7 enterprise apps making a (real) difference in (real) businesses

19 April 2017 -

The business app market is starting to make strides and catch up with its consumer-focussed cousins. Here’s some of the top tools on the market

Guest blogger Rob Mannion

From social media and messaging to news and online shopping, consumer apps have become a fundamental part of our existence, accounting for 89% of mobile media time.

Enterprises have been a little slower to recognise the benefits that mobile technology can deliver, but business and productivity apps now account for around 13% of the apps available in the App Store. Gartner predicts that, by the end of 2017, large enterprises might have up to 100 mobile apps within the business.

Here’s a selection of enterprise apps we love at RNF that are solving business problems and making a positive impact on both productivity and business success.

1. SME Safety Wizard

For SMEs, health & safety is often overlooked due to time and resource pressures. The information available can often be difficult and time-consuming to sieve through to find out what is relevant to an individual business.

The SME Safety Wizard draws information from the HSE website, using a simple tick-box list to consolidate all the relevant information for a business in one place, saving businesses significant time and resources. It’s also on Google Play.

2. Slack

Slack is hailed as the end to email by many organisations. Described as ‘team communication for the 21st century’, it allows users to set up public channels where all messages related to a subject are housed.

Users can also set up private groups and direct message colleagues, share documents and set up notifications for other apps. Using Slack decreases the likelihood of emails being missed and makes finding relevant information for a project simple for anyone in the organisation.

It certainly makes the team here at RNF vastly more efficient and organised!

3. Bestway Wholesale Ordering

Bestway’s wholesale ordering app allows users to browse up to 20,000 products and place orders directly from their mobile device. It also has a barcode scanner, previous order history, secure payment facility and a real-time depot inventory.

But the really innovative solution is that it uses geofences and iBeacons to deliver personalised push notifications. This allows Bestway to communicate with its customers in a contextual and relevant way, driving sales to such an extent that the app is now the company’s biggest ‘depot’ in terms of sales. It’s also on Google Play.

4. Trello

Trello is a project management app designed to make managing and collaborating on projects simple and straightforward. It works by having boards, lists and cards to enable you to organise and prioritise your projects in a flexible way.

You can easily collaborate with colleagues by adding comments and attachments directly to Trello cards, streamlining processes and increasing efficiencies.

5. Calor FieldPro

Converting leads is often an inefficient process, particularly when part of that process involves site visits. Calor’s FieldPro app (operated by Calor Gas itself) streamlines the sales process, allowing a salesforce member on a site visit to enter data immediately, generate a contract, secure customer signatures and inform the delivery team in a single appointment.

All information is captured in digital form, increasing the accuracy of the data capture and enabling Calor’s central system to be instantly updated, too.

6. Things

Things is great example of a task manager app. It is simple and easy to use while being powerful enough to handle complicated to-do lists, helping you organise your daily task list and making you much more productive in the office.

7. Firestone Tyre Pressure Calculator

Having the correct tyre pressure is important for everyone but in particular for farmers. The correct pressure gives reduced soil compaction, less wear and tear on tyres and increased fuel economy.

For Firestone, getting this information out to farmers via a technical data book was becoming cost prohibitive while, for farmers, it was hard to access and use. The Firestone Tyre Pressure Calculator App allows farmers to enter all the relevant data into a simple calculator, generating the correct tyre pressure at the touch of a button. Also on Google Play.

Rob Mannion is MD of RNF Digital Innovation