Ever since smartphones became available to the masses in the late 2000s1, the app has progressively made its way into our lives. Today, you may have started off with a hot cup of coffee and your digital newspaper subscription on your tablet. Maybe, you already went for a little run before work, checking your distance and your performance on your smartwatch. Or you used your fitness app for some yoga or Pilates to get going with the day.
By far, it likely does not stop there. As much as we use apps for a million things in our private lives, we may come across a vast number of apps and software tools at work, too, especially at office jobs. The apps we use at work can be divided into different categories.
On the one hand, we have apps that help us with organizational matters at the workplace, typically referred to as productivity apps or productivity software. These apps help us to get organized, increase effectiveness, easily access databases, avoid losing or wasting time and much more. Productivity apps may include apps to record the own working times, tools for project and task management, to do lists, streamlining workflows and more.
Then, there are apps to improve the communication and collaboration between colleagues, project teams and customers. Over the last decades, businesses have become so internationally intertwined, with team members sitting across borders, a remote workforce and travelling sales representatives.
Communication apps have a positive influence on the workforce staying connected with each other, as well as being in contact with the customers. Making phone calls via softphone from any device, being able to see the colleague by means of a video call, flexibly participating in hybrid or virtual meetings, sharing the contents of your screen with others, checking the presence status, or sending a quick chat message for tiny questions are just a few of the features which communication apps have to offer. Depending on the industry, apps and specialized software may also be used to cover the varying needs of different markets, improve customer services, to keep customers committed (e.g. with loyalty programs) or to provide better support mechanisms.
We have become so accustomed to the apps we use on a daily basis and to the rapidly growing range of available apps that we oftentimes no longer think about the enormous impact these sophisticated technologies have in our lives.
The advantages seem endless – for the individual as well as for businesses.
For all the advantages that come with the increasing use of (mobile) apps in private and work-related areas, there are also security risks associated with apps.
This situation is surely familiar to you: You just downloaded a new app onto your mobile device. Now, you are amazed at the permissions and access rights to your device information you must grant in order to run the app. Recklessly allowing access without giving it one more thought is rarely a sound idea. It may result in data mining – the collection of large amounts of personal data. In a business sense, data is highly valuable and the analysis of large lumps of data are of great interest to consumer-oriented markets with target groups. This can turn into a big risk if personal information or confidential business intelligence gets into the wrong hands and becomes available to untrustworthy 3rd parties.
In the digital age, cybersecurity is critical to companies, especially with the number of cyber-attacks reaching new heights each and every year. Once an attack has occurred, the financial loss for businesses is tremendous. The growing mobility, increasing use of digital technologies and trends such as BYOD (bring your own device) require the implementation of security measures and mechanisms to keep the business network safe, and intruders as well as hackers at bay. Best practices for mobile app security may include - amongst others - data encryption, secure APIs and regular updates and patches which address vulnerabilities.
innovaphone offers a smart work and communication solution with its expandable myApps platform. Users profit from an ever-growing range of business apps, productivity apps, and apps to communicate and collaborate with – available to system admins via the innovaphone App Store. The myApps client provides the user-friendly and intuitive interface to the various apps. It is either installed on the end device(s) or can be accessed directly via the browser. The open platform architecture of myApps further enables app partners to develop own apps for the myApps ecosystem, profiting from the innovaphone SDK (Software Development Kit) with all necessary build tools. Partners have the opportunity to market and distribute self-developed apps via the established innovaphone sales channel.
innovaphone solutions can either be set up in the cloud or on premises (rental / purchase), on innovaphone VoIP gateways – no additional servers required. When opting for on-premises operation, all data remain in-house, adding extra security. The entire innovaphone product portfolio is always in conformity with GDPR, and stands for digital security “made in Europe.”
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