App'ification of Enterprise Software - Evaluating Mobile App Characteristics Enabling Online Purchase And Their Portability To Enterprise Application Software

Enterprise application software vendors seek to re-produce the success story of consumer mobile apps in their domain. Like private users, business users ask for flexible, consumer-grade applications for their daily work. However, enterprise software applications do not meet those expectations and are not ready for the “App Store Model”. Therefore, IT departments are facing new challenges with consumerization and “shadow IT”. Practitioners and researchers expect to counteract these issues if enterprise software was more flexible and consumer-like – in other words, if enterprise software was app’ified. Therefore, this study investigates typical “app characteristics” from the business users’ perspective. Special focus is on the characteristics that are relevant for online purchases. Furthermore, it is evaluated if app characteristics can be applied to enterprise application software. To study the “app phenomenon”, a self-completion questionnaire and mainly quantitative data analyses have been used. The results are addressed to both IS researchers and practitioners. For IS research this study offers insights into the under-investigated topic of apps as an own concept. Enterprise software vendors and IT departments can use the results to design enterprise software which targets an employee-driven adoption using online channels or to assess existing applications and app store initiatives.