If you’ve got a smartphone, chances are you’ve encountered push notifications before. These are app specific notifications and can provide a cost effective way of sending messages or alerts to your users, prompting them to check the app or sending quick updates.

Used correctly, in a business context, this can be a powerful way for quick interactions with your application. These notifications can also be extended with further response context giving users a quick way of acknowledging the message or giving them direct links to further functions within the app.

Touch ID is a relatively new function on modern smartphones, and was first seen with the introduction of the iPhone 5s in September 2013. This allows users to authenticate themselves using their fingerprint, giving greater security to apps or enterprises looking to know a specific individual had looked at something.

This technology can be added into apps and could be used for any form of authentication, from logging into the app to providing a digital stamp to verify an individual had read something.

iBeacons are very small Bluetooth devices that you can normally attach to a wall, doorway, or any other location. These devices send out a signal that mobiles can detect to work out how far away they are from that specific location. iBeacons have been around for a few years now, but are only recently starting to make their way into more main stream usage. The majority of this adoption has been in consumer facing applications, but this technology has a very broad usage that businesses can take advantage of.

A beacon’s signal can be detected from a few inches or up to 70 meters away and an app can then trigger different behaviours depending on how far away you are from the specific location. The benefits that beacons bring over other location services such as GPS are that they work very well indoors (you don’t need to be able to see a satellite for them to work!) and you can make the location of the beacon very precise to give your users specific, context rich information.

Applications for this technology could include apps knowing specifically where users are in a room, for example walking around a museum and knowing which exhibit they were looking at, or logging staff coming in/out as they pass through a doorway.

GPS is something we’re all much more familiar with, this technology has become embedded in the heart of consumer navigation, but how can you use this within a business context? Allowing users to check in when they reach different locations, providing location tracking services and verifying users’ locations can be helpful starting points.

Businesses whose staff are often working in different locations can use this to help verify their location, or provide real-time updates for a centralised management team. This is often a technology that when used in conjunction with others can provide a powerful solution to work in a range of contexts.