In an already digital world, the Covid-19 pandemic forced society and businesses to adopt additional modes of technology and press on for more advanced application development. Business’ focus shifted to increased remote work collaboration, streamlined contact tracing work, and enhanced consumer e-commerce connections. With little knowledge on how much longer social distancing measures will be in place, more on-demand application development options are needed to successfully maintain workplace functionality.
Gabriel Torok, Founder and CEO of PreEmptive, recently authored an article as part of the Forbes Technology Council. In it, he describes four application trends that help predict emerging expectations for the future of enterprise.
- Protect your application. Although formats and features may be at the forefront in app development, the bigger priority should be robust application security. Especially in the age of Covid-19 with current industry imbalances, hackers are relentless in their pursuit to expose and exploit software weaknesses. Such has made users more wary of sharing personal information out of fear of it ending up in the wrong hands. To protect brand reputation, revenue streams, and intellectual property, it’s important that app developers implement coding best practices and in-app protection tools on a consistent basis to confuse hackers. Solutions range from obfuscation techniques, runtime checks, and reverse engineering defenses with a security-first approach without slowing down the application itself.
- Transition from in-person to virtual. Prior to Covid-19, remote work and socially distant directives were already on the rise; this trend is expected to thrive in a post virus world, especially with: telehealth, e-commerce, banking, and other customer-focused apps, as they make it more affordable and efficient to meet consumer needs. Essentially, the need for human contact will become a thing of the past as we resume normal order of operations.
- Communicate effectively from a distance (beyond the mandated 6 ft). The transition from working in-office to remote has led to a usage boom for videoconferencing and collaboration apps, such as: Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. With several viable options to choose from, remote workers have opted for apps with improved feature sets that streamline communication and empower connection. To keep up with demand and stay competitive, such platforms will need to provide more consistent streams of software and hardware updates for better connectivity for users wherever and whenever. It will no longer enough to roll out apps that “get the job done” if glitches and a poor user interface accompany it.
- Create apps that are easy to use and perform at scale. Due to evolving Covid-19 impacts, employees have growing concerns regarding work-life balance and strained budgets. Having difficulty navigating and using an application should not warrant an added stressor. Although there’s an added complexity of juggling the needs of both in-office and at-home workers, this caveat isn’t going away anytime soon; if anything, Covid-19 has only increased this complexity. Therefore, the opportunity in app development is providing a simple user experience and high functionality. Reducing potential complexities in the employee onboarding process will be the true test of what makes a successful tech company.
Although Covid-19 brings many questions and future unknowns to the workplace, two things are certain: distance is meaningless when it comes to productivity, and apps must be built on a frictionless, security-first frameworks to remain competitive. As such, this will drive more organizations to convert to a mobile first approach, leading to more intuitive app developments.
If in-app protection is an initiative you’d like to tackle with your organization, take a look at PreEmptive’s protection solutionsthat easily integrate with .NET, Android, Java, JavaScript, and iOS applications.
