Knowing what apps you want to build to move your enterprise mobile strategy forward is one thing. Getting budget approval is another.
In the early days of mobile (a whole 6 years ago), it was safe to assume an enterprise app would cost about $50,000. Today, however, the level of complexity is much, much higher. These days, we’re focusing more on using mobile to reengineer and simplify core business processes. The kind of processes tied to big, tricky, back-end systems.
But before we can calculate the cost/effort of building an Enterprise Mobile App, we first need to do the following:
1. Understand the app: While it may seem obvious you can’t estimate what you don’t understand, you might be surprised at how often folks approach us with a “less than fully-formed” Enterprise Mobile App idea to pursue. And while you won’t need to define every app feature and function at this point, you do need to understand the app’s target users, its objectives, and its primary usage scenarios. How complex is it? What business processes are we taking on? What systems do we need to connect back to? And how will mobility impact the use cases?
If the app sponsor can’t answer these questions, IT will need to collaborate with the Business or conduct structured ideation sessions to identify the user scenarios and use cases. This is where Propelics App Scoping and Prototype kickstart plays an essential role—in helping clients define the Enterprise Mobile Apps they want to build.
2. Understand the cost levers for mobile: Many factors impact the cost to develop an Enterprise Mobile App. The key elements to get a handle on are:
Once you’ve armed yourself with this information, you’re ready to get into the actual cost estimation.
Our first step is to split the process into 2 components:
1. The Core—the basic costs to build the app for a single OS and device type, assuming “perfect delivery” with no defects.
A Core estimation requires familiarity with a few things: the user stories and key functionality of the product, the composition of your development team (their skill level often determines whether a task takes an hour or a day), and what tools/platform you’re using to design and develop the app.
We need to be familiar with these items because user stories translate loosely into the following: number of screen types, UI/UX complexity, Business Logic complexity, and complexity of integration and data transformation necessary to connect to backend systems.
2. The Common—the multipliers we apply to The Core estimate. Key components of The Common include the following:
Of course, this is far from being an exhaustive list of everything we evaluate when estimating the cost of an Enterprise Mobile App, but it hits the main points and hopefully provides some good guidance to enhance your process.
Ready to get started?
For those companies full of great ideas but lacking the know-how to make an accurate cost-estimate, check out our new Enterprise Mobile App Cost Calculator.
Our accurate calculation engine is based on years of experience building mobile apps for organizations worldwide across all industry verticals.
Then sign-up for a complimentary consultation with one of our mobile strategists to help plan your next steps and get you well on your way to mobile success!
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