Enterprise App Strategy: A Guide to Streamlining Your Internal Operations
- By Dinesh Varadharajan, Kissflow
- April 17, 2023
Enterprise applications play a crucial role in any organization, from supporting the intellectual foundation of the business to managing procurement requests and even lunch menus. However, operating with a tangled web of integrations, APIs, and scripts can lead to a cluttered and inefficient work environment. To achieve true digital transformation, it's essential to have a well-thought-out app development strategy. One simple way to organize the apps in your enterprise is to break them into tiers:
Three Tiers of Enterprise Applications
The first tier of enterprise software tools comprises mission-critical apps that link directly to your core frontend or backend systems and must always work flawlessly for work to continue. Cost is not a concern as the enterprise can't run without these applications. A retailer, for example, would consider their point-of-sale system mission-critical.
The second tier includes applications that support the operations of a department or function, but the organization would still be able to function without them, albeit inefficiently. These complex and multi-functional apps require systemic planning, integrations and dashboards. For many organizations, a CRM may be categorized as a tier-two application. While customer communication could continue without it, it would be much more difficult.
The remaining tools are grouped in tier three and include single-function applications that perform one task exceptionally well, such as an automated approval process, project management board or ticketing system. They are usually simple to build and can significantly streamline business users’ daily work.
Revising Your App Development Strategy
Currently, tier-one apps receive the most attention and budget allocation. They are built and maintained by the organization’s best developers. However, tier-two apps present strategic challenges as department heads desire custom solutions, but bringing in high-priced developers to build these apps often results in delayed and unfinished projects. Tier three apps regularly fall to the end of the priority list. IT leaders purchase solutions where possible and leave spreadsheets, paper forms or miscellaneous apps to fill in the gaps.
Tackling this uneven allocation of resources requires a thoughtful strategy and starts with building the right apps with the right people on the right platform. Tier one apps should still receive the most attention from the best developers because they are necessary to further business outcomes. To share the workload, tier two apps can be created quickly on low-code platforms by non-technical business users, and tier 3 apps can be created and launched by business analysts, process owners, or trained business users with proper oversight.
Managing with a Single Unified Platform
The biggest challenge in this strategy is maintaining multiple platforms to host your apps, which adds complexity to both the business users and the IT team. To overcome this, it is crucial to find a single, governable platform that can handle all your tier two and three apps and enterprise requirements but is simple enough for business analysts and process owners to build on their own.
A New Mindset for Enterprise App Development
With an estimated 750 million cloud-native applications expected to be created globally by 2025, there's no time to waste. Enterprises must update their strategy by identifying the right apps, attracting more than just high-level developers, and finding a single platform to host all the tier two and three apps.
There’s never been a more critical time for decision-makers to rethink their enterprise app strategy and streamline their internal operations. They can more effectively manage apps by categorizing them into tiers, identifying which apps are critical to business operations and moving to a single platform to have total visibility over team workflows. This is a big step towards true digital transformation, allowing a more efficient work environment catered to all levels of technical expertise.
Dinesh Varadharajan, chief product officer at Kissflow, wrote this article.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CDOTrends. Image credit: iStockphoto/Snezhana Kudryavtseva