Build your own Salesforce Custom Mobile App

Building a mobile app for your business just got easier and more affordable

Some businesses were born mobile, and others have mobile thrust upon them.  Or put it another way, with Hailo the app came first, but for a more established business, one like yours maybe, then it’s probably the next step on your evolving customer engagement plan.

This plan may well have included adopting Salesforce.com as somewhere to push your website collected customer data. But to really bring your service to life, an app accessed via a mobile phone goes a lot further than that. Build in the potential for real time collaboration through this mobile app and a lot of possibilities are open to you.  Here are a few examples:-

• A junior doctor could log patient information on his rounds and call for assistance from other relevant team members in real time. All the relevant data would be recorded against the patient, ready for the next shift.

• Car Insurance firms  – drivers could take photos at the scene of the accident, and get input at the scene of the accident from legal and/or mechanical specialists. The claim process would automatically go into motion.

• A college – students could collaborate with other students on joint assignments, while getting guidance, direction and grades from tutors.

With a Salesforce business app, each of these specific functions can be accessed by any mobile device, and all the data logged back direct to your Salesforce.com set up. But not just simple data inputted into fields – what you are getting is complex user generated session data, which can now interact with Salesforce directly, triggering automated workflows.

It’s not just for big businesses and computer coders anymore

It may well seem a distant dream for many SMB customers, or sole traders, to get access to this kind of technology. Surely having your own app built is the preserve of just big businesses?

What WordPress did for websites, ManyWho is doing for business apps

Back in the day, the same could have been said about websites, but then came along content management systems such as WordPress and changed everything. You could start with a template and use the building blocks available to add the pages and posts, determine the look and feel through widgets and style settings. You no longer needed to know how to write a single line of code. The same is about to happen for mobile business apps.

ManyWho are ex-Salesforce.com. They know the API through and through because they worked on the development, lived it and breathed it for many years (which is why the product they have delivered seems native to the platform). They recognised that the current app building process was code heavy, complex, and far too expensive and risky for many businesses to embark upon, let alone support once live.

The fact that ManyWho have received significant investment from Salesforce themselves, with Marc Benioff taking a personal interest in the technology himself is an indicator of the strength of the platform they are building.

That’s why they have built the equivalent of WordPress, but for mobile business apps. Using the same type of user friendly interface we’ve come to rely on for our websites, and the building block approach, ManyWho has made it possible for businesses to start building their own custom apps. You can simply drop and drag the blocks into place, adapting and testing as you go.

Apps while you wait

When ManyWho told us that their product made it possible to build an app while you watched, we had to challenge them to show us themselves. And more importantly show our Salesforce community in the SW at our user group Forcewest. So that’s what they did last night. Before the event, the ManyWho team gave our own Gary McGeorge a little preliminary coaching, and right there at the event, he was able to demo the simple app we had been able to build for ourselves. The app had one purpose – it allowed the audience to rate and comment on the various beers available on tap at the bar.  Here is what it looked like.

As you can see, the look and feel of the app is quite basic, but the functionality is all there.

“Just in the same way that you might configure your website on your CMS, then go to your web designer to pretty up the front end, the same is true of the business apps you can build with ManyWho. Retrofitting the nice looking user interface is simple and easy to plug in on top of the working parts,” 

Steve Wood, Co-Founder, ManyWho

Building your own Salesforce.com business app: key ideas to take away

• Make it really easy for your users to access what they need, on the move from their phone
• Building a business app for Salesforce.com has traditionally been complex and work-intensive
• ManyWho has developed what is effectively a user friendly front end for building your own app – clicks not code.
• This is a product developed by an Ex-Salesforce tech team, and is built with deep knowledge and understanding of the platform. In other words, it integrates brilliantly with the platform.
• This is where you build the functionality – you may still need some digital design expertise to pretty it up

If you were not able to make the event last night, but would like to find out more get in touch with Desynit or the guys at ManyWho – we’d be happy to chat. You can check out a demo of the ManyWho platform here on their YouTube channel, and it’s also possible to have a play with the functionality – click the free trial button on the ManyWho homepage.

Our next Bristol Salesforce User Group (Forcewest) meet up is scheduled for the 23rd January, and we’ll be posting details of the content for the evening very soon. If  you would like us to email you an invitation as soon as we have the details, please register for updates here.