Tan Kin Lian - Perspectives Organizations should avoid developing their own apps
I have more than 50 apps on my mobile phone. Most of them are not necessary.

The wasteful ones are the apps developed by government agencies and the commercial companies, such as those that provide banking, telephone, utility and other services.

Each of these organizations provide an app that requires me, as the user, to download the app and to manage the services. I do not need to manage the services often, so an app is wasteful and troublesome to use.

These organizations already provide a website. It would be easier for me to log into the website to view my statements and to manage the services on the website.

I only need the app to provide the authentication to use the website services. I have to login with my ID and password, and then authenticate it with my mobile phone.

These organizations should use a common authentication app, such as SingPass or google authenticator. They should not provide a separate app for their own authentication.

I often receive an email to remind me about an invoice that I have to pay. The email ask me to view the invoice with the app provided by the organization. It is usually troublesome and difficult to view the invoice.

Furthermore, this standard method adopted by these organizations have resulted in many scams that have occurred in Singapore. As the customers are confused, the scammers were able to exploit their confusion to scam the customers.

I prefer to click on a link to a website and then view the invoice at the website of the organization with the authentication app on my mobile phone.

These organizations could save a lot of their development budget, as they do not need to develop a separate app to manage their services. They can provide the services from their website. The webpages can be made mobile friendly.

If our organizations adopt the approach that I suggested, it will be easy for their customers, and will also avoid the scams that have occured.

Tan Kin Lian



 

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