How do you enable employees on the move to access Enterprise Applications?

THE PROBLEM

With the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets by consumers, employees are more and more interested in using their own devices for work instead of the clunky ones mandated by their company. This has given rise to the BYOD trend and IT departments allowing employees to use their own devices for work. The challenge then becomes figuring out how to securely enable these personal devices as they access enterprise data. To manage and secure data, companies have adopted solutions that protect company information but also lock down the entire device.

Our client saw an opportunity to solve this problem through an application that created a secure workspace on employee’s personal devices. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, the company set out to make this vision a reality.

The intensely competitive enterprise mobility market required our client move quickly to capture the emerging market opportunity. To capitalize on the first-mover advantage, they had to design the solution as they built it, and quickly adopt to market trends and customer feedback. There were no Product Requirement Documents and limited visibility of milestones.

The market opportunity for a high-end enterprise grade app environment required a product that was not only secure, but also easy-to-use. To create an offering that stood out from the crowd, complex networking and security issues were needed to be solved.

To help resolve some of these technical issues and bring a great product to market fast, this start-up approached Innominds for help.

To solve these problems quickly and dynamically, Innominds needed seasoned professionals that had deep expertise in certain areas yet were able to understand all of the steps in the process to ensure the Team could respond rapidly. Innominds quickly assembled a team of specialized developers with 12-14 years of experience.

In past projects, Innominds found that experienced professionals were able to quickly understand each other’s abilities and organize themselves into a very productive team. With this understanding, the Innominds and client’s Teams created an optimal methodology that enabled them to respond quickly to project goals given the resources at hand.

This capability was vital in the process of developing and designing the product simultaneously. Innominds had limited visibility on what the final product would look like, but worked with the client as product ideas evolved and the path forward became clearer. To ensure that the project stayed on track, the Team implemented a number of successful tactics.

1. Replaced the weekly update with a daily status report
2. Adjusted working hours to accommodate two status calls per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon
3. Determined that before starting to code a feature, the team should have at least 70% clarity on it
4. Decided that code should be frozen before the testing team takes over
5. Created a live Wiki Page where all interactions between the client and Team were updated and documented. This documentation became an integral part of our collaboration strategy.

From what seemed like, at first, a seemingly chaotic situation, the Team was able to self-organize and emerge with an order that would prove effective and efficient.

SOLUTION

Along with the client team, Innominds delivered a better experience for employees using their personal devices at work. They were able to use a single mobile app to access all of their work applications and document repositories on any device they chose.

THE RESULT

With effective communication and constant interaction, we were able to become a strategic partner to our client, helping them better organize, plan and deliver their software more effectively and consistently.

This partnership also lead to the disruption of a software segment that was plagued with poor user experience and high cost by providing a solution that was easier to implement, cost less and was simpler to use. In fact, we at Innominds started promoting the solution to our other client, as well!