36% of Construction Firms Used More Than 5 Mobile Business Apps in 2014

Survey indicates construction firms rapidly building and deploying multiple mobile business apps, and why they use them

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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, most prominently construction and contracting, field services, retail and distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, and government, and transportation & logistics.

“Construction firms are not only using multiple mobile business apps, but also building and deploying them to their mobile workforces faster than ever before – an indication that businesses of all sizes are shifting from expensive, resource-intensive custom app builds to cloud-based mobile business app solutions,” said James Quigley, CEO and co-founder at Canvas. “The survey results also reaffirm that when construction firms 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:

  • Construction firms using multiple mobile business apps – 36% of respondents indicated their organization used more than five mobile business apps in 2014, and a robust 23% of organizations used ten or more mobile business apps last year.   
  • Inspections, work orders most used mobile apps – When asked what business processes they used mobile apps for in 2014, inspections (61%), work orders (49%) and checklists (31%) were most heavily used.
  • For Box and Google Drive – 69% of businesses see value in integrating core business applications – such as Dropbox, Square, Salesforce, and Quickbooks – with mobile devices and tools, up 4% from last year’s survey. While Dropbox usage held steady at 58%, big gains were experienced by Google Drive (15% in 2013 to 31% in 2014) and Box (8% in 2013 to 15% in 2014). 
  • Image capture, signature capture most popular features –The 2015 survey tracked, for the first time, which mobile app features construction firms are using. Signature capture (64%) and image capture (60%) were most popular.

The survey of Canvas customers, conducted March 25th – April 7th, 2015, included companies from a broad range of industries and sizes. Of the respondents, 28% were from businesses with 500+ employees; 26% were from businesses with 101 to 500 employees; 19% worked at organizations with 26 to 100 employees; and 27% hailed from small businesses with 25 employees or fewer.

Canvas is a cloud-based software service that enables businesses to replace expensive and inefficient paper forms with powerful apps on their smartphones and tablets.

Read ForConstructionPros.com coverage of mobile apps for construction

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