A study by 451 Research and Kony has revealed that, although demand for enterprise mobile apps is increasing rapidly, organisations cannot keep up with the demand of producing them in house.
More than half of the 480 respondents said they were planning to deploy ten or more applications over the next two years, but budget and resourcing limitations, skills gaps, legacy infrastructure, overall technology fragmentation and immature lifecycle workflows are holding them back.
Despite the majority of employees and management looking to the IT department to help develop the apps different departments need, 42 per cent of mobile app development work is happening outside the department. In fact, IT departments are increasingly looking outside of the organisation to help build the apps.
However, there is a lot of confusion in organisations about who is responsible for leading the mobile app development process. 55 per cent of developers think they should be the point of contact, while 61 per cent of IT managers think they should be in charge.
"There is strong demand for new mobile apps, and companies are broadening their focus beyond core processes and application silos; however, enterprises are still very much in the early stages when it comes to mobile app strategies," said Chris Marsh, principal analyst, 451 Research.
"IT is still in the driver's seat when it comes to both the bulk of internal mobile app development, technology procurement and project management, although line of business want input and greater collaboration," Marsh added.
The most in-demand applications across the board are focused on CRM, followed by marketing and services, customer engagement and general employee productivity apps.
"Companies need to be prepared to meet this demand for mobile apps with proper alignment between lines of business, IT developers and IT management, to effectively manage and lead enterprise mobility projects," said Dave Shirk, president of Products and Marketing at Kony.
