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10 Mobile Business Apps Target Analytics, Productivity and More


  • The soaring use of mobile devices in the enterprise has created a climate for innovation around mobile development, device management, security and productivity enhancement. Entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this climate to launch new products and companies for the B2B mobility market. Among this intrepid bunch, the following 10 companies are working on new and innovative ways to build a better enterprise mobile infrastructure.

  • COMPANY: LIA

    MISSION: To align messaging between marketing and sales divisions through greater mobility synchronicity.

    PRODUCT: LIA Platform

    LIA aims to better prepare in-the-field sales staff to make sales by synchronizing data in the cloud through its platform, which offers digital asset management, mobile publishing and curated content. Analytics and other data are accessible by mobile devices as well as desktops through a special app.


  • COMPANY: DoubleDutch

    MISSION: To link employees in a social network tailored specifically for an enterprise-sized corporation.

    PRODUCTS: Hive, Flock and Pride

    DoubleDutch takes the essential format of CRM platforms and gives it more of a social media flavor. Sales reps can add photos of worksites or customer locations, and corporate management can send information on the fly. Its sales CRM product, Hive, links directly with Salesforce or stands on its own. The Flock app aims to get the most out of every conference, letting attendees leave comments quickly, without broadcasting every company secret over Facebook. DoubleDutch's broader-based social networking app, Pride, lets employees in the field share information with each other and with the corporate office.


  • COMPANY: Catavolt

    MISSION: To create a secure pathway between any enterprise data system and any mobile device.

    PRODUCT: Extender

    Formed by a group of displaced IBMers, Catavolt Extender streams data from any enterprise data source to mobile devices without necessitating infrastructure changes to the enterprise network. Users can tap into the corporate network, streamed in real time without caching, replication or storage, while still using custom, native applications on their mobile devices. Data access can be centrally managed with an online control panel. It will even automatically import corporate user profiles from Active Directory.


  • COMPANY: MobileSpaces

    MISSION: To offer a BYOD app management system that protects user data and privacy at the same time.

    PRODUCT: MobileSpaces

    With the MobileSpaces platform, enterprise clients are able to assemble an online app store unique to the company. The employee is served at the native, local and offline level. Personal apps can be segregated on the user’s device and aren't carried up into the MobileSpaces platform. In the screenshot above, all of the apps with a MobileSpaces badge on the upper left of the icon are delivered through the platform.


  • COMPANY: Base

    MISSION: To provide a CRM product that “doesn’t suck.” Intended to boost productivity and empower the sales force.

    PRODUCT: Base

    A mobile productivity, sales and metric platform with a colorful GUI, Base seems to shine the brightest on a tablet, which gives sales reps more space to drag and drop items for a customized user experience. All customer interactions are intuitively filed, keeping information separate. The software will generate reports on the fly and schedule reminders for follow-up calls and other events.


  • COMPANY: PlanGrid

    MISSION: To keep track of blueprints or other technical drawings as they're used and changed across various mobile devices.

    PRODUCT: PlanGrid

    PlanGrid is meant for construction professionals who carry paper blueprints into the field. With the software, blueprints or other technical drawings can be uploaded into the cloud in PDF format. From there, staff can make notes and changes on the drawings with tablets, especially iPads.


  • COMPANY: Domo

    MISSION: Domo is an executive management system delivered as PaaS. The goal is to deliver business intelligence to mobile devices in a way that’s meaningful to users.

    PRODUCT: Executive Management Platform

    Delivering BI visualization to most mobile platforms, Domo provides an interface that can collect data from CRM, HR, financial or resource planning systems, and correlate data into a browser-based view usable by BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The back end can serve the data up to thousands of devices simultaneously.


  • COMPANY: SimpleCrew

    MISSION: To help grass-roots marketing, issue-oriented canvassing, fundraising or any other street-level team better coordinate their efforts.

    PRODUCT: SimpleCrew

    Available at different levels, the pricing is keyed to the number of members on the crew as well as the amount of cloud storage allocated to the account. The core product makes it easy to take photos and share them with other mobile users. Pricing runs from $20 to $180 per month.

    The product was born out of early grass-roots marketing campaigns in which the SimpleCrew founding members were stymied by the difficulty of collaborating, sharing photos and keeping one another accountable while in the field. The app offers stylish interface speeds and organizes the process of uploading photos and sharing intelligence on the ground.


  • COMPANY: Apperian

    MISSION: To empower enterprise BYOD with a broad mobile application management platform.

    PRODUCT: EASE: Enterprise App Service Environment

    Apperian's mobile application management platform coordinates Apperian or third-party back-end modules with end-user interfaces to give enterprises a better handle on their mobile app management. The scalable platform can be used for crowdsourcing, email provisioning, building an in-house app store, and some app and device security, including remote wipe.