RMAD

  • IoT for Agriculture: Optimizing the Mobile User Experience for Farmers

    Smart Phones. Smart Homes.
    Why not Smart Livestock Management?


    Cows standing in a pastureIn the Feb 18, 2015 Forbes article, “The Future of Agriculture? Smart Farming,” contributing author Federico Guerrini wrote “The agricultural sector is going to face enormous challenges in order to feed the 9.6 billion people that the FAO predicts are going to inhabit the planet by 2050: Food production must increase by 70% by 2050, and this has to be achieved in spite of the limited availability of arable lands, the increasing need for fresh water (agriculture consumes 70 per cent of the world's fresh water supply), and other less predictable factors, such as the impact of climate change, which, according a recent report by the UN could lead, among other things, to changes to seasonal events in the life cycle of plant and animals.”


    Guerrini wrote further, “One way to address these issues and increase the quality and quantity of agricultural production is using sensing technology to make farms more "intelligent" and more connected through the so-called "precision agriculture" also known as ‘smart farming’.”

    This is the problem Outsource Technical Concepts is addressing with AgVis, their precision livestock monitoring solution. And they are doing so with ViziApps for the mobile app.

  • Mobile-first apps help put back-end data in the hands of field service workers

    Is any part of your company’s business based on serving customers in the field? You’re likely challenged with how to enable your field service personnel with the right tools and information to make certain they are productive, efficient, and deliver quality service to ensure customer success.

    There are millions of field technicians employed in service industries worldwide. The number is expected to grow.

    Optimizing mobile worker workflow and real-time data capture and reporting increases productivity and efficiency. Platforms like Quickbase make it easy to create desktop solutions that streamline these processes supporting on-premises workers, capturing real-time data and improving company operations.

    Your field service employees need to execute their workflow in concert with your in-office personnel, but they don’t need the weight of a web-based solution. They need to have secure access to the same data sources (cloud and/or on premises) and business workflows but focused on their specific needs. The mobile app shouldn’t be just a mobile dashboard or responsive-mode client to a cloud-based or on-premises server application. It needs to be designed for mobile-first. These task-specific apps work in conjunction with and complement the in-office, web-based solutions.

    With ViziApps, mobile-first apps can have access to cloud and on-premises databases including SQL Server, MySQL, 35 other SQL databases, Quickbase, Google Sheets, and even PTC ThingWorx and AT&T IoT data. Through the use of mobile-first apps developed using ViziApps, key business process information is updated and stored for ready access by on-premises workers. And these mobile apps can contribute device-accessed data such as photos, barcode scans, and GPS geo-location which can be used in real-time in the mobile app workflow logic.

    Mobile-first apps developed using ViziApps with Quickbase can also provide your field service technicians with support for offline operations in poor connectivity locations. New or changed data is automatically synchronized and updated when the technician is back online.

    The benefits are clear. Learn more by viewing our tutorial videos

    Try ViziApps Studio for yourself with this Free Trial.

  • No Code Platforms Give Rise to the Mobile Citizen Developer


    Business use of mobile apps is exploding and with good reason. As a result, many mid-market and enterprise companies now need dozens to hundreds of business workflow mobile apps for their workers. These mobile apps can yield big benefits in cost reduction, increased productivity, and worker job satisfaction.

    But many of these organizations can’t keep up with the demand for a high number of custom-coded mobile business apps. It’s simply too costly and takes too long to go the custom-coding development route.

    And in many cases, it’s not necessary to use custom coding, because new Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD) platforms empower citizen developers who have just modest technical skills to create robust mobile apps for a fraction of the time and cost of custom coding. Gartner Research predicts that by 2022, 70% of software interactions in enterprises will occur on mobile devices and that more than half of all business-to-employee (B2E) mobile apps will be created by enterprise citizen developers using code-less tools.

    Forrester Research projects the market for such citizen developer mobile no code/low code platforms will grow to $15 billion by 2020.

    This is a big deal.