How to Develop an Enterprise Fleet Management Mobile App?
The transportation and logistics industries have seen major setbacks in the past two years, but things seem to be a lot better now. With the coronavirus receding around the world, it is best to plan ahead and get your own enterprise fleet management mobile app to manage your business. We have built various solutions for different fleet management needs and offer the best apps and fleet software in the industry.
Today we will be discussing all the aspects you need to think about when getting an enterprise fleet management app developed. You can follow the below steps to reach your goal of successfully getting the app developed. Each step holds specific relevance in the app’s development and briefs you about how to develop the fleet management app. Let’s get started without wasting any more time.
How To Develop an Enterprise Fleet Management Mobile App?
Step 1: Making a List of Features
The true differentiator for your enterprise fleet management app would be the features you plan to offer in it. You need to include various must-have features in the app, and there’s one feature that you think would be your USP. Making a choice in what to include your app will heavily affect the overall development time and cost and even your app’s market position in the long run. Below is a list of features most associated with good enterprise fleet management mobile applications.
Route Planning
The most important feature of an enterprise fleet management app has to be route planning capabilities. Not only would it save time and fuel costs, but it also helps manage your fleet much better than before. You can foresee almost everything with applied analytics and always stay two steps ahead of what closely even ‘might’ occur.
You can easily avoid congestions, plan efficient routes, avoid delays, and more when you opt for route planning in your enterprise fleet management app. Most good enterprise fleet management apps would include this feature, and you should do that too. Make sure you get the best of it by asking your mobile app development what you specifically want in this, as this will help you make your business more efficient.
Geo-Location and Tracking
Geo-location enables an array of utility and efficiency improvement features like tracking, geo-fencing, congestion avoidance, and more. Real-time tracking of all the features stays the most important, be it for customers or as an operating fleet management business. With the help of GPS, you will be able to track all the vehicles in your fleet right in your mobile app.
The third-party integration of APIs for GPS depends on your choice, but the features you want to implement come as a part of development over and above. Your mobile app development partner would be able to implement anything you want based on live location if you choose this feature. It goes without saying, this is one of the must-have features in an enterprise fleet management app.
Behaviour Tracking
Using simple onboard devices, you can implement the feature called behaviour tracking. This feature enables you to know the driver’s behaviour inside out, in real-time, all the time they are driving. Things like acceleration, braking, consistency, and other factors affecting the driving part can be monitored and tracked using the behaviour tracking feature.
Within the app, you will be able to find the best possible drivers; thanks to advanced analytics, your mobile app developer can integrate with the app. You can filter the data out per your requirements and set notifications in case the driver is posing rash behaviour. We can implement behaviour tracking in your app the way you want, and you will be able to use it as convenient.
Vehicle Management
Vehicle management is a major part of a fleet management app. You would get the entire vehicle status and management functionality right in your phone app, and you will be able to configure it all. The OBD you choose will enable functionalities like monitoring even the tyre pressure, enabling you to know the vehicle’s exact condition at all times.
With vehicle management options, you can also keep track of wear and tear and schedule repairs and service appointments for your entire fleet. Through this functionality in your app, you will be able to handle your fleet much more easily and avoid disasters of vehicle breakdown and delays. As an investment, a data-based maintenance plan can also reduce wear and tear to varying degrees.
Analytics and Insights
A mobile app would make management and operations simpler and help you make them more efficient through data-driven analytics and insights. You can also choose between technologies like IoT and AI to further improve the operations and management of your fleet. We have implemented various enterprise fleet management apps with new-age technologies, with a major increase in the efficiency of businesses.
You would need to find professionals for it, and this feature is usually tough to implement as it is. As an experienced mobile app development company, we know the inside outs of analytics and insights, but going with other development options might not be a good idea. Only implement this feature if you are able to find quality developers who can create an app compliant with analytics and insights best practices.
Step 2: The Development Part
Before even considering developing an enterprise fleet management mobile app, you need to figure out the basics. The features, the team you would require, the type of app you would build, and more. In usual cases, your app development company would consult you for it, but since knowledge never hurt anybody, it is better to go in with experience.
The major decisions you would be making include:
The Platform for Mobile App Development
Native applications: Separate native applications for iOS and Android users. Both applications are developed separately and cost higher in most cases. The major benefit of Native applications is the flexibility, customisation options, and high performance.
Cross-platform application development: Apps built by reusing the majority of code, cross-platform applications work on most platforms with basic tweaking. You will be saving major costs here; the general compromises include a similar but lesser performance than Native apps, fewer customisation options, lesser flexibility. But you would rather save in the long term, too, specifically in maintenance and versioning costs.
Choosing Team Members for Enterprise Fleet Management App’s Development
A perfect team is what breaks or makes your application; they are the ground workers to build a reliable and high-performance application. Contrary to widespread belief, hiring only the developers isn’t going to work. There are briefly 5 types of experts you would need onboard in your app development team; their expertise and experience are for you to choose from. As the scale of your application rises, you would need more experts to do the job. Mostly you would need:
- A Project manager
- Native or Cross-platform app developers
- UI/ UX experts
- QA and testers
- Digital marketers
Technology Stack
Even with technological expertise, you might be needing professional help in this department. There are 100s of different technology stacks to choose from, and only an experienced mobile app development company will be able to guide you with the best. The majority of your application’s success depends on this point, and you should do thorough research before choosing your technology stack. Below are some of the most popular technologies used for developing a mobile app.
Native App Development
- Swift (iOS development)
- Android Studio (Android development)
- Cross-platform app development
- React Native (Cross-platform development framework)
- Flutter (Cross-platform development framework)
- Ionic (Cross-platform development framework)
- Xamarin (Cross-platform development framework)
Data analytics tools
- Python
- Java
- Amazon EC2
- Amazon S3
- Kafka
- Scala
- Amazon VPC
- Amazon EMR
- Apache Impala
Utilities
- Elastic Search
DevOps
- Chef
- AWS CloudFormation
Databases
- Aerospike
- MongoDB
- Cassandra
- HBase
- MySQL
- Postgre
Step 3: Who to hire?
Setting Up Your Own Team
This is the costliest way to get your app developed; you would be paying for office space, company expenses, and salaries for hiring permanent employees. It is only recommended to set up your own team if you are building an app scaled to be used by millions of users. Otherwise, you would just be splurging money for no exact benefit. If you are too keen to, you can create a hire per a hybrid model by only employing managers and hiring a company or freelancers for the actual development.
Hire Freelance Developers
Hiring freelancers is one of the cheapest options to get a mobile app developed, but looking at the complexity of a fleet management app, it is not highly recommended. There are downsides to hiring freelancers too, which mostly include untimely delivery and unprofessionalism in rarer cases. Hiring freelancers would work best when you have your management team already set up and have time on hand to compensate for delays.
Hire a Mobile App Development Company
Hiring a mobile app development company turns out to be the best possible solution to all the problems. You would only be paying a slight premium compared to freelancers and would still get all the benefits. Most mobile app development companies are professional in that sense. They deliver the app on time, charge you lesser, and employ some of the industry’s most experienced mobile app developers.
Recommended Read – How to Develop a Real-Time Public Transport App?
Are you Ready to Develop Your Enterprise Fleet Management App?
We at Matellio help businesses improve their efficiency by building app and software solutions. Our fleet management solutions include various software and mobile apps, and you can choose the one you wish. We offer competitive prices, along with our commitment to perfection and timely delivery of your mobile app. If you are looking for a perfect fleet management mobile app, get in touch with us, and we would be happy to help you.
