Author posts Steven Rovito

In a sort-of recent article by the Chicago Tribune, it stated that American’s much prefer typing rather than talking. A generation that grew up in the age of technology is now finding that speaking to people can sometimes be more difficult then simply writing out a sentence. Sometimes reading cannot express sarcasm or feeling, but it has not stopped newer generations from hiding behind monitors.

Guestbook apps have grown in popularity in recent years as the standard for gathering information from potential clients. When considering that American’s like to type more than speaking, it makes sense. Would you rather tell the store attendant your complicated email, or quickly write it out on an iPad they handed you? Small businesses can use Guestbook apps to capture data from their clients as they are purchasing, allowing them to re-market to those clients without having to worry about the awkward “Can we have your email?” question. For entrepreneurs that are visiting trade-shows where potential business partners run around in abundance, a guestbook app could help to capture some of those clients name tags, and even sometime about them.

Snappii has taken this functionality to the next level. Using our lightning-fast platform, we can create a customized Guestbook app for a fraction of what it would cost to build it natively.

What exactly comes included in a custom guestbook app? Glad you asked.

Design

Building an app from scratch requires that even minute details go through a intensive programming procedure, and one that often has to be repeated multiple times throughout the app. In the programming world, nothing is easy, and all of those nuances are going to rack up the cost, fast.

Slight variations in design can also amount to a lot, especially if it’s a necessary feature that needs to be implemented quickly. Hiring native developers is already expensive, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the same team you got last time so that they can pick up where they left off.

Snappii platform makes this obstacle much easier to deal with. Simply send the requirements to the developers, we quote how long it will take (we quote by hour, not days or weeks), and development will start as soon as we receive payment.

Custom Data

Because Snappii maintains such a close relationship with it’s clients once development has started, any small changes to the app that are necessary before production can be implemented without much push-back. The ultimate goal is to make your life easier, and we want the app to reflect that once it’s finally in your hands and in use.

This data, however, is not any good unless it fits with your system. If you have a template or some skeleton that you are used to working with, there’s a good possibility we can export the data captured in the device into the file type you’re looking for. Spreadsheets and PDF’s are easy, but we’ve been known to do some other file types as well.

Professionalism

There’s no doubt that you are looking into creating a Guestbook app because a certain degree of prestige that comes from being able to give your potential partner an iPad with your name, logo, and questions on it. For small businesses, it eliminates the need to awkwardly ask for their information while the dialogue fumbles from a decent sales pitch to a rising regret. By giving them the tablet, you are giving them the power to say no without interrupting the flow of the normal interaction, thus helping you improve the experience for them, while gathering much needed data for you.

Snappii works (almost) day and night to assure that all apps are working properly, and that you have someone to rely on if they aren’t. Any minor changes you want to make to a form, or even if you just want to change the font, are all possible when utilizing the platform. Best of all, Snappii has the best prices in the industry, and is ready to meet your needs. Contact us at sales@snappii.com, or support@snappii.com, for a quote on your very own Sign-In Guestbook App.

Creating software for a company is difficult. A lot of people all knocking their heads together for months to create a solution that’s actually useful and not just pretty – and it can get expensive. However, mobile apps offer a unique solution that’s equally effective. By utilizing the tool that can already be found in your employee’s pockets (their smartphones), you can increase the efficiency of your projects overnight.

There’s a lot of noise on the markets. There’s more options than ever before, each with their own pricing models and features that are unique to their companies. Despite there being a lot of variety and innovation, it’s important to weigh your options before committing. Signing up with the wrong company could lead to time lost and wages that you won’t see a return on.

Snappii works differently than other app-shops. Instead of building an app completely from scratch, Snappii has developed a platform that allows developers to put together apps in a fraction of the time. This means faster turn-around times, lower prices and readily available prototypes within 48 hours. To see more information about Snappii, click here.

If you really are considering a construction application solution, here’s a few pointers to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.

What’s the point?

There’s probably a few reasons why you came across this blog. Maybe you saw that one of your competitors has this nifty tool that they can do work from on their iPads. Perhaps your done with having file cabinets take up all the space in your office. Or maybe you’re just trying to keep track of your team without having to call them all the time.

Personally, I think the best way to answer this is to remember who the app is for. Your team members are the ones that are going to be using the piece of software on a daily basis, so if anyone is going to give you accurate requirements on what exactly you need (and why you need it), it’s them. Do the field workers need voice dictation so that they don’t get slowed down by having to type? Do your data-entry people want a system that sends forms to a cloud? Write down everything you can get.

Each app builder is going to do things a bit different, so determining what you want you app to accomplish can help significantly with the next part.

What’s the focus?

Even a professional app shop would ask you what you expect from the final product of your app. Creating a thorough list of requirements can help alleviate some of the questions they’ll have, and help you out with planning for the long run.

Take note of what type of utility you’d like to see in the app, what type of functions employees will (and will not) have access to, and, of course, your budget. Even though Snappii is pretty lenient when it comes to requirements, even they need an idea of what you want when it’s all said and done.

Another thing to keep in mind is something that is often overlooked: how easy is it to use? Remember that the purpose of converting your crew into a digital solution is not for them to look flashy, it’s for them to do their job easier. Daily tasks like report logs or scaffolding inspcetions can take minutes. If using the app is more difficult then finding a pen and paper, your employees will still opt for the latter (and they won’t care that you spend so much money on it either).

In most cases, at least with Snappii, our apps revolve around a single form or two. Making something extravagant and complicated isn’t the goal, and it’ll help with keeping the cost of things to a minimum.

Support for everything

During the first week of converting your employees from paper to digital, there may be some resistance, more so if something goes completely wrong. If it does happen, you want to make sure there’s a system to help. If the app shop that you’re investigating has a support hotline, call it and see if like what you hear. Are they English speaking? Did they actually help you with anything? Take notes if you have to, especially since support won’t be available if you hire freelancers to create your app. It may not seem like a deal-breaker at first, but even the most sophisticated systems can have problems, and you don’t want to freeze your whole operation because the new toy doesn’t work.

These are just a few tips to get your feet wet about the entire process of converting over to mobile forms. For every company, things will be different. Snappii, a leader in mobile software technologies, is dedicated to helping you see your vision come true. With our industry defining mobile form creator, platform, and the ability to customize every aspect of your app, our team can provide a solution to you in less time and with less money than you can imagine. Click here to try out some of Snappii’s templates, or click here to send a quote to our sales team.

As a general contractor, the benefits of working on digital equipment come naturally to you. Your team has figured it out, and your secretaries can’t thank you enough for the time saved on the paperwork. It’s made your business take leaps ahead of the curve, and you took the opportunity to make sure you got into the market before it was too late.

Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, even if the general contractor is on-board with technology, there’s a chance that the subcontractor might not. Even worst, they may simply not understand it.

At Snappii, we’ve made it a point to make things as easy as possible. With things like app templates and custom-made features that you can just add to your apps with the click of a button, we believe in keeping things simple. Check out more about our editor here.

So how do you get your subcontractor to take a step back and see the bigger picture that technology provides? I’m not an expert by any means, but if you remember a couple of these things, I’m sure that you can convince anyone to join the dark(?)-side.

Make the transition as easy as possible

A lot of people, our users included, make the mistake of over-complicating things. Some of the proposals we get for apps seem out-right bananas. It’s as if the more features they cram into the app, the more useful it will be. While true, it also going to be exponentially more difficult to control. Keep everything to a minimum, and it’ll keep your contractors from asking too many questions.

Remember, the point of the app is to make things easier – make sure your subcontractor’s understand that. Many times, people are just accustomed to the way they’ve been doing things and they may feel negatively about trying out new things. Just be persistent and try your best to sell the benefits of using an app. If they know and understand it, they’ll want to use it too.

Provide the gear

Believe it or not, some people still don’t have a smartphone. I can’t blame them too much, with the majority of people having their heads constantly craned down and looking at a screen, I’d be a little tentative to sell my soul away to a piece of digital hardware too.

Jokes aside, there’s an easy way around having subcontractors who don’t have iPhones or Samsungs – supply them with tablets. It might be a heavy initial investment, but word of mouth is a heavy motivator. Another subcontracting firm might catch wind of the fancy contractor who uses iPad’s to make sure all of their employees are 100%, all the time. The good part is with a mobile app, it’s possible for very cheap.

Be helpful

Don’t get distracted by your own work when your first introducing your guys to this digital playground. Make sure your around to answer questions. As a User Interface guy, I can tell you right now that even if you make a perfect app, people will still have questions. Better to be ready for them, and if possible provide your employees with a resource for them to brush up on how to use the app if necessary.

In-case of emergency

And again, even with the perfect app, you’re bound to run into problems. Make sure that the app itself has your firm’s contact information in it, that way there’s no excuse for someone not having your number to let you know if something happened. Including resources directly inside of the app may be effective as well. Make it easy to access, and people will use it.

Construction is coordinating an orchestra with heavy machinery and spare hands.  The person that works on the electricity often doesn’t know how the plumbing works, and the same can be said for most elements that go into making any structure. However, you need to keep everyone updated at the same rate.

The problem is that the way we do this, usually by logs and forms, are primitive. Dragging a pen and paper out into a dirt field with rubble everywhere is asking for it to get damaged. Those papers then have to get transported to an office at the end of the day, where the information has to be put into a database that (hopefully) everyone in the crew can access. It’s a cumbersome process, with a lot of room for error on many different parties.

And yes, there’s mobile devices like phones and tablets. But those are almost useless in the workplace without an app. Software is what makes a computer into a tool, but creating that for a phone can quickly become a logistical nightmare. Accumulating a crew of coders and programmers, delivering your requirements and hoping they create something that you can actually use – it all turns into a gamble.

Snappii, a mobile app shop, aims to provide apps to it’s users by utilizing it’s proprietary platform to create apps. This allows Snappii developers to go through the app and quickly adjust it’s parameters, ensuring that the user is always up to the company’s requirements. Minuscule changes can take as little as minutes to adjust, and the most a major one will take is a week. Contact our sales team today or check one of our apps out in the app store.

The biggest reason you want everyone on the team using an app is obvious – communication is key. Having access to instant communication to anyone in the company can instantly clear up a lot of downtime most operations face. Here are some other reasons everyone on the team should have a mobile app:

Automatically save your work

One benefit of having a mobile app is that any reports sent through the app get recorded onto the Snappii website. Backing it up digitally means you can’t lose your work if you ever need it, and it’s much easier to find. You can implement tags so that you can find past reports by date or name.

This also eliminates the need to transfer the data from point A to point B so that it can be entered into a database. Since the information is being inputted digitally the first time, there’s no need to do it again.

Share work with other workers

As long as everyone’s using the same app, it’s extremely easy to show a user your own work. It gives a clean medium where the workers can collaborate and make notations on schematics without running the risk of ruining the original.

Works on All Platforms

With all the different operating systems floating around nowadays, it can be difficult to make sure everyone’s on the same page. We have Apple offering an operating system on both phones and desktops, and now even Windows is trying to join the forray with their proprietary devices and app store.

Because all of Snappii’s apps are generated right on their platform, it’s easy to push the apps as either Android, Apple or even HTML5 formats. And because it works on every system, you can make sure that every employee is looking at the same exact piece of software. This can help in a multitude of ways, including actually teaching your employees to use the software – a learning hurdle that every company has to go through when adopting these apps.

There’s many ways Snappii can help out your business with a mobile app. Even if you’re looking to use it more for marketing rather than actual functionality for your business, having a form can increase your productivity tenfold. To order a custom form through Snappii, click here. If you would like to enter the Snappii lab and try to make a form yourself, click here.

Buying software for your company can be a headache. If there aren’t ready-made solutions out there, developing one is often out of the pockets reach, and even more so if the company is pressed for time. Mobile apps offer a unique, but just as effective solution. By utilizing the tool that can already be found in a lot of your employee’s pockets (their smartphones), you can increase the efficiency of your projects exponentially.

It can be overwhelming to find the perfect mobile software for your company. There are more options on the market than ever before, with fluctuating prices and different business models that may not always deliver what you want. There’s a lot of variety and innovation – but you still have to be careful.

Snappii works a bit differently from other app-shops. Instead of building an app from scratch, we’ve developed a platform that allows us to put intricate (and simple) apps together in a fraction of the time. This means faster turn-around times, and extremely low prices. To see some more information about Snappii, check out our home page, or click here to send your requirements directly to sales.

If you really are considering a construction application solution, here’s a few pointers to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.

Why go through the trouble in the first place?

To be more efficient!

Still, it’s a tough question.  Perhaps you were just looking around and saw that a lot of competitors in your industry were converting to mobile solutions. Maybe you’re done with having file cabinets crowd up the office space and want to digitally index some of the paperwork. Or maybe you just want to keep track of your team.

Personally, I think the best way to answer this is to remember who the app is for. Your team members are the ones that are going to be using the piece of software on a daily basis, so if anyone is going to give you accurate requirements on what exactly you need (and why you need it), it’s them. Do the field workers need voice dictation so that they don’t get slowed down by having to type? Do your data-entry people want a system that sends forms to a cloud? Write down everything you can get.

Each app builder is going to do things a bit different, so determining what you want you app to accomplish can help with the next part.

Narrow down the scope

Before you even start your search, your idea has to be slightly fleshed out. Sure, you may have this list of requirements, but what then? Even a professional app shop would ask what you expect from your completed app.

Map out what type of utility you want the app to have, what type of function employees will be able to do with it and, of course, your budget. Although Snappii is usually pretty lenient when it comes to requirements, even we need a sort of baseline of what you, as the consumer, expects.

One thing to keep in mind too is something many overlook: ease of use. The purpose of converting your team to a digital solution is to alleviate some of the burden that goes into doing daily tasks like report logs. If the process of using the app is more difficult than finding a pen and paper, then it probably isn’t going to work out for neither you nor your employees.

The more concrete your list of requirements is, the easier it will be to find an app builder that works for you. In most cases, at least with Snappii, our apps revolve around a single form or two. Making something extravagant and complicated isn’t the goal, and it’ll help with keeping the cost of things to a minimum.

Support, support, support

It’s inevitable that during the first few weeks of converting from paper to digital, something is going to go wrong. When that happens, you want a support system there to help you with getting out of trouble. If the app shop that you’re investigating has a support hotline, call it and see if you like what you hear. Take notes on whether the support is 24/7, English-speaking and actually helpful. It may not seem like a deal breaker at first, but even the most sophisticated systems can have problems at times, and you don’t want your workflow to be at a standstill because of something that was supposed to make the job easier.

These are just a few tips to get your feet wet about the entire process of converting over to mobile forms. For every company, things will be different. Snappii, a leader in mobile software technologies, is dedicated to helping you see your vision come true. With our industry defining mobile form creator, platform, and the ability to customize every aspect of your app, our team can provide a solution to you in less time and with less money than you can imagine. Click here to try out some of Snappii’s templates.