The demands of the modern business require increased mobility and connectivity across the organization. However, even as businesses are aware of the need for productivity solutions, not everyone has the capability to build their own mobile apps.
According to Opinion Matters, 99 percent of surveyed enterprise IT professionals consider mobility as a priority, but only 6 percent have the mobile developer talent to achieve this. Short of outsourcing the development work to outside talent, businesses can simply deploy whitelabel solutions that enable mobility for their existing workflows.
Whitelabel employee apps come with different capabilities and feature sets. You will therefore need to find the one that best suits your needs in terms of onboarding, flexibility, cost and ability to scale. Here, we will briefly review five whitelabel platforms that can help your business with a mobility boost.
Connecteam
Connecteam is one of the more well-rounded whitelabel employee apps on the market. A self-managed solution, it can be deployed without the IT department being involved in onboarding.
The productivity-enhancing features are quite extensive: location-based punch clock, instant messaging, surveys, polls, interactive checklists, GPS tracking, employee onboarding, workforce management and more. The solution also comes with a business dashboard that provides insights into employee
interactions, engagement, and even attendance information while they are in the field.
With flexible pricing schemes, Connecteam also offers a free app version, which makes it a quick, easy and affordable option for organizations to get their own branded smartphone app in as quickly as one hour. So far, it's the only platform to provide a self-managed process to instantly create employee apps right after you register.
Capriza
This platform might at first be overwhelming, given its focus on large enterprises. Capriza offers many types of integration with ERP and CRM solutions, such as SAP, Peoplesoft and Salesforce. The solution focuses on providing mobile access to otherwise complex workflows.
The downside is that no immediate onboarding option exists. Capriza requires a one-week lead time for deployment, particularly when heavy integrations are required.
However, once the core app is deployed, your IT department can then deploy mini-apps within a few minutes, based on pre-set templates for various industries and workflows. Existing workflows can then be carried over without need for additional coding.
A highly-scalable solution, Capriza is ideal for large enterprises with many concurrent active users and complex processes. It may not be ideal for smaller and more agile organizations, due to the lack of self-service onboarding or simplified content management.
Sky Giraffe
Another platform that targets large enterprises, Sky Giraffe acts as a mobile middleware that integrates with leading ERP solutions and enables mobile access to intranets and web-based corporate network systems.
The solution comes with a visual app studio for building custom apps that can be integrated with existing data and workflows. This will require some development background, however, and self-service onboarding might be difficult. Also, the solution lacks a dedicated messaging app, although it provides push-based notification based on workflow triggers.
To summarize, Sky Giraffe lets your IT department wrap a mobile experience around your existing infrastructure. The lack of self-service onboarding and dedicated IM might be a void in an otherwise well-rounded offering, however.
Beekeeper
Focusing on improving real-time communications and measuring employee engagement, Beekeeper unifies messaging, social engagement and sentiment analysis.
The solution does not have a self-managed onboarding option, although the upside is that it easily integrates with external messaging and social networking services. This allows you to integrate your organization's social streams, enabling the organization to gain real-time insights into employee and external engagement.
Your team can establish communication workflows and content campaigns that can trigger automated messages, aimed at driving more engagement. Beekeeper's real-time dashboard provides visual feedback on the performance of both internal and external outreach.
While the solution is scalable, the platform does not offer any additional functionality outside of communications, which means that teams that need other productivity options will need to use other apps to extend functionality.
Go-arc
Go-arc
's whitelabel solution focuses on improving workplace safety and productivity.
Given this focus, the platform will appeal to organizations that deal with hazardous work environments, and which require real-time push updates to keep field employees informed and safe.
The solution uses geolocation to push relevant training material based on vicinity, as well as real-time and historical accident data, which can help increase awareness on potentially dangerous spots in the workplace or field.
Reported issues are displayed on the map, to provide immediate and actionable information to concerned team members. Employees can also share videos and photos of hot spots, which can help prevent accidents and downtime.
A highly-specialized employee app, the value proposition with Go-arc is mostly geared toward manufacturing and in-the-field operations, where quality and safety are essential to the business.
Conclusion
Given that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to enterprise productivity, you will need to properly assess which solution is best for keeping employees motivated, engaged and productive. Each whitelabel employee app offers its own value proposition, which ranges from flexibility to very targeted concerns. The key is to find the solution that fits your need.