RESTON, Va. — Thirty-three percent of organizations used more than five mobile business applications in 2014, gaining thousands of dollars in annual cost savings, according to Canvas’ Second Annual Mobile Business Application Survey.

The Canvas 2015 survey was completed by more than 1,600 decision makers from a broad range of company sizes and industries that have historically relied heavily on paper forms and manual processes, including construction and contracting, home services, and more.

“Organizations are not only using multiple mobile business apps, but also building and deploying them to their mobile workforces faster than ever before,” said James Quigley, CEO and co-founder at Canvas. “The survey results also reaffirm that when organizations are able to easily share and learn from data collected via smartphones and tablets across the mobile workforce, the cost savings and productivity benefits can be significant.”

Key survey findings include:

• Organizations are using multiple mobile business apps — Two-thirds of respondents indicated their organization used 1-5 mobile business apps in 2014, and a robust 20 percent of organizations used 10+ mobile business apps last year.

• Organizations are saving money converting manual processes to mobile apps — Of those tracking their cost savings, 17 percent saved between $25,000-$100,000 annually switching to mobile apps, while 81 percent indicated cost savings between $1,000-$25,000.

• Mobile apps are still used most heavily for inspections and work orders — When it comes to specific tasks businesses are using mobile apps for, inspections (52 percent), work orders (35 percent), checklists (20 percent), and surveys (20 percent) remain the four most popular, as was the case in last year’s survey.

• Signature capture and image capture are popular features — The 2015 Canvas survey also tracked, for the first time, which mobile business app features organizations are using. Image capture (56 percent), signature capture (52 percent), workflow (23 percent), and GPS (22 percent) were most popular.

• Still demand to integrate core business applications with mobile — 64 percent of businesses see value in integrating core business applications (such as accounting and credit card processing) with mobile devices and tools, up 1 percent from last year’s survey.

For more information, visit www.gocanvas.com.

Publication date: 5/11/2015

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