Mobile apps made easy

Mobile applications have never quite reached the level of success that was predicted for them in the past, and one of the reasons for this has been the cost and complexity of developing for the mobile environment. Now, one company is seeking to change that by offering applications as a managed service, and allowing users to customise the end result using a simple web-based interface.

Aeromark is a UK company that has been in the field of workforce mobility since the early 1990s, and already has a number of offerings including Optimatics, which combines workflow with GPS vehicle tracking for customers such as delivery firms. It also provided the technology behind Orange’s Mobile Forms service.

At the beginning of June, the firm unveiled Workflow DynMX, a platform that combines workflow with mobile forms to enable many of the most common kinds of mobile application to be implemented more easily.

“Customers want something that is quick and easy to develop with,” said Aeromark managing director Roger Marks. “However, what we’ve found is that they want us to do it for them, but in such a way that they can customise it themselves afterwards,” he added.

The platform is a fully-hosted solution, with store-and-forward capabilities to a customer’s own systems. “It offers BlackBerry-like performance, but on a PDA,” explained Marks.

Workflow DynMX uses a web-based design console that lets Aeromark or the customer put together forms by dragging and dropping fields to define how they will appear on the mobile device. On top of this, there is a workflow that allows the customer to define business logic, specifying what actions are taken based on data entered into the fields.

“It’s different from mobile forms, because forms alone don’t allow you to make decisions, to take certain actions based on the data input,” Marks said.

As an example, he cited how a delivery firm might ask drivers to capture a photograph of a customer’s front door if there was no answer, as proof that they were actually on site. If the driver checks an on-screen box to say there was nobody present, then the workflow can be defined to display a message and automatically start the camera application on the handset, he said.

The completed workflow, forms and data is compressed together and downloaded to the user’s device for deployment. “The application is sent over-the-air when the end-user subscribes to it. They get sent a text message, which directs them to a web link to download it to their device,” said Marks.

Aeromark also provides a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow Workflow DynMX to integrate with a customer’s service management system or other back-end enterprise application, which ensures that data captured on the mobile device is delivered back to base. The same APIs allow Workflow DynMX to link with Optimatics, which enables workers to be provided with turn-by-turn navigation to reach a customer site, if necessary.

While this might sound complex, Marks said that development times are significantly shorter compared with coding a bespoke application, as much of the functionality is already implemented in the Workflow DynMX platform. Most of the project work is in creating the forms and tailoring the workflow to meet a customer’s exact needs, which means that a solution can be delivered relatively quickly.

“We can deliver a pilot version in three weeks and complete the project in less than two months,” said Marks. Moreover, once Aeromark has delivered the working solution, the company can provide training so that customers will be able to modify the application themselves if necessary.

This is one of the key differentiators of the technology, according to Marks, as it enables customers to swiftly amend their application to meet changing needs in future, such as the requirement for workers to capture extra information during a job.

Workflow DynMX is marketed as a managed end-to-end package by Aeromark, as the company said it can provide everything except the devices. This covers application development, training, and provision of network airtime to connect mobile users to Workflow DynMX itself.

Marks claimed that customers will ultimately only pay about half the cost of implementing a comparable offering. Aeromark charges fees of about £25 up to £50 per user per month, on top of a setup fee that will vary depending on the size and complexity of the application.

“This is nowhere near the price you would pay if you used professional services to create a bespoke app,” Marks said. “It opens up the market to more people, those that would like to go down the paperless workflow route, but are frightened by the cost of development.”

Aeromark’s Workflow DynMX is available now, but currently only supports Microsoft’s mobile platform, covering devices based on Windows Mobile 2003 or later.

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