Businesses today rely heavily on technology to meet their business needs. From accessing your email to planning a project, the business world is fully integrated with technology, for better or worse. Most of us rely on our laptop, tablet or smartphone to keep us connected to our business when we are on the go. However, when connectivity fails, there can be major problems. Working with construction companies and contractors of all stripes we learned that offline access for JobFLEX, our contractor estimating app, would be a necessity. So, with that in mind, here are a few critical things to know about apps that claim to work offline.
Make Sure It *REALLY* Works Offline
For any mission critical apps, you need to know they provide *all* of the features to complete your task offline. If you’re deciding on an app that is an important part of your business or sales process, remember our checklist of questions from our post “What Most Software WON’T Tell You About Their Apps”:
- Can it create quotes offline? Get right to the heart of the matter from the start. If the answer is ‘no’, it’s time to walk.
- While in offline mode, can the estimate creator pull my labor and material pricing? Okay, so you promise a good connection — in the off chance that I don’t have one, can I still get access to the materials I need to provide an accurate estimate?
- If so, how does it pull them? Is it storing my pricing data on the device? Or will I still be relying on some sort of connection to grab what I need?
- What CAN’T the app do when it’s not connected to the Internet? Enough beating around the bush. Just tell me what I’ll be missing when I could be clinching the sale.
Benefits Of Being Offline
Occasionally you’ll see apps that gloss over offline features or don’t mention them at all. Truth be told, there are some major benefits to having apps that work offline.
- Increased productivity. If you’ve ever hopped onto a plane without Wi-Fi access you’ve likely run into a hiccup in your business activities. If you can’t access a document or review critical information without access to the web, you’re wasting valuable time. Our JobFLEX app allows you to review and generate quotes without access to Wi-Fi, and other apps like Pocket and Google Drive will allow you to sync and store data on your phone’s internal memory to keep you working away with or without internet access.
- Differentiate yourself from competitors. If, like many contractors, a significant amount of your business is “off the grid” it can be difficult to get a good cell signal. Rather than embarrassingly asking for your potential customer’s Wi-Fi password or waiting until you get back to the office, you can complete critical tasks on the spot providing an experience that competitors can’t match.
Things To Watch Out For
There are a few possible pitfalls to selecting online apps, though if you do your homework you can likely avoid any problems here as well.
- The first potentially troubling factor for some mobile devices can be storage. Many modern smart phones and tablets simply don’t provide much space which can be an issue if an app will be storing larger files like images locally.
- You’ll also want to make certain that if multiple users might be collaborating on a project or a file while offline, that the app has the ability to manage multiple versions or has some internal logic to stop work from being overwritten or deleted if and when the files sync back up to a server.
No matter where you’re working, in the digital age customers’ expectations are to get information immediately, and if you’re constantly asking them for their Wi-Fi password or you’re fumbling around trying to connect your air card to the web to get the data they need you’re more likely to start losing more and more business to competitors who chose their apps more wisely.
