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Application development for telcos: A 7-step guide

 | 6 min read
Application Development for Healthcare: A 7-Step Guide

When people ask you what IoT means, what phone model to get, or what’s the best way to understand your customers, you tell them “google it.” But when they ask you how to do something—track your data usage, pay bills, stream your favorite movies—you say “you know, there’s an app for that.”

Because most likely, there is. There’s an app for almost everything these days—and the telecom industry is no exception. In fact, as of this year, there are 1.76 million apps available in the Apple App Store alone.

The app industry is poised for growth, and for organizations looking to get into that space, it helps to know exactly how the process works.

How to build a healthcare app

7 steps to building an effective telco application

How do you design, develop, and deploy an application for the telecom industry? Whatever development methodology is followed—waterfall, RAD, agile—there are a couple of steps involved in the application development process.

1. Planning

The first step, like for anything else, is to prepare a clear and actionable plan for the application. Start by thinking about what problem or pain point you’re trying to solve and consider whether it can be answered with an app. You have to be as specific as possible here. Basically, you should fill in the blanks: When an employee or customer needs to ____, my app will come in handy.

By identifying this need, you can also define what outcome is expected. What real-life application will users get by using the app? Is it the ability to track their delivery, generate a quote, or connect with a customer service representative? During this process, you should also be able to define who your target users are: young or old, male or female, local or worldwide.

This would also be a good time to conduct a competitive analysis. Are there competitors and if so, is there enough market space for your organization to tap into? If you determine that there’s enough demand, you can also take a look at the features of competing applications to get insight and inspiration.

And lastly, you have to ensure the profitability of the application you’re trying to build. Define the monetization strategy. Will you be requiring an upfront cost or in-app purchases? It’s worth noting that the subscription business model generates the most money, with 36% of developers attesting to the fact.

2. Analysis

Now that you’ve laid out your plan, it’s time to get into the specifics. In this stage of the process, your goal is to document all the user, software, and hardware requirements of the app. This way, you can determine what features to focus on and anticipate what problems might come up during development.

For example, will your application be available in several platforms—mobile phone, tablet, and on the web? Having multiple touchpoints means different requirements and optimization strategies. If you envision just a mobile app, you’ll also need to decide whether it should be built for Android or iOS or both.

As for functionalities, will it need internet connectivity? And will it benefit from integrating with the user’s camera, smart devices, or even customers records? These integrations will also need to be analyzed and laid out in detail.

And lastly, but certainly not the least, make sure that the application complies with government or app store regulations. If your app turns out to be noncompliant, it risks being removed, fined, or shut down altogether.

3. Design

Based on the analysis conducted, visualize how the app will work and how users will experience it. After all, it’s not enough to just build a great app—it must also provide a great user experience. A customer trying to book an appointment will use an app because it is convenient. If it has a poor user interface that obstructs them from doing a simple function, they’ll just pick up a phone to get the job done.

To do it right, start by finalizing the application features list. Remove unnecessary ones and focus only on the core value, or what the desired outcome is. This will enable you to create an MVP (minimum viable product) of your app that will shorten the time-to-market. Any nice-to-have features can come later as updates.

Next is the actual app design. It’s during this stage where a mock-up or prototype of the app is created. This usually includes high-level design details such as the flow control and structure and different navigation patterns, and more granular aspects such as buttons, font section, and other UI objects.

4. Construction

Now comes the actual building. This is the stage where all the previous planning, analyzing, and designing efforts are implemented. Using the requirements and design plan as a guideline, your in-house or outsourced development team will begin the actual programming and code the app.

5. Testing

When the app’s built out, you’ll need to make sure that it works as intended, that document requirements are met, and that it’s free of major bugs. As many know, there is not much room for error in the telecom space—much less its apps.

It is a mandatory that the app goes through a stringent security audit as well as system tests, integration tests, performance tests, user acceptance tests, quality tests, and debugging to make sure everything is in order. It is critical to ensure your app is secure to protect the app users and all their sensitive data.

You’ll also want to get as much feedback as possible during this stage, so consider running the app past target users by conducting a beta test. Use the positive and negative feedback gained to make iterations to the application. Repeat this process until you deem the application is ready for release.

6. Implementation

Congratulations! Your application is ready to go live. Make the app available to use in the platforms that you’ve identified in Step 1. It will likely go through a review process first, but this is also a good time to make some noise. Promote your new app internally, on social media, or your network.

7. Support

Building apps is not a one-time thing. You’ll most likely go through this process over and over again, especially if you’re following the Agile methodology.

So when the first version of the app is live, don’t just stop here. Invest in an application maintenance and support  process as well. Monitor feedback, make iterations, continue debugging, and offer support to your users. Remember those nice-to-have features you identified? This will be a good time to pursue those functionalities.

Time to develop that app

The app market will only continue to grow—and for good reason. Because it offers a much-needed convenience, apps are being used everywhere to do a myriad of tasks and activities. There are a lot of factors that go into how application development is done, but the process outlined above will give you a solid foundation.

About the author

Fiona Villamor

Fiona Villamor

Fiona Villamor is the lead writer for Sryas, a global technology company that delivers powerful insights and business transformations at scale. In the past 10 years, she has written about big data, advanced analytics, and other transformative technologies and is constantly on the lookout for great stories to tell about the space.

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