When you think “micro,” you probably think of something small or minuscule. In the world of mobile though, micro represents a consumer or business app that delivers highly-focused, task-based functionality while allowing users to get in, interact and get out of the process with maximum efficiency.
As IT departments struggle to meet the needs of their users with limited time, budget and resources, the best place to start are often with these micro-apps. Mobile app development platforms, like PowWow Mobile are making it easier for technical and non-technical teams to deploy their own micro apps that optimize a specific application workflow. In recent years, the idea of “micro-moments,” or brief interactions where apps can capture the attention of a user and anticipate their needs in seconds, have become increasingly popular.
While business mobile apps are designed to help increase productivity and workflows in a number of situations, micro-apps are designed to resolve simple but critical tasks in your organization:
Start with Small Use Cases That Accelerate Business Processes
What are common tasks that your employees must do frequently but are taking too long complete? For example, do your users have to go through a multi-step desktop application to input simple items such as timesheets or expense reports? What about field service teams that need easy access to scheduling applications or purchase order forms from their mobile device while meeting with a customer? Currently, eight in ten companies still use manual tools including spreadsheets to complete routine tasks.
Easy access to these applications and workflows are critical to overall business processes. If your employees are traveling, working in the field or at home and cannot access these applications without a desktop or VPN, this can lead to delays and frustration. To remedy these problems, consider the use cases that your users have to interact with on a regular basis, but could get done in less time with micro-apps.
Consider the User Experience at a Consumer Level
Micro-moment functions in mobile apps should be “short and snappy.” They should have no more than four to six screens and never overwhelm the user with too much information. After all, these apps are meant to get simple tasks done in seconds. This is important because on average, your employees are spending 1.8 hours a day searching for and gathering information.
When designing micro-apps, remember that ease of use is your number one priority. Ultimately, your task-based app for business should provide a consumer-like user experience, with 44 percent of employees wanting their enterprise apps to perform at consumer levels. Your organization’s micro-apps should improve workflows for your users from anywhere, at any time, making it possible to submit and access information from the security line at the airport to the back seat of a cab.
Accelerate Design with PowWow Mobile’s Micro-App Templates
With PowWow Mobile’s SmartUX Studio, pre-built micro-app templates are designed to deliver the ultimate experience in speed and productivity with code-less drag and drop capabilities. Micro-app templates allow for rapid mobile enablement of common organizational tasks including employee timecards, multi-system approvals and corporate directories.
These micro-apps can be quickly developed and deployed without having to create any new screens or writing a single line of code. Further, PowWow Mobile’s platform gives developers and business analysts the ability to leverage their existing applications such as SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and PeopleSoft to maintain current data models without having to re-map existing application data to the new micro- app. 
Once your team deploys your first micro-app, you will quickly see how much easier it is for your users to get simple but crucial tasks done. Now, consider the other use cases you have in your backlog that can easily be deployed as simple apps for task-based wins!
To learn more about how PowWow Mobile’s SmartUX Platform can help your team quickly and simply deploy micro-apps to your users, alleviate paper-based and legacy processes, and save your workforce valuable time, click here to learn more.
