Mobile app or web app for your team

Three ways to put a system on a phone

What a web app does well

A web app opens on any phone or computer, so a boss on a laptop and an agent on a phone are looking at the same system. When it is fixed or improved, everyone has the new version straight away. Nobody has to update anything, and no store has to approve the change.

For agents who enter leads, log call outcomes and check a customer's status between calls, a well-built web app is usually enough. The work is in making it good on a phone: large text that follows the phone's size setting, big buttons, and one clear job on each screen.

There is also a cost argument. One web system is one thing to build, test and keep current. Two installed apps plus a web system for the office is three. Ask each vendor to price both routes, so you can see what the app adds before you decide it is worth it.

When you need an installed app

• Alerts that must arrive. You need 'call this lead now' to reach people when the app is closed, and you cannot depend on every staff member adding a web app to their Home Screen first.
• Closer use of the phone. The app has to work with the phone's own calling, contacts or files in ways a browser does not allow.
• Weak signal. People work in places with a poor connection and need the app to keep going and catch up later.
• Customers, not only staff. Your customers will install it, and a store listing helps them trust and find it.
• Adoption. Some teams will not open a link but will tap an icon on the phone. If that is true of yours, it is a real reason. Test it with a few people before you decide.

What an app costs beyond the build

• Apple. The Apple Developer Program is 99 USD per membership year, shown in local currency when you enrol. An organisation must be a legal entity with a D-U-N-S Number, a public website and a work email on its own domain.
• Google. Google Play charges a one-time US$25 registration fee. An organisation account needs a D-U-N-S number. A new personal account created after 13 November 2023 must run a closed test with at least 12 testers for 14 days before it can release to the public.
• Review. Apple says that on average 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours. Allow time in the schedule for a rejection and a second submission anyway.
• Updates. Each new phone system release can need changes to the app. Ask who does them and what they cost.
• Whose account. Publish under your company's developer accounts, not the developer's. Then the app stays yours if you change developer.

Prices vary a great deal by vendor. As one data point, NexFlows quotes custom apps with the build, and the phone app for the Loan Advisory CRM is RM 250 a month on request. Our guide on what a custom CRM costs shows how to compare quotes.

A short test to decide

Go through these questions in order. The first yes is a good reason to build an app. If you reach the end with three noes, a web app is the right place to start.

A sensible path

Start with the web app and make it work well on a phone. Test it on the oldest phone in your team. Watch what staff actually do for two or three months. If they keep asking for something the browser cannot do, write it down and build an app for that reason.

When you try a web app on the team's phones, check four things:

• Can an agent log a call outcome with one hand, straight after a call?
• Is the text still readable when the phone's text size is set to large?
• What happens when the signal drops halfway through typing something in?
• Can the boss see who is signed in, and remove a person's access from the phone?

Whichever route you take, ask what happens when a phone is lost or an agent leaves: how do you remove their access, and how fast? Write that question into your one-page spec and ask it of every vendor, along with the others in questions to ask before you sign.