Timesaving webinar on survey data collection

Time has great impact in the enterprise mobility continuum. Developing tools for mobile workers has long been the sole province of IT, but the demand for mobile apps is stretching IT to the breaking point. Demand for mobile apps is five times greater than IT capacity, according to one market study.

This makes many organizations reluctant to jump in to mobile development or to change traditional processes that aren’t broke — so why fix them? The trend also explains the emergence of zero-code app development platforms that can reduce a one-year IT backlog to a few hours. The equation changes when end users become “citizen developers,” allowed to create the custom apps by selecting features, interfaces from a menu of capabilities.

Zero code is being called both a game-changer and disruptive technology because it offers a new approach to mobile data collection, with new, easy-to-use technology to develop tools.

One such example is Terrago’s Magic, a zero-code development studio, which is growing both vertically and horizontally, with both directions responding to customer input.

GPS World readers and all other interested parties have an opportunity to learn more about these time-saving tools in a free webinar on May 25: How to Build Custom Trimble Apps for Any Industry with Zero-Code. See www.gpsworld.com/webinar for further details and immediate registration.

Participants will learn how to:

• Create custom mobile apps with your branding and selected features using a click-not-code app studio;
• Integrate your custom mobile app with Trimble GNSS and many other enterprise platforms;
• Publish to the AppStore, Google Play and the Cloud with the click of a button;
• Deploy cloud-based or private-hosted enterprise servers; and
• Reduce development costs by 90 percent.

Vertical growth comes through a software development process that generates a new version every 4-6 weeks, each with new features. Magic custom app development basically involves selecting workflow elements from a menu. Since anything with a menu is limiting by definition, TerraGo does not claim that Magic can be all things to all people. But as limitations are reduced with each version’s new menu, Magic is becoming more things to more people – and can complement less-limiting (if more time and money consuming) low-code app development organizations by reducing the strain on their IT departments.

Horizontal growth is coming through partnerships with companies such as CompassTools and Duncan-Parnell.    These firms have the vertical expertise to customize and deploy tailored solutions at speeds not achievable with traditional approaches.

CompassTools, headquartered in Denver, serves eight Midwestern states from Canada to Mexico with high-precision field data collection solutions. For many years Compass offered handheld GPS devices as the foundation of those solutions with great success. Still, the data typically required manual processing once the devices were returned from the field, introducing expensive delays. Now positioning, mobile and cloud innovations are reducing that time.

“We really believe that TerraGo’s approach represents an important part of the future data collection tools that our customers are going to need in the field,” said Andew Carey, an account manager with CompassTools.

“Because TerraGo apps provide direct integration with Trimble receivers, they can help us deliver the best of both worlds for customers with easy-to-use field apps and proven Trimble accuracy,” said York Grow, MGIS solutions manager at Duncan-Parnell.