Anexinet Looks To Battle Outdated Apps With Mobile App Refresh Kickstart Program

In just a few weeks, the solution provider assesses the current state of a customer’s app and develops a full plan for a refreshed version.

While many businesses at this point understand the value of having a mobile app, fewer spend the time to evaluate whether their app could use an overhaul.

That's the message—and the opportunity—that solution provider powerhouse Anexinet is seizing upon with its recently launched Mobile App Refresh Kickstart program.

[Related: Anexinet: Microsoft Cloud Opportunity Is All About Services]

Anexinet, which acquired enterprise mobility specialist Propelics in February 2018, has added the Kickstart program to quickly assess the state of a customer's mobile app and develop a plan for a full refresh.

The Kickstart program typically lasts just a few weeks, and targets issues ranging from eliminating app crashes to adding features that have only recently become available.

"There are new capabilities being added to these mobile platforms that customers haven't gone back to look at. They haven't asked, 'What could we or should we do with these?'" said Glenn Gruber, senior digital strategist at Anexinet. "The whole point of the Mobile App Refresh Kickstart [program] is to go back and look at the portfolio of apps that have already been built, and start to evaluate when was the last time these were looked at—and understand which are most important to the organization."

The program starts with redefining the organization's vision around mobile and moves on to gathering usability and user feedback; identifying potential functionality for the app; and performing an assessment of the app's UI/UX design, usability, features, performance and architecture.

Anexinet then makes user-experience and technical recommendations, and builds a mobile prototype. Finally, the solution provider works with the customer to develop a release management plan and budget for the app project.

"These are not long, drawn-out evaluations. These are done in typically a two-week time frame,” Gruber said. “They're very intense engagements—a lot of value gets derived in a very short period of time.”

The apps covered by the Kickstart program can include both consumer-facing and internal use apps for the business, he said.

"We try to understand the situation from the people in the business, not just the folks who are at the HQ side of things. We try and see what's working for them, and that really drives a lot of what comes out of these sessions," Gruber said. "Sometimes we do a 'day in the life' visit—shadow whoever is doing the activity, how they're doing their process, where is the app working great, where it could use improvement. It's always very illuminating, and it's not something that you often see clients do."

Overall, in the fast-changing world of mobile technology, customers "don't often have the time to be looking at what's coming, what's changed, what they should be thinking about," Gruber said.

"It's not just keeping up with bug fixes and new APIs," he said. "We are looking at what's changed. And at a high level that gives us an opportunity to do something different."

It's just the latest Kickstart program for Blue Bell, Pa.-based Anexinet, No. 218 on the 2019 CRN Solution Provider 500.

The solution provider offers a wide range of short Kickstart programs in areas such as cloud and hybrid IT (including for Office 365 migration and Office 365 data security), enterprise mobility (including field services modernization and app scoping/prototyping) and analytics (including customer experience analytics).