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April 09, 2014

Lextech's New Guarantee Make Enterprise Apps More Affordable than Ever

Designing an enterprise app is a risky endeavor for any business. Depending on complexity, platform(s) and business integration needs, a company can easily spend $50,000 on an app and often three or four times as much. And since apps can take three to six months to develop the company has to look ahead, projecting what their needs will be in half a year or more.

Yet apps have almost become a requirement for any smart, growing business. Being unable to access data, complete deals in the moment, or connect the customer to answers can be enough to lose business to a more mobile competitor. While many of these functions can be accomplished through third-party apps, more and more companies are deciding to invest in custom-built interfaces. While budget, timeline and operating systems are natural topics for discussion surrounding a new app, for any company kicking the idea around here are a few more things to think through.

Let employee or customer needs drive mobile:

Make the app a part of your overall workflow strategy, not another thing to be managed. For example any app that required duplicate data entry (on paper and into the app) is just wasting time. Do the field research to understand user tasks and challenges.

Capitalize on mobile features:

Think about how things like GPS, maps and location services that are already integrated into mobile devices can be used to benefit your business.

Consider the user experience:

Most employees have some experience with apps. Use that experience to make your app design intuitive and simple rather than something new that has to be learned. Another option is to mimic (and improve upon) your on-premise database design as much as possible, to cut down the learning curve.

Research required infrastructure:

Are you going to host the app and provide user support? Can it live in the cloud? Do you need to move other data sources into one cohesive spot and then push the information to the app? Factor these costs and time into the app development process.

How will you distribute the app?

This can be an easy answer but it’s an important one for getting the product to your users. Check into the enterprise options offered by the major platforms as well as third party app distributors like Amazon Appstore, App Center or FastApp.

Expect revisions:

Testing is part of the process of any technology development so when the designers tell you they’re ready to start testing don’t get overly annoyed by issues and negative feedback. It’s all part of the process of getting the product right.

Good news for cautious companies arrived this week when app developer Lextech raised the bar for enterprise developers by instituting a return on investment guarantee. The Return on App (ROA) program guarantees a full return on the app costs within twelve months. Lextech has already used their strategy of analyzing workflows to produce apps that have saved and generated billions of dollars for clients.

"Companies fritter away millions of dollars every year because of inefficient and broken workflows; mobile apps can help stop this waste," said Alex Bratton, CEO and chief geek of Lextech. "By addressing inefficient workflows, Lextech develops mobile apps that simplify processes, give easy access to information and allow companies to leverage the investment in their enterprise legacy system." The ROA guarantee requires the workflow evaluation to be a part of the development process.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson


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