One of (if not) the most prohibitive hurdle to
developing your own app is cost. First off, you
have to make a concrete calculation weighing
anticipated business gains against the cost
outlay for development and support. According
to many market research studies, including
leading firms like Forrester, development costs
are can represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Once you take the time to spec out and build
your dream app, you’ll find little things that
you could have done better; or U/I updates
that would make it more intuitive; or Google
released a new update to Android; or Apple
changed the resolution on the newest
generation of iPads. Whatever the case may
be, more than 80% of IT personnel polled in
2012 by AnyPresence found that their firms
were updating their apps at least twice per
year. A third of the respondents were pushing
new updates every month. Forrester estimates
that only 35% of any app’s lifetime cost is
covered in initial development. This is a major
stumbling block for many companies, and
rightly so.
Apps are not an experiment that you can play
around with and just see how the market
responds. The future of enterprises is mobility
and only companies that fully embrace and
integrate mobile strategies effectively will
thrive in this landscape in the months and
years to come. So, swinging and missing on
app development is unacceptable in the
modern business atmosphere.
In addition to development representing but a
portion of an app’s full cost, most companies
looking to work with a mobile solutions partner
(or even app developer if you want more of a
vendor/client relationship) don’t know what
type of cost ranges within which any given
app could fall. There are a huge number of
factors to consider, and every app is different
in some way or another. As such, there are no
perfect predictions to be had. However, we
can provide you with some general cost
brackets broken down by complexity and,
therefore, required development effort.
At their most basic levels, apps come down to
hours. Whatever feature you want, whatever
U/I style you desire, whatever working
relationship you want with your developer or
parter will all affect the number of hours that
a firm needs to complete the project. Some
companies might quote their rates based on
features you request, others might take your
specifications and simply give you a flat cost
amount, while others will just estimate the
total number of hours required to complete
the project, break that down by employee
type, and give you a granular estimate that
way. Regardless of the method employed,
each company is making an internal
calculation about how many hours they
anticipate the project will require (based
mostly on the feature requests and the
complexity of any external hardware/software/
API integration) and which resources that
company will have to utilize to accomplish you
goals. So, we can break down the cost
buckets similarly.
Every feature your app incorporates equals a
certain number of design, programming,
project management, QA, and revision hours.
The more features you request, the more
hours required to deliver all of them, and the
more the app will cost. The more complex the
feature, the more hours required, and the
more the app will cost. As such, the ideal
working relationship with any vendor or partner
is with someone willing and able to itemize
each feature by the hours required to develop
those features, cross referenced with the
respective cost per resource hour. That way,
you can obtain a granular overview of where
the largest cost factors are. If your partner
can do this for you, you can make informed
decisions about which features are the most
important or which features you might think
about scrapping to save costs.
Most market research I’ve seen categorizes
mobile app costs into three buckets:
Lower-level complexity, smaller feature list,
generally one mobility platform: <$50,000
Medium-level complexity, medium-sized
feature list, 1-2 mobility platform(s):
$50,000 – $150,000
High-level complexity, large feature list, 3+
mobility platforms: $150,000+
The cutoff between the medium and high
complexity buckets can vary some depending
on the study at which you look, but it’s
generally $100K+ or $150K+. Being more
realistic for an enterprise context, high-
complexity mobile solutions will generally run
$150,000+. But, this categorization might not
clear much up if you don’t know where your
app falls in the spectrum to begin with.
For example, if you want to build an app that
simply interfaces with your backend database,
parses and analyzes that data, and then
displays the information you want via a native
tablet app on only one platform, that’s a
relatively simple app (assuming your back end
is well designed and any legacy hardware or
software isn’t too hard to integrate into).
If you want to build a field sales application
that supports offline data collection and
caching, third-party hardware integration for a
credit card reader, API support for payment
and credit card security protocols, backend
database integration, and social sharing?
That’s going to fall into the second bucket
and run you anywhere from $50,001 to
$149,999 based on how many total features
you deem necessary.
If you decide to completely overhaul your CRM
and you want to build a new solution from the
ground up, including microphone and camera
integration into the application, learning
algorithms, backend integration, custom
performance metric reporting, shareable and
group editable files, individual device
management, individual app management,
individual logins, varying security protocol
levels based on employee department, division,
title and seniority, custom VPN requirements
by device or by app, you’re looking at a very
complex application. Many of these things are
absolutely necessary for your ultimate app,
but you have to know that every feature you
add, and as each of those features requires
more and more expertise to deliver on, the
higher into zone three you’ll climb. That’s not
a bad thing by any stretch, because you’re
building a more comprehensive, safer and
more useful solution. But as your solutions
become better, it simply requires more to build
them.
So long as you can find a mobile solutions
partner with the discipline and forethought to
forecast each feature by hour and resource on
the front end, you’ll be able to choose the
features you can’t live without and which
features can wait for v2.
A word to the wise, though — even if you find
such a firm and make the best choices for
your business, always beware that support,
updates and continual improvements often
require far more capital than building the v1 of
the app in the first place. Know that choosing
to build a mobile app is a long-term
investment to solidify your place within your
target consumers’ digital lives and stick to
that mindset. It’s not about the extra few
dollars you spend now, but rather how can you
build an integrated solution that will stand the
test of time and generate business returns for
years and years to come.
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