One of our initial customers, Shikshanjali Edutech, recently on-boarded their partnering NGOs on the MMN platform. We captured our journey of onboarding Shikshanjali and partners on the platform as an independent Network of NGOs. Shikshanjali aims to work with NGOs to improve the standard of education provided in the government schools. Working with multiple organisations, Shikshanjali leadership requires to monitor and assess the progress of each NGO in the programme.
Custom B2B apps for Social Sector
To measure progress made over a span of 6 months to a year, it’s important to record daily activity. We designed an iOS app to capture ground activities. These ground activities are consolidated into a report and sent to the to Shikshanjali Edutech leadership every week.
The purpose and the workflow of this app were subject to the organisation, hence it did not make sense to publish this app on the App Store for all iOS users. Instead, it should be available to Shikshanjali Network users only. Post research we figured that Apple has a process to build and distribute custom B2B applications. Apps developed by third party developers (associated with apple developer program) can be distributed on a privately maintained app store via the Volume Purchase Program.
Volume Purchase Program for iOS
Volume Purchase Program(VPP) is a part of Apple Deployment Programmes, enabling developers to build and distribute custom B2B applications to organisations via a privately maintained App Store accessible only by the organisation members. We found a guide on their marketing website that helped us understand the process for enrolment and distribution.
To begin the process we required the organisation to be registered on the VPP. It follows a stringent verification process, verifying the authenticity of the organisation and the person registering the organisation on the VPP.
App Distribution with iTunes Connect
Developers registered with Apple Developer Program can distribute B2B apps via iTunes Connect. For this developer require the Apple ID that was used to create the VPP account for the organisation. This document illustrates the entire process for developers to distribute apps via iTunes Connect. We created a record for the application on the App store and did the same. The app release follows the same review processes that it does for the App store on iTunes Connect.
Getting your unique B2B application on MMN
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