Originally published on EnterpriseAppsTech on September 5, 2016

Are you tracking and testing the performance of mobile apps in your enterprise? If you aren’t, you shouldn’t even bother with apps.

Okay—so maybe that’s a little dramatic. But the main premise of the statement holds true: if you aren’t tracking the performance of your suite of mobile apps, you’ll never realise their full potential.

Time and time again, we’ve talked about how important it is to pair your mobile applications with a management platform that enables you to track key analytics; data about app usage, downloads, users, and productivity gains helps paint a picture of how your apps impact your bottom line. So too have we talked about how mobilizing key business functions makes it more likely that you’ll see significant productivity gains. And, as it turns out, a recent study from open-source software company Red Hat backs up our core assertions.

Red Hat’s 2015 Mobile Maturity Survey, released earlier this year, sought to uncover how large companies are using apps. What they found—fortunately—is that “almost everyone was using [KPIs] to see how their mobile apps are doing.” KPIs can measure everything from actual app performance—how often do your apps crash, and why?—to employee satisfaction with an app or apps. All throughout the spectrum, tracking performance enables you to make changes on the fly and keep employee satisfaction top-of-mind.

Interestingly, Greg Collins, founder and principal analyst at Exact Ventures, told CIO Online that also he sees tracking app satisfaction as a security measure. In essence, the happier your employees are with the apps you’re providing, the less likely it is that they’ll try to seek out their own (unsanctioned) solutions. Great apps prevent shadow IT usage, which is a definite positive.

From actual app performance to employee productivity gains and satisfaction, this Red Hat survey—and our experience working with countless companies—reinforces the idea that it is absolutely essential to have a system in place that enables you to measure app performance. It may sound obvious, but if you don’t have a pulse on how your apps are performing, you’re going to have a very hard time proving ROI down the road.

Dramatic statements aside, we cannot overstate enough how important it is to track app performance. However you do it, make sure that robust analytics—perhaps paired with KPIs as Red Hat suggests—are a central part of your enterprise mobility management strategy.