Custom application development is an area that can boost your office’s productivity while shaving expenses. You may already have an IT infrastructure in place, and you may not yet be willing to completely forego it in favor of the cloud—and that’s OK. For right now, let’s talk about how a cloud-based custom app can help your current infrastructure run more smoothly and productively.
Let’s say you want to implement a knowledge database, posting it to your Web site so that all of your customers can quickly and easily find answers to their questions. The goal of this is to empower customers, drive traffic to your website and capitalize on upselling opportunities, and to free up customer service agents who may be spending valuable time answering FAQs. While you could purchase a boxed software solution to do this, you will also have to upgrade your servers. You’ll have to install the software across the company, and you may need to train employees on how to input data. All of this means a lengthy rollout—and lost revenue in the meantime.
Instead, you could contract with a content management Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, to use a cloud-based app that requires no installation, no physical maintenance, no licensing fees, and no complicated training period. These types of apps are pay-as-you-go, user-friendly, scalable and customizable. The application development process may seem daunting, but it can be easily broken down, and in the end you’ll have a system that better meets your needs than software you buy shrinkwrapped.
Practical Application:
BOK Financial had gone through a number of mergers and acquisitions, which meant that their information systems were a jumble of different training programs, front-end information systems and CRM processes. They needed a streamlined, efficient and integrated system. When they chose their cloud-based provider, they used a custom-designed architecture that enabled them to integrate the CRM applications with the corporate data warehouse, a legacy commissions software, and the existing security framework. BOK has seen its CRM usage nearly double in a matter of months, and has allowed employees in all departments to access and share critical information with intuitive, actionable dashboards.
So are you ready to help the infrastructure of your business by exploring the possibilities of custom application development? The first step in the process is to define what you want to accomplish with your application. Don’t forget to account for the flexibility to modify the application as your business grows. This is what is known in the development environment as scalability—the ability of your application to handle more work as your business becomes more successful. You want to be able to quickly adapt and add more servers as demand for your product grows. You don’t want the performance of your system to be adversely impacted when more users are accessing your Web site.
These days, most custom application development takes place through the cloud, or the Internet, where these applications will eventually run. This is less costly, more flexible, and often easier to use than prepackaged software or custom software development. Applications that run in the cloud are less complicated to roll out to employees, too, since they are user-friendly and can be personalized by individual end-users. Additionally, middleware can help you integrate cloud-based and on-premises software, Software as a Service, and applications, whether those apps are proprietary legacy ones, off-the-shelf solutions, or custom developed applications.
