While the vast majority of transport and logistics businesses are making use of employee-facing mobile apps, many face regular reports of problems from their workforce.

Research by UK mobile data capture specialist WorkMobile explored the rising case for no-coding app development. It revealed that 75% of CIOs in the transport and logistics sector have received complaints from end users about their apps’ functionality.

The two most commonly reported problems are that apps are not updated frequently enough (38%) and that they are not sufficiently tailored to employees’ needs and roles (25%).

Other widely cited complaints included apps providing a poor user experience (21%), being difficult to navigate (18%), not functioning in areas of low or no connectivity (15%), and only being available on company-owned devices (13%).

Exploring the reasons behind these issues, the report found that while 48% of transport and logistics industry CIOs were expected to enable employees to work remotely more easily, more than a third (34%) were also under intense pressure from other senior members of the business to adhere to restrictive budget constraints.

This has resulted in issues both when developing mobile technology in-house and when procuring third-party apps. According to the research, 38% of CIOs in the industry have experienced difficulties developing apps within a designated financial budget, while another 38% have found costs a problem when implementing off-the-shelf apps.

“Mobile apps can be a brilliant way to streamline operations and facilitate better remote working, particularly for field-based employees,” said Colin Yates, chief support officer at WorkMobile. “They can also help to make social distancing easier, by eliminating the need for certain employees to return to the office to complete paperwork.”

However, he said it was clear that in their efforts not to exceed tight department budgets, many transport and logistics sector IT teams were struggling to find and implement apps that truly made the end users’ roles and responsibilities easier.

“Developing apps in-house is time-consuming and costly and requires specialist expertise that many companies find it hard to source,” he said. “Equally, purchasing off-the-shelf can result in apps that don’t quite fit the requirements of the business. Newly emerging no-coding app builders offer a fantastic alternative that enable CIOs and their teams to quickly and easily build their own solutions that are specifically tailored to the needs of their employees and can be tweaked as needed based on feedback from employees.”