’s future success; it encompasses a substantial section of our overall mobile app development process.

6. Deployment & Support

Releasing a native mobile app requires submitting your app to the app stores, Apple App Store for iOS apps and Google Play for Android apps. However, you will need a developer account with Apple App Store and Google Play Store before launching your mobile app.
An app’s release in the app store requires preparing metadata including:

Your app’s title
Description
Category
Keywords
Launch icon
App store screenshots

After your app becomes available in the app stores, monitor its usage through mobile analytics platforms and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring your app’s success. Frequently check crash reports, or other user reported issues.

Encourage users to provide you with feedback and suggestions for your app. Prompt support for end-users and frequently patching the app with improvements will be vital to keeping users engaged.

Conclusion
App development is an ongoing process similar to developing enterprise software applications or developing with emerging technologies. App development will continue after the initial launch as you receive user feedback and build additional functionality. Following this enterprise mobile app development process will ensure a successful launch of your app.

Using Virtual Reality for Business Collaboration

Invonto — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 03:21:50 +0000

In the last few years, virtual reality technology has advanced and has become a viable business solution to improve employee performance, collaborate with coworkers, and improve workflows. At Invonto, we've been working with companies across industries to create VR applications that make business collaboration seamless. In this article, we explore the various ways companies are using VR for business collaboration.

Benefits of VR for Business Collaboration

With virtual reality, people can go beyond existing communication technology like video and audio conferencing tools, to have engaging interactions with colleagues. Virtual reality offers a new level of work collaboration to help businesses create the workplace of the future.

Stronger Team Dynamics

Compared to traditional methods, virtual reality makes remote meetings and collaborative work far more meaningful. Virtual reality encourages multiple and parallel communication. This replicates the traditional ‘office environment’ far more efficiently. Companies can also run simultaneous meetings within a VR app making VR meetings a lot more cost-effective.

Improve Meeting Focus

In virtual spaces, employees are more physically present during a session. Employees interact with others using body language and movement, sorting through digital information. With VR meetings, it’s less likely that employees will end up getting distracted.

Remote Business Collaboration

The face-to-face office environment isn’t as common as it once was. Virtual and remote working are becoming the normal experiences of the future. As a result, businesses must continue to innovate and provide the best tools available. By providing these tools, businesses can stay ahead of their competition and improve employee productivity.

How VR Can Transform Business Collaboration

Research & Development

Virtual reality enables researchers to create experimental setups without the limitations of the real world. Virtual reality creates controlled and repeatable experimental setups without the cost needed to accurately manipulate experiments in the real world. These virtual reality end-to-end research tools are being utilized in a variety of fields including healthcare, travel, energy, retail, psychology, military, biology, and oceanology.

Product Innovation

VR has also produced considerable interest within product design and development. Industries such as the military, aerospace, healthcare, retail, construction and automotive can leverage virtual reality to reduce time spent conceptualizing, revising, testing and developing new products. Product designers can work together within a virtual space in real time regardless of their physical location. Product designers and clients get a better vision of the final product making the entire process far more efficient.

Employee Training

Virtual reality has established its value as a tool to teach concepts and train users in a safe, measurable, and repeatable way. VR training enables employees to train on dangerous situations, such as handling toxic chemicals or working under hazardous situations, in a safer environment. This trains employees to perform those tasks with greater proficiency and enhanced safety in the real world.

Conclusion

Fully immersive virtual reality technology is transforming the way businesses collaborate and work. Companies can use VR technology for building collaborative business solutions for almost all aspects of their work.

Originally published at Invonto Insights

Why Virtual Reality Training May Be Right For You

Invonto — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 19:02:26 +0000

Virtual reality (VR) training digitally simulates scenarios for training purposes. Virtual reality offers a risk-free simulated environment with repeatable training exercises. A user enters a 360 degree interactive environment to participate in active learning. Using the headset and pair of controllers, users can move about the environment freely with the ability to interact with objects, avatars, tools, and much more.

In the workplace, scenarios that were once too difficult or too dangerous to train for become much more practical, cost-effective, and safe. At Invonto, we developed a realistic laboratory VR simulation to help our client’s stakeholders better understand the construction project floor plans.

Because we learn best by doing, a combination of immersive scenarios and engaging story narratives make virtual reality training a top investment for innovative businesses.

What are the benefits of virtual reality training?

Virtual reality is an incredibly effective training method. The technology provides many benefits to the businesses who invest in it.

Virtual Reality Improves Job Performance

Studies prove that employee job performance increases when utilizing virtual reality training. Because virtual reality removes many of the risks and distractions commonly found in traditional training methods, employees are more likely to retain information and outperform those who do not use virtual reality training.

Virtual Reality Is Cost Effective

In the past, virtual reality was very expensive. However, platforms like Oculus, Pico, and Hololens are making the virtual reality and mixed reality hardware easily accessible. Investing in virtual reality training now means greater long-term savings in the future. By saving on time and resources, employers interested in more effective training should have no issues justifying the cost of virtual reality (VR) applications.

Virtual Reality Makes Training Accessible

In situations where employees and customers are remote, it is often not feasible to bring them together for in-person demonstrations, training, or collaboration. VR makes it easier for delivering training solutions for remote users. All a user needs is a VR headset!

Virtual Reality Leads To Earnings

Whether your goal is to reduce costs or increase revenue, virtual reality training can play a large part in your overall business strategy. Internally, employers should use training to identify bottlenecks in workflows and take advantage of these insights to improve them. Externally, the increase in performance in both hard and soft skills should be felt by your customer base.

Conclusion

Companies can build VR training solutions for almost all aspects of their work related training. Whether creating a VR training for heart surgery in healthcare, scientific research in pharmaceutical, safety training in construction, or war zone exercises in the military; VR training can help companies transform their workplace training. One of the most commonly requested applications of virtual reality is training.

Developing a Digital Transformation Strategy in 2020

Invonto — Tue, 19 May 2020 17:09:57 +0000

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the implementation of modern technology to initiate changes within an organization. Digital transformation requires business leaders to rethink their business strategies and operating models to transform their business for sustained growth. By introducing new technologies and strategies to a company, businesses will see growth in employee satisfaction, customer engagement, and business innovation.

Driver for Digital Transformation

A successful digital transformation starts with a well-defined strategy that prioritizes initiatives, sets goals, and identifies the success criteria. No matter what industry, most companies will focus on one or more of these key areas:

Customer Experience

The success of every business is heavily dependent on the customer experience. When customers are not satisfied with a product or service, they leave. By using modern technology, businesses can enhance the customer experience and improve customer loyalty and retention.

Employee Performance

Digital initiatives can address aspects of your business including employee satisfaction, skill advancement, employee performance, and work collaboration. Providing employees with the tools to communicate, collaborate, and connect will increase productivity for greater business success.

Data Analytics

Digital transformation can be driven by a desire to better understand your business. Data can provide businesses with valuable insights to inform future business objectives, products, and services.

Competitive Advantage

Businesses who rely on legacy systems and outdated technology risk losing their competitive advantage. To meet customer demands, businesses must constantly evolve. Digital transformation will enable you to operate more efficiently, grow your customer base, and find new business opportunities.

Technologies That Power Digital Transformation

Over the last three decades, advancements in hardware, software, and networking have made it possible for any business to implement digital solutions.

Cloud Applications

Companies are moving from legacy systems to cloud-based applications that offer flexibility and scalability to meet business demands.

Mobile Applications

In order to adapt to a customer’s active lifestyle, businesses must invest in mobile app development to build products and services that can be accessed easily through a mobile device.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a crucial part of business growth by providing companies with the ability to mimic human intelligence. Businesses who have properly gathered business data can utilize this data to create personalized experiences, predictive maintenance, process automation, and much more.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The internet of things (IoT) connects people, equipment, and data to enable process automation. It presents businesses with incredible opportunities to streamline workflows and improve existing products.

Augmented and Virtual Reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) offer more immersive opportunities to businesses and its customers. Businesses can use AR/VR to develop training simulations, 360 walkthrough, field service tools, customer engagement tools, and collaboration tools.

Roadmapping Your Digital Transformation Strategy

A digital transformation strategy is a high-level document outlining your business objectives and digital initiatives. When developing this document, it is important to keep these steps in mind.

Business Assessment

Your digital transformation strategy should begin with a detailed assessment of your current business, strategic goals, key performance indicators, and potential growth opportunities.

Research Your Industry and Competitors

After assessing your business, it is important to understand how you compare to your direct competitors and your industry. A competitive analysis will help you understand the market and identify opportunities to build a thriving business.

Prioritize Digital Initiatives

Each digital initiative will be different in scope, resources, and return-on-investment. Prioritize your initiatives based on their value, impact, and estimated effort.

Create a Delivery Plan

The delivery plan should include a roadmap for each digital initiative, resource requirements, and criteria for measuring results. Before beginning the development stage, identify all development and delivery processes to build standard practices for your entire organization.

Create a Budget Plan

Most digital transformation efforts fail because of insufficient budget. When you create your budget, anticipate delays and plan for when new technology makes current investments obsolete.

Create a Resource Plan

It is crucial to assemble a team with the right skills and mindset to put your strategy into action. Conduct an assessment of your current capabilities and who you need to achieve your digital initiative.

Leading Your Team Toward Digital Transformation

Your digital transformation will affect your employees, customers and partners. The success of your transformation is dependent on earning buy-in from your team.

Establish Digital Leadership

To oversee your digital transformation team, you will need to appoint a reliable leader. Sometimes you may need to introduce a new role such as the Chief Digital Officer who will oversee strategy and execution of your digital initiatives.

Getting Your Team On Board

For digital transformation to succeed, the team needs to understand the impact of digital adoption. Seek input from employees to define your digital initiatives and include them throughout the process. With the full support of your team behind you, you can focus on developing digital solutions that will benefit them and your customers.

Cultivate a Culture of Innovation

Companies that place too many restrictions on the process of innovation will only hamper creativity. Organizations should encourage their teams to experiment and test various technologies throughout the process.

Make Better Decisions with Data

Your digital transformation should begin with data. Data can be used to help make your decisions and validate experiments throughout the digital transformation process.

Invest in Employee Training

Sometimes employees may push back on digital transformation because of how the changes will affect their position. Their job to become obsolete or drastically change their responsibilities. Offer your employees training opportunities to improve consistency, business efficiency, and employee satisfaction.

Conclusion

Digital transformation is less about technology and more about your business strategy. Digital transformation is not an overnight change. You can slowly start transforming key areas of the business and eventually be successful in meeting all objectives. In the digital age, the only way to survive and grow is to embrace digital.

What is your experience with projects focused on digital transformation?

Explaining How Long It Takes To Make An App To Clients

Invonto — Fri, 15 May 2020 20:38:58 +0000

Over the last decade, Invonto has built over 100 mobile and web apps. Our work has impacted the growth of companies across many industries. During project consultations, clients always ask, “how long does it take to make an app?”. Many factors can contribute to how long it takes to create an app. Let’s take a closer look at the app development timeline.

The app development timeline

A successful app needs strategy, execution, and promotion. You could just build it, but a strategy will improve your chances of success. First, your mobile strategy must establish your goals. The strategy will guide the app development process. Let’s briefly talk about it within the context of an app development timeline.

Strategy

Before you build anything, you need a plan. During this stage, you solidify the scope of the app’s functionality. You need to document how the app will solve a particular problem. You will need to conduct competitor research to understand the market. Expect to spend between 2 - 4 weeks creating an app development strategy.

App Development

Next, you will need to design the app user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Most apps begin as simple wireframes and expand into prototypes. Once you approve the prototype, will build the app. App development can take between 16 - 20 weeks to complete depending on app complexity (more on that in a second).

App Marketing

It is pointless to build an app if you don't plan on sharing it with everyone. Without a marketing strategy, your app will not be found by customers and you won't get downloads. Invest in marketing channels where your audience congregates. Developing a marketing strategy takes 1 - 4 weeks. The execution of that strategy will be an ongoing process.

App Support

Just because you rolled out the first version of your app doesn’t mean the work is complete. You will receive tons of user feedback about your mobile app. These updates can include bug fixes, new features, security patches, and more. Immediately after launch, expect to spend at least 2 - 4 weeks on updates.

Understanding Project Scope

Project scope outlines the app’s purpose, user stories, technical requirements, project timeline, and business goals. Understanding the scope can help understand the complexity of the app. This can reveal time and cost estimates for your app.

Low Complexity Mobile Apps

Low complexity mobile apps have a few screens with a simplistic UI. These simple apps do not require a back-end or API integration. Low complexity apps include calculators, clock, or to-do lists. They have limited functionality, usually serving one purpose. A strong development team can complete this within 8 - 10 weeks.

Moderate Complexity Mobile Apps

Data-driven mobile applications are moderately complex. These apps require a back-end, database, and API integration. These apps will have a user login and require methods of authentication. They may utilize custom UI design. Moderate complexity mobile apps include mobile banking apps, project management apps, product catalog apps, field service apps, and logistics apps. These apps take 4 - 6 months to complete.

High Complexity Mobile Apps

Most successful applications fit in this category. They include custom UI design, a back-end, API integration, and payment processing. These apps may require multi-language support, third-party integration, custom animations, and real-time features. Social networking, games, and e-commerce apps fit in this category. High complexity mobile apps include Netflix, Facebook, Uber, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, TripAdvisor, and Duolingo. To deliver these apps, you must plan for more than 12 months of development time.

How can you speed up the app development process?

Delays are inevitable. However, you can take steps to be proactive and speed up the process. Follow these tips to deliver your app on schedule and on budget.

Developing a Product Roadmap

A product roadmap states the vision and direction of your application. It documents the why, what, and how of your mobile application. A product roadmap will help your development team stay on track.

Building Your MVP

The first version of your app should be distilled to its essential components. Remove the “bells and whistles” and focus on core functions. This reduces how long it takes to create an app, and reduces the cost. Build an MVP first and test it with your market. User feedback will help you determine future direction. If feedback is negative, you need to take a step back and reevaluate.

Hiring Experienced App Developers

If you aren't building the app yourself choosing the right talent is crucial for the success of your project. Select an app development agency with a strong portfolio of client work. These case studies should illustrate their process and the results of their work. The app development company should be adhering to current design trends. If that company is only showing work from ten years ago, that's a huge red flag.

When you choose app developers, think long-term. Remember that development doesn’t end when your product launches on the App Store. Choose app developers who can handle updates and provide support. You should be able to rely on an app development team to extinguish any fires.

Conclusion

Each app development project is different. There is no "formula" to calculate an app development estimate. This is why it is important to rely on an expert to get a proper estimate. To figure out how long does it take to make an app, you need to understand the full project scope and know how to create an app. The team you hire and the complexity of your app impact costs and timeline.

Invonto Announces $5M Program for Businesses Affected by Coronavirus

Invonto — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 17:15:49 +0000

At Invonto, we are closely monitoring COVID-19 developments. The health and safety of our employees and customers are our top priority. Since March 16th, we have been operating virtually and will continue to do so until it is safe to operate normally.

We understand the impact the current crisis is having on small and medium-sized businesses across the USA. Many businesses are finding it difficult to stay operational and support customers remotely. Without the proper technology infrastructure, we fear many businesses will not be able to stay efficient and retain their customers for long. Conversely, we have seen that companies that have invested in digital solutions have supported themselves and even thrived during this difficult time. We believe that the right technology has the power to help businesses meet customer needs, maintain revenue streams, and support employees. In an effort to support struggling US businesses affected by the crisis, Invonto will be launching a $5 million program to partner with businesses in need of improving their technology solutions.

We are extending our support with several key initiatives:

We will host client applications on our Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure infrastructure at no cost for one year.

We will provide development and support resources on an hourly basis without requiring any commitments and retainer fees. No project is too small.

We will offer a pay-as-you-go model that includes no down payments. Payments can be deferred up to 60 days from the initiation of our services.

We will substantially reduce our development and consulting fees for new projects.

We will expand our services to help businesses support and maintain existing systems to ensure they stay operational.

We are using Google Meet, Zoom, and Slack for communication. We also have a suite of solutions required for software design, development, and project collaboration. We are making all of these tools available to our customers so there will be no upfront or additional costs for managing projects.

Interested businesses must meet the following requirements for eligibility:

US-based companies only
Businesses with less than 1000 employees

We are not healthcare professionals. We cannot be on the frontlines against the Coronavirus. However, we don’t want to stay on the sidelines either. We still want to do our part.

By taking these measures, we hope to help companies meet their current technology needs and prepare their business for accelerated growth when the current crisis ends. In addition to our $5 million program, we are also talking with biotech and pharmaceutical companies researching solutions for Coronavirus and offering our technical assistance.

If you know someone who has a project in mind, please fill out this contact form. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time.

Stay safe and healthy!

Preparing for remote work during the coronavirus pandemic

Invonto — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 17:40:34 +0000

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has proven itself to be much deadlier than the flu. Not even two months after the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”, there are 129,587 cases worldwide (as of March 10th). Wuhan, China went on lockdown, shortly followed by Italy. The coronavirus has even made it to the United States with over 1200 confirmed cases. Events like SXSW, WWDC, and Google I/O are being canceled causing a domino effect of event cancelations. An increasing number of school districts around the world are also announcing indefinite closures. In New Jersey, everything from highschools to colleges are closing including Princeton University, Kean University, and Rutgers University. Most recently, the NBA has announced that they will be suspending their ENTIRE season after an NBA player tested positive for coronavirus.

How Businesses Are Responding To The Threat Of Coronavirus

The whole situation feels like something out of a movie about a dystopian future, but the good news is that over 67,000 patients with coronavirus have recovered in the same two month span. Still, it is important for us to face the reality that this isn’t over yet and we need to take precautions. One of the ways that businesses are combating the spread of coronavirus is through social distancing. In the event of an infectious outbreak, public health officials recommend reducing contact with others to minimize the spread of the disease. Businesses are following these recommendations by allowing employees to work from home. However, many businesses are already feeling the economic impact of the coronavirus and are now burdened with logistical issues of allowing employees to work remotely. The mismanagement of operations during this crucial time could severely impact businesses long-term. How do companies protect their employees from spreading coronavirus while minimizing the impact social distancing will have on their business?

Low-Cost Online Tools To Keep Your Business Moving

While the coronavirus continues to run rampant across the globe, many businesses and organizations are facing the need to support remote employees. We highly recommend you familiarize yourself with the digital tools necessary to maintain productivity.

Productivity Suites

G Suite is an invaluable tool. We use it heavily at Invonto. G Suite equips your newly formed remote workforce with essentials such as video conferencing, email, spreadsheets, documents, and calendars.

Collaborate on documents in real-time

Your team can view, create, and edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations remotely. Emailing attachments is a thing of the past. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides all enable employees to collaborate in real-time. Changes save automatically and previous versions of the document can be accessed easily.

Store and Share Resources in the Cloud

With Google Drive, team members will have easy and secure access to shared files. You can store just about every file type and share it with the full team or select employees.

Coordinating with team members

Google Calendar allows your team to stay organized. You can create multiple calendars to keep track of meetings, training, vacation, and more. Need to reach someone immediately? Google Hangouts is a great tool for sending text messages or hopping on a video call.

If you prefer Microsoft products, Microsoft 365 offers a similar suite of productivity tools including Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams.

Work Planning and Management

At Invonto, we use Teamwork to manage our internal initiatives and client projects. Teamwork offers multiple time-saving, collaboration-enhancing features to make project management quicker and more efficient.

All projects are composed of task lists, tasks, and sub-tasks allowing you to have a detailed plan of action. Milestones and calendars allow managers to see an overview of individual projects or multiple projects. Coworkers can collaborate on tasks through messaging and uploading files. Managers can make sure all projects run smoothly through time tracking, customizable dashboards, and risk management. Invonto uses Teamwork because it one of the most versatile project management tools available today. Additionally, Teamwork has a suite of support apps including a CRM, Messaging platform, Customer Help Desk, and Document Management.

While Invonto prefers Teamwork, there are plenty of other excellent project management tools available on the market.

Trello - Trello’s boards, lists, and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way.

Asana - Asana is the work management platform teams use to stay focused on the goals, projects, and daily tasks that grow business.

Basecamp - Trusted by millions, Basecamp puts everything you need to get work done in one place. It’s the calm, organized way to manage projects, work with clients, and communicate company-wide.

Team Communication and Collaboration

If you can’t communicate with your team, getting work done is going to be impossible. Slack is the go-to choice for instant communication. Employees can easily follow and contribute to conversations. Creating channels allow conversations to be organized based on project, topic or team. Slack also has a deep inventory of app integrations to connect with other productivity tools like Google Drive, Asana, Trello, GitHub, Zoom, and much more. Best of all, Slack is easy to pick up and accessible via desktop and mobile devices. Here are a few other options to explore!

Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork in Office 365. Keep all your team's chats, meetings, files, and apps together in one place.

Google Hangouts Chat - Hangouts Chat makes it easy for teams to be able to get their work done in one place.

Discord - All-in-one voice and text chat that's free, secure, and works on both your desktop and phone.

Workplace by Facebook - Empower and transform your whole business, with familiar features such as groups, chat and video calls.

Skype - Easily generate your online meetings in three simple clicks.

Meetings & Video Chat

Some businesses may need more than just a simple messaging app. One of the most useful tools for increasing productivity of remote workers is tele and video conferencing. If video conferencing is a major aspect of your business, Zoom is a great solution. Zoom offers simplified video conferencing across any device. All meetings have end-to-end encryption and you can record your meetings locally or to the cloud. Additionally, Zoom integrates with other productivity apps to help you manage email communication and set up calendar events. The platform's built-in collaboration tools allow multiple participants to share screens, create annotations, and more. If Zoom isn’t your cup of tea, here are a few alternatives.

Google Meet - Connect with your team from anywhere. With easy-to-join video calls, you can meet face to face without the added cost of travel.

Microsoft Teams - Invite everyone you work with to chat, meet, call, and collaborate all in one place, no matter where you are.

WebEx - Work remotely or from home. Stay connected. Unlimited usage on the most secure collaboration platform.

Customer Support

Most of what we have discussed have centered on internal communication. What about communicating with customers? With the coronavirus outbreak in full swing, communicating with your customers is more important than ever.

Business software like Intercom allows you to connect with people on your website. Your customer support team can work together to respond to customers and address their inquiries. If you utilize Intercom’s smart automation features, you can streamline and personalize most of your messaging so you can focus on the unique issues your customers are facing.

If you have a large customer base, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be crucial to managing and responding to customers. The benefit of a CRM is that it includes a suite of features that go beyond live chat. For example, Zendesk Support puts all your customer interactions in one place to create a seamless experience. Communicate with clients and maintain an organized history of your interactions. While live chat will mainly focus on website interactions, a CRM can connect with customers through websites, emails, and SMS/Text messages.

If you aren’t looking for more sophisticated software, you can use your social media channels to broadcast announcements and answer customer questions. Facebook business pages have business-focused features that can be incredibly useful for communicating with customers. Recently, Facebook released a new resources hub to support small businesses during the outbreak. Twitter can be another great customer support platform. Many businesses already use Twitter to broadcast messages, even before the outbreak. Some large businesses even have Twitter handles that are dedicated to providing customer support.

LiveChat - LiveChat is a 360° customer service platform that automates your work and fuels your sales.

PureChat - The easiest & fastest way to add live chat to your website. Free.

Olark - Olark’s live chat software and customer data tools help you learn from every online interaction.

ZoHo CRM - Zoho CRM empowers a global network of businesses to convert more leads, engage with customers, and grow their revenue.

Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) - Get better organized, be more efficient with your time, and delight your clients every step of the way.

Making The Most Out Of Remote Work

Adopting a tool won’t guarantee success. Business managers will need to consider other factors to maintain morale and productivity.

Transparency

For remote work to work, you need to be transparent with your team. Employees must be proactive in discussing and sharing their work. Managers must communicate clearly and frequently. Setting up daily standups via a video conference can be a great way to get everyone up to speed. Establish check-ins throughout the day so that all employees are held accountable for sharing their progress, successes, and setbacks.

Trust

Not being able to see an employee typing away in their cubicle can be stressful for some managers. With remote work, teams need to build a strong sense of trust among each other. Employees should be responsible and earn trust over time. Managers should focus on trusting their employees to get the work done and do their best not to micromanage. Many of the productivity tools we’ve listed keep records of interactions, updates, and progress. Use these to oversee employees and guide them through the project.

Time Management

Working from home can present some challenges for employees. There are so many distractions at home. Chances are their kids will not be attending school. It is difficult to deflect household duties. In some cases, employees may overwork just to prove they are working.

Employees and managers will need to take advantage of the flexibility of remote work. Decide on optimal hours for the team to sync up. Commit to strict deadlines to show reliability and dependency. Employees should focus on self care and be mindful to take breaks throughout the day.

Ultimately, business leaders will want to make this transition as comfortable as possible. This is incredibly important if this is the first time the business is being forced to work remotely. Success now will mold expectations for the future.

What This Means For Your Business Future

It should be said that these productivity tools will not solve every problem you come across. Many businesses rely on in-person interactions to manage their business and will struggle to adapt regardless of the tools available to them. Some businesses have adopted a few tools, but have not considered how these tools integrate with overall business goals. Still other businesses have crucial operations that can’t be resolved with a productivity tool.

The coronavirus is forcing many businesses to rethink how work is organized. While these productivity tools will help in the short-term, it is important to consider the unknown. What if this temporary inconvenience becomes a several month or year long process? What if other circumstances arise that require the team to collaborate remotely? Businesses need to be prepared. The reality is that a few SaaS tools isn’t ever going to be a long-term solution.

Business leaders should be considering how each aspect of their company will function should something like the coronavirus outbreak happen again. A messaging app isn’t going to solve critical supply chain delays. Google Hangouts isn’t going to allow medical staff to treat patients without being exposed to a pathogen. Powerpoint will not be a viable solution for forecasting business trends or overseeing business performance. The future of business will rely on the innovative technology that helps support it. If we don’t take strides to prepare, the glimpses of social and economic ruin we are witnessing today could be far more severe in the future.

What are your thoughts on working remotely? What challenges are you facing? We would love to hear all about it. Need any help in evaluating and getting setup with the right digital tools for your business? Contact us!

From all of us at Invonto, be safe out there!

Full List of Productivity Tools Mentioned

Productivity Suite
G Suite
Microsoft 365

Meetings & Video Chat
Google Meet
Microsoft Teams
WebEx

Customer Support
Zendesk Support
LiveChat
PureChat
Olark
ZoHo CRM
Keap

Team Communication
Slack
Microsoft Teams
Google Hangouts Chat
Discord
Workplace by Facebook
Skype

Work Planning & Management
Teamwork
Trello
Asana
Basecamp

How To Create A Successful App For Your Business in 2020

Invonto — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 20:51:06 +0000

If you didn't know, there are 4,410,000 apps in the Google and Apple app stores. That is ALOT of apps. I have maybe 300 currently installed on my iPhone at the moment and spend maybe 75% of my time on 20 of them. In the 12 year history of the app store, competition among mobile apps is at an all-time high. There are millions of mobile apps, but few will be as widely adopted as WhatsApp, Uber, and Facebook. If you want your app to be more than a flash in the pan, you need more than coding skills.

There are six steps for taking your app from idea to having a thriving business.

Create a business strategy
Hire app developers
Budgeting & planning
App development
Marketing
Support & maintenance

While this article focuses more on the mobile app development, it can still be a good read if you are creating web applications as the overall development process is somewhat similar.

1. Create A Business Strategy

Creating an app without a strategy is like building a house without a blueprint. It is possible, but you won’t be happy with the end result.

Define Your Business Needs

Your app should solve a problem or offer unique value to consumers. Billion dollar apps solve big problems that affect a lot of people. Every successful app has a defined purpose. Google Drive allows you to quickly and efficiently access, create, and store files. Uber offers you ride sharing services at your doorstep. Your big idea should be something you see consumers using frequently.

Conduct competitive research

An app idea alone doesn't make it unique. Through research, you may discover similar app ideas attempting to solve the same problem. A competitive analysis will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of these mobile apps. Does their app solve your problem? Is there a way you can improve upon that solution? How successful is their app? Is there really a market for another app with a similar idea? Do they have a mobility strategy?

2. Hire App Developers

Once you have a business strategy in place, it is time to build your app. If you have the skills to develop the app yourself, go for it! However, quality mobile apps require different skillsets such as UI design, programming, QA testing, and project management. It is more likely that you have a team of specialists building out your app idea. You have a few hiring options.

Read: How to develop a successful mobility strategy

Hire In-house Developers

In-house developers can be a great choice in certain situations. You can hire exactly what you need and keep everything internal. However, the process of building a team can be time-consuming. What if you are in a region that has a small talent pool? Hiring the best talent is near impossible or could take months to fill the roles. Hiring in-house developers can also add fixed costs to your payroll.

Hire Freelancers

Hiring freelancers can provide you flexibility as you are not committing to them long term. Though, most app development projects will require the skills of multiple freelancers. This can present project management challenges. You will also be dependent on the availability of freelancers as many work on multiple projects at the same time. Most companies hire freelancers for a specialized skill and short term assignments.

Hire app development agency

An app development agency eliminates the fixed costs associated with in-house developers. It also eliminates project management overheads and challenges associated with hiring a group of freelancers. Most app development agencies provide end-to-end services taking your project from idea through launch. It is important to note that sourcing the right app development agency has its own caveats. Google is an incredible tool, but it isn’t perfect. Sometimes, you may notice that your local search results include overseas companies. We recommend extending your research to LinkedIn or Apps Inc, a business directory exclusive to US-based agencies.

Who you hire to create your app can make a huge difference in the outcome. This is the most critical decision you will have to make.

3. Budgeting

According to Gartner, less than one percent of mobile apps are successful. Insufficient funding is one of the main reasons why apps fail. So how do you estimate and budget your app project? If you have in-house developers or if you are hiring freelance developers then you should seek estimates from them. If you are considering hiring an app development company then you should seek estimates from at least three different companies. In addition, you can also try an app cost calculator to get a ballpark estimate.

As part of your estimation and budgeting process, you will have to make technology decisions. Do you want to build a native app or do you want to build a mobile-friendly / responsive web app? What you choose will influence pricing and timing.

If you are trying to budget for a startup app business, keep in mind that technology / app development is typically 40% of your overall investments. When you budget, you need to consider both external and internal costs. You will require funds to invest into marketing, support, and administrative functions. You might also incur hosting fees if your app requires a back-end program running from a server. So for example, if the cost of app development is $100,000 and if your app is not going to start generating substantial revenues soon after the launch then you should have at least $250,000 available to create a successful app business.

If you don't have sufficient funding available rather than giving up on your app idea, we recommend creating a minimum viable product (MVP) or starting with wireframes / prototypes. This can help you demonstrate your idea to potential investors to get additional funding.

Gain More Insight: How much does it cost to make an app?

4. App Development

There are five stages in the mobile app development cycle - define, design, develop, test, and deploy.

Define

For the apps with a limited scope and low complexity you can create an app in iteration following agile processes without gathering a lot of details upfront. However, more complex apps will need use cases / user stories to capture detailed requirements for each function. All stakeholders should contribute to defining project scope. This process can help clarify the project scope for the development team.

Design

In 2020, app design cannot be an afterthought. Consumers prefer products that offer an intuitive user experience, polished UI design, and good performance. The design phase focuses on visual design and solution design. To create visual designs, the app designer can translate the app requirements into wireframes using design tools like Invision, Sketch, or Adobe XD. For solution design, your app development team will identify an app’s architecture, technology stack, database structure, and API design.

Develop

Now that you have your app designs, it is time to develop your app. Most app development projects involve front-end development, API development, and back-end development. Don’t just jump into programming. Prioritize the requirements and create a milestone based development plan. As your team completes each milestone, you should review it to ensure it meets your expectations. In addition, you will want to include a process for handling project changes. In many projects, stakeholders may make suggestions that change the project scope. Having a change control system will help manage, evaluate, and prioritize changes.

Test

Quality assurance (QA) testing ensures you provide a stable, secure, and functional app. Best practices suggest that you should conduct multiple tests across each aspect of your application. User experience testing will validate your app with app designs. Functional testing will verify that each feature within the app works. Performance testing ensures the app loads quickly, there are no memory leaks, and the app doesn’t drain the device battery. Security testing looks for vulnerabilities that could put user data at risk. Device testing ensures the app functions with each annual device release. Many modern applications rely on automation testing to reduce manual testing efforts. Automation testing can also simulate multi-user and load testing scenarios during testing. We encourage you to involve all stakeholders to participate in the testing stage. Any feedback you receive in the test phase should be tracked, reviewed, and prioritized.

Deploy

iOS app should be submitted on the Apple App Store. Android app should be submitted on Google Play. Once you submit the app, it goes through a review process. Google needs a few hours to review and approve your app. Apple takes about a week due to its stringent review process. The app store will notify you if your app doesn’t meet its guidelines. In which case, you’ll have to address those issues and resubmit your app. The app will be available for download when the app store approves it.

If app development includes database and back-end work, you will have to deploy these separately. Many companies rely on cloud service providers such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to host their web applications and databases.

5. App Marketing

Each app store has millions of apps. Discovering apps in the app store is not as straightforward as searching for a website in your browser. If your app isn't a high-ranking "featured app", your app will be difficult to discover organically. Implementing a marketing strategy will help your audience discover your app through other marketing channels.

Just as you have hiring options for your development team, you also have options for your marketing team. You can hire in-house marketers, you can hire freelance marketers, or you can hire a marketing agency that specializes in marketing apps. Whatever you choose, make sure the marketers have a firm understanding of mobile app marketing. They should understand the app development process, tech trends, app stores, and app promotions. Most marketing agencies will work on a retainer-basis with monthly fees ranging from $5000 to over $20,000.

6. Support & Maintenance

Mobile app development is an ongoing process. The truth is no matter how perfect the original app is, there is always room for improvement. You must consider user feedback, market demands, new competitors, and advancements in technology.

Application maintenance will include any updates related to app performance. Platforms like Google Firebase help app owners monitor performance metrics. Firebase offers performance monitoring, crash reports, user analytics, and much more. In addition to maintenance updates, you may want to consider enhancing your app with new features. This will help you earn new app users and retain existing users.

Conclusion

There is a lot that goes into creating an app but with the right strategy and the right team, you can turn your app idea into a successful business. For a recap, here are the steps for making an app:

Create a business strategy
Hire app developers
Budgeting & planning
App development
Marketing
Support & maintenance

At Invonto, we’ve been making mobile apps since 2008. We’ve created many successful apps for companies across the USA from finance, construction, healthcare, industrial engineering, entertainment, retail, travel, and consumer products industries. Some of our success stories include voting app for America’s Got Talent, personal finance management app for Transamerica, construction scheduling app for D. R. Horton, Telehealth app for ReconSTAT, and enterprise apps for Sealed Air. We guide our clients from the idea stage through successful launch, providing our consultation for each stage of the process. We provide turn-key projects so that our clients can remain focused on the frontline of their business. Please feel free to reach out to us to say hello, to learn more about what we do, or to discuss what we can do for your business.

How much does it cost to make an app? [2020]

Invonto — Thu, 13 Feb 2020 19:28:18 +0000

It has been over 10 years since the launch of the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Combined, there are almost 5 million apps available to download. Apps are now an integral part of our daily lives. Nearly 70% of our internet browsing is on mobile devices.Large companies and creative entrepreneurs are recognizing the value of creating an app for their business. One of the most common questions about creating an app is "how much does it cost to make an app?".

If you've ever had trouble explaining this process to a potential client, here is a comprehensive guide that will hopefully answer all their questions. We both know there are many factors to consider so let's dive in.

In this guide, we will cover:

1) The stages of app development
2) How much does it cost to make an app
3) App development costs for past Invonto projects
4) How to get app cost estimates in minutes
5) What to do if you do not have enough budget

Let's start with the basics first. Think about app development costs like building a house or purchasing a car. In our scenario, your app idea is the "house" or the "car". Estimating the cost is impossible with little information. The "house" could be a 4 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom house. Or the "house" could be a 6 bedroom and 5 bathroom house with a basement. We need more details to give a proper estimate. For a house, we need to consider the square footage, flooring options, fixtures, and cabinetry. Let's switch gears and talk about cars. Whether you want a Toyota, a Ford, a Tesla, or a Ferrari, the cost changes based on features. The cost of creating an app is no different.

App development isn't rocket science. Still, we can agree that an experienced team and a systematic process are necessary to create apps. There is this false idea that mobile applications are built in a week and cost under $5000. The gig economy and news coverage on overnight success stories continue to promote the myth that successful mobile apps are inexpensive and easy to build. None of this is a reality. There is more that goes into developing a standout mobile app than meets the eye. An examination of the most popular apps of 2020 will help us understand the cost of app development.

Uber

The idea for Uber started as a timeshare limo service. It evolved into a ridesharing service and became the highest valued private startup in the world. The Uber app pilot program was developed with a seed funding of $200,000 and tested in New York City and San Francisco. Since then, it has invested billions in the platform, customer support, and advertising.

Robinhood

Robinhood is an American app-based stock brokerage that offers commission-free trading.The Robinhood Android app went live in 2015 with a $3 million investment.

Snap

The original Snapchat app started in a Stanford dorm room in 2011. You can still read Snapchat CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel’s first post a few months after they launched on the App Store. Evan’s photo-sharing app quickly grew in popularity. Snapchat later rebranded as Snap. Snap is now worth $23 billion.

The history of each app reveals some interesting themes that led to their success. The founders of each company built a mobile app that solved a problem. Each mobile app received proper investment early in their history.

“Most of the successful apps have three things in common: they solve a problem, they receive adequate funding, and they have a team committed to the idea.”

The four stages of creating a successful app

A successful app starts with a great idea and a sound investment. To be successful you need to follow a systematic approach to app development.

Mobile Strategy

A mobile strategy starts with conceptualizing your app idea. You achieve this by identifying your business needs. You may try to create a new segment, establish yourself in an existing market, or solve a business problem. The goal is to understand the company’s objectives and how the app will align with them. There is plenty more to learn about developing a mobile strategy. In our post, how to develop a successful enterprise mobility strategy, we dive into building a mobile strategy in great detail.

App Development

Design, performance, and security are crucial factors in app development. Successful apps can scale effortlessly. The app can have a few hundred downloads or several million downloads. Performance should not be affected. Successful apps are also highly secure. The data your app collects becomes a valuable resource. Use data to improve your app, meet consumer needs, provide personalized experiences, and increase revenue.

Following our mobile app development process will help you create a scalable and profitable app.

App Marketing

How you promote your mobile app can be the deciding factor in whether your app is successful or not. Marketing isn’t optional, it's mandatory.

Executing a marketing strategy will maximize user growth and help you reach your business objectives.

App Maintenance

Lastly, business leaders need a plan to maintain their mobile app. Popular apps have a strategy for long-term growth. Mobile app development is an ongoing process. The truth is no matter how perfect the original app is, there is always room for improvement. You must consider user feedback, market demands, new competitors and advancements in technology.

How much does it cost to make an app?

Now that we understand what it takes to create a successful app, we can talk about pricing. How much does it cost to make an app? Well, the cost is influenced by several factors. Let’s break it down.

Mobile App Development Cost Breakdown

The average mobile app will need 1200 - 1500 hours of effort. As work for the different stages is staggered, it takes on average 6 - 9 months to complete. Below we give an example of the minimum estimate of hours needed to complete each phase of the app development process for a telehealth app that we’ve built for a client.

Business Analysis and Documentation: 80 hours
User Experience Design: 160 hours
Back-end and Database Development: 240 hours
Web API Development: 100 hours
iOS or Android App Development: 480 hours
Mobile User Testing: 240 hours
Project Management: 120 hours
App Deployment: 24 hours

Based on the example, the time needed to create this app is 1344 hours. So how much does an app cost? Let’s check.

App Development Cost By Vendor

The cost, quality, and timeline will vary based on whom you hire. Earlier, we mentioned you have a few options. Let’s take our estimates and use that for comparing costs for each option.

Freelancers

The average hourly rate of a freelancer on Toptal is $80 per hour. If we take our estimated total development time, this will land us at $107,520. This might be what you were looking for, but let’s think this over.

Hiring a freelancer is fine if you need expertise for just one discipline. If your needs exceed that, a freelancer may not be the best option.

Even if the freelancer provides expertise you need, time becomes an issue. What takes a team a few weeks may take one developer several months. What if a freelancer gets sick for a few days? Everything stops. You risk releasing your app late, allowing competitors to swoop in. When you rely on one person, you are at the mercy of their availability.

The list of issues goes on. If you are serious about app development, we suggest you don’t hire a freelancer.

App Development Agency

Hiring an app development agency resolves issues you encounter with freelancers. The team will have specialists who dedicate their time to a portion of the app development process. This will help build your app faster and with quality. The average hourly rate for an app development agency is $125 per hour. That puts cost estimates for our telehealth app example at $168,000.

Most app development agencies will fully manage your project. This gives you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. If you outsource the project to an app development agency, make sure they can assist with app maintenance and enhancements.

Big Consulting Firm

If you need your development partner to assist with your business strategy then you may want to hire a consulting firm. The average hourly rate for a big consulting firm is $225 per hour. Our estimate balloons to a total of $302,400.

While there can be a sticker shock with the pricing, a big consulting firm will have a team of specialists with domain expertise which can be a great fit for the larger projects. Development teams at big consulting firms can be large, spanning 50 - 100 members across multiple locations. Consulting firms can offer all of the expertise to keep you worry-free about your technology needs, as long as you are able to manage the costs.

In-House Developers

Perhaps you want to find out how much it will cost to make an app by yourself. In-house developers can be a great choice in certain situations. You can hire exactly what you need. The cost of development will adhere to the number of salaried employees on staff. Average salary for user experience designers, app developers, and product managers range from $80,000 to $150,000. Salaries can increase if you are hiring in locations with higher cost of living such as New York City, Boston, Seattle, or San Francisco.

The main downside of in-house development is scale. The process of building a team can be time-consuming. Sourcing each employee is a multi-week process that will set you behind schedule very quickly. If you live in a region that has a small talent pool, hiring the best talent is near impossible.

Hiring in-house developers can also add fixed costs to your payroll. A single mobile app may not need a full-time dedicated team for a long term. Instead, outsourcing to an app development agency or a big consulting firm can reduce your fixed costs. Outsourcing your app development can prove to be more flexible, less costly and allow you to scale.

App Development Cost By Type

In app development, you have three main choices. You can build a mobile web app, a native mobile app or a cross-platform mobile app. You also have to decide on a mobile platform, if you want to build for iOS, Android, or both. What you choose will influence cost.

How to get app cost estimates in minutes

There’s a lot that goes into developing a successful mobile app. Cost will play a huge role in how you decide to build your app. Before starting any development, have a mobility strategy, hire an expert app development team, and have a realistic project estimate.

If you are trying to develop an app, you can use our app development cost calculator. No matter what you are building, the app cost calculator will help you understand what you will need to budget. All you have to do is answer a few questions about your app features and receive an estimate in under five minutes.

What can you do if you do not have enough budget?

You don’t have to give up on your idea if you do not have a budget to create your app. You still have a few options.

Start with wireframes

Creating wireframes is an essential to develop an app. Wireframes help turn app requirements into a visual storyboard. You can create wireframes for as little as $10,000. Wireframes help you demonstrate the potential of your idea to investors. This can greatly improve your chances of receiving investments for your project.

Create a proof of concept (PoC)

A proof of concept is a version of your app that includes only core functionality. PoC allows you to test your app with a focus group as a pilot project. PoC can be created with as little as 20% of your app’s cost estimates. Validated PoC can increase your chances of receiving VC investment for your business. PoC is used by both startups and enterprises. It minimizes risk and there is no need to fully commit to an expensive project.

Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

When you are on a limited budget, you need to evaluate your "wants" vs your "needs". It is easy to get carried away with all the bells and whistles of app development. An MVP is designed to restrict the scope of work. By focusing on key functionalities, you reduce the financial investment and delivery timeline. In our experience, an MVP could cost as little as 50% of the total app development cost.

Conclusion

App development is serious business. A successful app could launch the next unicorn or elevate your digital transformation strategy. It might seem like a daunting task, but you have support. An experienced development team can help you deliver your app idea successfully, on time, and within budget.