What is Mobile Workforce Management (MWM)?

Mobile apps are everywhere and are coming more integral to every-day business and home life. Something that is becoming ever more apparent, especially with emerging Digital Transformation technologies accelerating at a rapid rate, is that business chiefs and innovation specialists across every vertical are now looking at how they can digitise their business processes and improve efficiency across their entire organisation with the addition of mobile workforce management. 

Developing a mobile workforce management application app in-house

Developing a mobile workforce management application is an incredibly complex process and as a business, it can be a constant drain on valuable resources such as time and money. First of all, there will be a requirement to hire experienced mobile application developers, buy them the costly equipment they need, while also paying for and implementing the appropriate IT Infrastructure which can add a significant amount of time to the initial app release date. Following this, they’ll need even more time to write specifications, research the best mobile technologies and set up all their coding resources.  

On average, nearly half of all business apps take longer than six months to develop a mobile workforce management solution which means that the needs of your business and employees can change significantly during that time. Further to that, the challenge of staff retention plus technical challenges often mean that it can take even longer than this. As deadlines creep up, adding budget and adding people late in the software development process means there are more potential challenges to face. 

Releasing your mobile workforce management application to your users in a fragile state means that the app is likely to have multiple issues. This includes insufficient testing, realising that the application soaks up too many resources on users’ devices, and even too much code than you really need can result in the application crashing and ultimately, the loss of important work.

If the user experience isn’t intuitive and crashes are a constant occurrence, productivity within your business will start to decline, leading to frustration and, ultimately, time wasted.  

Once your app is up and running there are still costs for support and software updates – most mobile applications need to be updated once a month or more. These bumps in the road cost more time and yes, more money. The Enterprise Mobility Exchange surveyed 300 mobile practitioners and found total app development in-house can cost upwards of £200,000. 

Using a large software development company for a mobile workforce management app

Another option is contracting a software house to build a custom mobile workforce management application from scratch. While bigger software houses have built hundreds of apps before, and therefore have more experience, these companies often come with a hefty price tag and can charge anywhere upwards of £400,000 for a custom build. Getting approval and committing such a large amount of money up-front costs time and effort as well as posing as a massive financial risk to your business. 

You’ll spend a significant amount of time with your contractor specifying your requirements before any code is written and the value you will get in return will take months and months to realise. Even when your app is finally delivered, you can be saddled with hidden and irregular costs throughout the lifetime of the app for the changes you desperately need to make in order to keep your business running as usual. It’s also often the case that there’s no aftercare or support included which means you’ll still spend time and money researching an outsourced application support company or hiring your own Service Desk team.  

What is mpro5?  

mpro5 is a mobile workforce management platform that uses Software-as-a-Service and harnesses the power of the Microsoft Azure Cloud. The platform consists of a mobile app configured to your requirements, a management portal and reporting, alerting and dashboards. mpro5 is a full-service solution on a monthly subscription which allows scalable, flexible and sustainable digital transformation journeys for businesses regardless of their size. mpro5 is trusted globally in over 260,000 sites across industries such as transport, retail, logistics and facilities management.

Digitise Your Paperwork

Mpro5 digitises your paperwork using just two key features – mobile workflows and job schedules.