The plan to introduce an employee app is a challenge for many companies. In our article, we explain how to gather the requirements for an employee app and what to look out for. If you approach each topic step by step and take our recommendations into account, you will form the ideal basis for your own employee app.
Topics for requirements of employees App
Classify the various requirements of your employees App into subject areas. This provides you with a structured overview and enables you to more easily allocate tasks that arise.
Features & functions
The decision to introduce an employee app is usually based on a specific core problem. These problems can be solved through certain features and functions. So start by figuring them out and formulating them. How do you want to solve this problem? You don’t necessarily need definitive answers for this, as the provider can help you find them based on their expertise & experience.
If you want to encourage internal communication, for example, various providers offer you a wide range of features to choose from. Be it the classic chat, the sharing of news and notifications or, as with Polario, the social feed. There are numerous solutions here that you may not even be aware of. However, as long as you thoroughly formulate the core problem, it will be much easier for you to determine the appropriate requirements for your employee app.
Compliance
Particularly topics such asdata protection and data security are of great importance, not only legally, but also socially. Accordingly, the fulfillment of these requirements of an employee app should be an elementary component. Pay attention to security guidelines for passwords, audits and certifications. An example would be certificates for ISO guidelines or also for climate neutrality, which we as plazz AG possess.
Especially in the context of the GDPR, legal requirements for an employee app are indispensable. These include, among other things, the server location and which systems the processed data passes through. An area that is often underestimated is accessibility. There are a plethora of reasons that make an app difficult to use. So also take a look at the extent to which you make your employee app more accessible to any person.
Handling
For the requirements of an employee app, handling is also an essential component. For example, do you have older or less tech-savvy people in your company? Then you should make sure to formulate texts and terms as simply as possible or make sure that a kind of tutorial is part of the employee app requirements.
In connection with this, it is also important that your provider offers comprehensive support and service. This is because individual handling problems can be quickly identified and resolved via this. Also make sure that the employee app is available across different platforms (iOS, Android & web).
But not only the frontend (the app itself) should be easy to handle. It is equally important to ensure optimal handling of the backend, i.e. the content management system behind the app. Another part of the requirements of an employee app should therefore be how to manage the CMS and fill it with content. It is also very important here whether this is possible work autonomously with it and to what extent.
Flexibility
Flexibility as a requirement of an employee app can be divided into several areas. One would be the form of graphical customization of the app platform itself. How can colors be changed, how much can you customize the layout. Because it is important that your employee app adopts your company’s corporate design and reflects this towards the workforce.
Another point is the realization & communication of content. Determine how quickly you need to get certain content or features. In addition think about, how you will share it with your workforce. It’s best to assign priorities for different features.
The third thing to mention would be ongoing development. An important part of the requirements of an employee app can be how flexible your provider is for changes and custom developments. If you have internal databases, it should also be clarified whether an API is available. This, of course, depends on the extent to which you need any customizations. Nevertheless, you should already think about this in advance.
Specification sheet for the requirements of an employee app
In order to present the collected requirements for an employee app in a structured and clear manner, it is advisable to use a requirements specification. The rough structure of a specification sheet consists of the baseline situation, the project goals, and the various requirements to achieve them.
In order to capture the baseline situation in the best possible way, you need to perform a detailed as-is analysis. This also applies to the project goals. For this purpose, you should not only follow the input from management, but also include feedback from the workforce, i.e. the actual people who will use your employee app later on. This way, you’ll find out if you define features as a requirement of the employee app that will be used or needed at all. Stick to the core problem and expand the scope from there with various other features step by step.
The traditional specification sheet
Creating a specification sheet is not an easy task, and it also takes quite a bit of time. Normally, the individual requirements of an employee app are listed here in detail. However, this level of detail can be a hindrance, especially during the request for proposal phase. That’s why we recommend creating the requirements specification in two stages.
In general, you write down concrete ideas in your specifications. What function must be given and how should it look and behave. One advantage of this method is that the supplier knows exactly what your requirements are. If he can also fulfill them, this is the ideal scenario. But especially in software development such scenarios are rarely the case. The disadvantages of this are a long creation process, since your special requirements must first be individually realized. This exact realization is in turn associated with high costs. In addition, you have to be wary of vendors who give you promises about functionalities that are difficult or impossible to implement.
The light version of a specification sheet
We advise you to create a kind of “light” version of your specification sheet. Or rather to use this as a basis for the actual specification sheet. In this case, you do not have to lower the requirements of an employee app, but only put less focus on them.
Let’s take the chat feature as an example. You don’t have to go into great detail describing what the chat looks like, what exactly you can do, or what each item is called. Describe roughly what it is supposed to achieve. In this case, direct communication via chat. If you have certain requirements that are indispensable, they should be included, of course. If the transfer of files via chat is absolutely essential for you, it must be included as a priority. However, you can place other requirements in a lower priority level or omit them. After all, you may not even be aware of some features that a provider has developed and that could be of interest to you. If you describe your plans relatively roughly, a vendor can project its developments onto your use case much better.
Other advantages are that you not only have more vendors to choose from, but you can realize the actual project faster. This way, you work together bit by bit through the requirements of the employee app. The lower acuity of your level of detail also means more already-developed features for you to consider, resulting in little to no custom development. Accordingly, this comes with a reduction in potential costs.
Of course, a light version of the specification sheet does not only have advantages. A 1-to-1 realization, as in the traditional version, will not be possible. Especially since some functions may not be feasible or compromises have to be made. Prioritizing the various requirements of an employee app is therefore particularly important.
If you still have questions about the requirements of an employee app and the specifications or concrete ideas for the realization of a project, please contact us! Our experienced team in sales, customer support and development has already successfully implemented and accompanied hundreds of projects, from large to small.
Employee App
Increase the communication in your company with the help of an employee app and reach everybody directly & independent of their location.
