Mobile app integration - the next step to becoming a digital business

Mobile application integration is an important component of an organization’s overall business strategy. In this post, I shall discuss the advantages of mobile application integration, and how it is proving to be the future of digital business.

In our previous post, I discussed what mobile application integration is. In this blog, I shall discuss the advantages of mobile application integration, and how it is proving to be the future of digital business. Mobile application integration lets you integrate your mobile applications with your existing or any third party systems. This is certainly an innovative way to utilize your complete infrastructure and increase productivity. Companies have now started to integrate their mobile applications with the following backend systems:

• Integration with POS: Mobile applications can be integrated with your existing POS systems. This will enable you to view product catalog, browse products, make payments and receive payment receipts. You can create data on real-time basis or once per day depending upon the requirements.
• Integration with CRM: Mobile application integration allows you to communicate with your CRM systems to access sales and marketing reports. You can also view dashboards and access real-time customer information. This ensures easy trade and management of your data
• Integration with CMS: Mobile application integration also provides yow with access to admin section and dashboards when integrated with CMS.

Let us now discuss the benefits of mobile application integration:

• Workflow Automation: Mobile app integration, when combined with CRM, provides you with facility of automatically building reports and also evaluates it. It helps you in enhancing business processes and increases transparency of financial flows.
• Improved Data Sharing and Management: Mobile app integration elevates interoperability between various departments of the company. It allows access to all the information collected by business apps, eliminating data processing and retrieval tasks. Also, data can be updated accurately in real-time. This increases the speed of business processes and reduces errors.
• Flexible IT Infrastructure: Mobile application integration allows businesses to expand easily and respond to the customer's growing expectations quickly.
• Operational Effectiveness: By integrating mobile apps with an organization's ERP or CRM, we can enable operational efficiencies.
• Stock Control: Several organizations maintain a stock management system. Integrating this system with mobile applications enables the staff on the field to view inventory levels and plan aid distribution in a correct manner. We can also ensure that the inventory levels are appropriately adjusted within a stock management system in real time. This helps in maintaining the accuracy of the available inventory.
• Financial Management: Using mobile application integration, we can improve a company's financial management as it provides features like enhanced financial control and monitoring of staff costs.
• Rapid Expansion: Mobile application integrations promote rapid expansion as interrelated applications can be revamped during integration stage, and can be made scalable.
• Better customer experience: Mobile app integrations provide easy access to all data necessary for CRM via a single point without delay. Service can be achieved since all data necessary for CRM is accessible via a single access point without delay.
• Agile Environment: Mobile app integration promotes the growth of an agile environment and supports development of new applications and products, thus providing a competitive edge.

Even though there are several advantages of mobile application integration, TheServerside.com Readership Survey 2011 has showcased that only 20% of surveyed IT professionals are planning to focus on application integration in the coming few years. Organizations must now realize the benefits of mobile application integration and start refocusing their efforts and resources on implementing it.