Employees across industries are not only using their own mobile devices for work more than ever today, but are looking for their companies to provide useful tools that can better assist them throughout the typical workday. From communication tools to information-providing portals, a mobile workforce app can take on many different uses. However, the best are designed to empower employees in ways that are most effective for the company’s unique daily needs.

The following seven examples demonstrate elements of strong mobile workforce apps and can help you understand how to enable your employees with a strong and useful mobile application.

1. LGT SmartBanking

Private banking and asset management group LGT decided to provide their staff with a mobile workforce app that gave access to company services and customized information, leading to the creation of LGT SmartBanking. As a flexible mobile workforce app, SmartBanking was able to integrate with legacy systems and allow for long-term development and growth.

Why It’s Great: Employees are able to perform company services, view customer data, connect with upper management and carry out daily business needs, all from their mobile device. In addition, a public version of SmartBanking is available to customers, allowing them to perform any needed transactions on their smartphone and experience improved communication with LGT representatives.

2. Telx’s Security App

In order to better equip data center managers, Telx, an interconnection and data center company, developed a mobile app that allows employees to add contacts to a security database who are immediately synced with on-site security teams to allow entry at a moment’s notice.

Why It’s Great: Through the app, data center managers can quickly connect with on-site security teams no matter where they are, allowing for fast communication that supplements daily needs while aiding in company security. In addition, UX on the app can be redesigned and rearranged quickly in order to fit the experience of someone on the go and in need of quick, easy tools.

3. Coach Inc.’s CoachWeb

With more than 1,000 stores worldwide, Coach Inc. created CoachWeb, an employee intranet that improved connections between headquarters and stores, as well as within individual teams. By being accessible on smartphones, Coach’s employees could use CoachWeb to receive the latest news, receive information and provide feedback at a moment’s notice.

Why It’s Great: The combination of having more than 1,000 stores worldwide and dozens of employees in each store with their own daily needs meant that the easily accessible and informative CoachWeb could provide fast communication and information, no matter what an employee was doing. As such, Coach’s employees could be better equipped while work store floors and out of reach of the typical desktop company portal.

4. Tap My Back

Employees enjoy being recognized and supported in the workplace, but it can be difficult to provide that recognition in the modern workday. Tap My Back is designed as a motivation and recognition tool, which allows people to give online recognition to fellow employees and encourage positive workplace behavior in a simple manner to be seen throughout the company. While it also provides important team information, this workplace app was created to improve morale and give feedback in order to improve workplace culture.

Why It’s Great: Employee motivation and recognition can play a large role in a company’s culture and retention rates. Tap My Back is designed to leverage the ease of use and speed of modern apps to encourage employees to support one another and improve daily office morale.

5. Family Dollar’s Cash App

The ever-expanding Family Dollar chain of stores empowered their employees with the “Cash App” mobile workforce tool. This app provides district managers with quality surveys for each store that evaluate layout, merchandising organization, pricing, employee behavior, cleanliness and more in order to ensure every location is providing a pleasing customer experience.

Why It’s Great: The Cash App has completely replaced the manual paperwork process, which saves hours of data entry every week for more than 600 employees, resulting in a fast and effective return on investment.

6. Apple’s Bug Reporting App

Apple employees have exclusive access to many unique apps that are only available to them, which enable them to provide useful feedback and insights. The Bug Reporting app allows developers to provide detailed reports on any bugs they find, including test cases, screenshots and video.

Why It’s Great: Bug Reporting leverages the insights of individual developers to quickly find and address any potential bugs. The result is a catalog of bug reports that help the company quickly find and address potential issues before they become serious.

7. Red Robin’s Training App

In an effort to increase employee retention, Red Robin created a training app that encouraged its workers to consistently interact with the program and interface with the company to a higher degree. This was accomplished through games and simulations, such as scavenger hunts, that both trained and entertained for a higher employee satisfaction rate.

Why It’s Great: It has been shown that a more highly engaged employee will not only enjoy his or her job more, but will become more productive. Red Robin’s app helped the company achieve this and led to the creation of several customer-facing apps for the restaurant.

The Elements of Great Mobile Workforce Apps

While these seven mobile workforce apps each have their own unique focus on how to supplement the workday, they are all committed to empowering employees. From enhancing communications to providing needed information on the fly, each leverages the accessibility and ease of use found in today’s mobile devices in order to effectively meet and fulfill the daily needs of employees. Through careful planning and paying attention to the unique demands of their workforce, each of these companies have provided useful mobile workforce apps that improve day-to-day operations.