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Enterprise Application Development: Building Enterprise Apps Fast

Whether it’s enhancing collaboration, improving customer service, or boosting productivity. For large businesses, enterprise application development has become foundational to their continued progress — and keeping pace with competitors.

But many of the leaders we speak to share a problem — they’re struggling to deliver new enterprise apps at the speed and scale their business requires. So why is this the case? And how can you speed up the process in your organization?

 

What is enterprise application development?

Enterprise application development is the process of building custom applications that address business challenges. These bespoke apps support business operations by integrating systems and orchestrating end-to-end processes

Enterprise application development enables organizations to build apps that:

- Simplify and unify infrastructure for more efficient processes, accelerating outcomes and reducing costs. 
- Build better connections between people, applications, robots, processes, and information.
- Standardize operations to establish clear, consistent operating guidelines and provide reporting to track performance.

 

What are the different types of enterprise applications?

- Process-centric – built with the process at its core using the process flow to determine the order of events.
- Data-centric – built around data requirements and to support data sharing across and outside of the organization.
- Mobile-centric – built to run on mobile devices to support employees when out of office or in the field.

 

Enterprise application examples

1. A vendor data management portal at DHL 
DHL Group are using a low-code automation solution to orchestrate their systems, optimize their operations, and achieve enterprise-wide visibility. They now use the platform to run over 24 of their business-critical practices, automate 95% of their Duty Billing Process, and manage over 2 million cases per year – all using bespoke enterprise applications.

2. Employee onboarding and offboarding at OCS 
The OCS Group implemented enterprise applications as part of their push to optimize on/offboarding of over 700 employees per month. They are now enjoying considerable improvements to their operational efficiency, including reducing the average time it takes to create a new employee ID from 2 weeks to just 24 hours, a 93% reduction.

3. Customer support at Bunzl  
Bunzl used enterprise applications to automate their customer contact center and centralize their operational processes. As a result, they are:
- Resolving customer cases 33% faster. 
- Saving 7 days a month on call logs and resolution.
- Processing 4,000 product lifecycle cases each month.

 

What’s delaying enterprise application development?

Developers are in short supply
Companies are struggling to hire top tech talent. According to estimates by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, American companies will face a 1.2 million shortfall in developers by 2026. This talent deficit will continue to slow the pace of enterprise application development.

There’s a spiralling IT backlog
App development is also being delayed by a backlog of IT projects. In a report last year, The Economist Intelligence Unit found the average backlog for planned IT projects was between 3-12 months. Delays of this scale leave businesses perpetually on the backfoot, because they’re unable to fully invest in solutions they need right now.

Project requirements are often unclear and changing      
Ever-changing requirements are part and parcel of enterprise app development. Projects may need to be adapted (or scrapped) due to a myriad of reasons, from new market demands to regulatory updates. App development can also be hindered if leadership teams are vague about the goal or problem they’re looking to solve.

 

What is an enterprise application development platform?

An enterprise application development platform is a software solution that facilitates the development and deployment of enterprise apps within an organization.

Key enterprise application development platform features include:

Composability
Reusable components allow professional developers and citizen developers to build apps quickly.

Security
Built-in security and governance features ensure data is handled securely and that applications comply with industry regulations and company policies.

Scalability
Enterprise apps need to be capable of handling large volumes of data and users.

Integration
Integrating with other business systems is key to 

Reporting and analytics
The ability to collect, analyze and visualize data enables organizations to gain insights into operational performance and make data-driven decisions on improvement opportunities.

 

How can you speed up enterprise application development?

Create a fusion team
Fusion teams have become a smart solution to the tech talent shortage. By combining the domain expertise of business users, and the technical expertise of IT, fusion teams allow organizations to build enterprise apps faster — and in direct response to a clearly articulated goal from end users.

Low-code platforms are fundamental to this process, as they allow both technical and non-technical users to collaborate on app development in a single place, maximizing resources and speeding up time-to-value.

Establish your own Centre of Excellence (CoE) 
A CoE involves creating a team of experts that are responsible for providing best practices, support and momentum around a specific area of focus. Applied to enterprise app development, a CoE can help you overcome technological bottlenecks, reduce production costs, and experiment with different ways of working to increase efficiency.

Orchestrate systems
In contrast to automation (which generally refers to automating a single task), orchestration involves the automation of multiple tasks. IT teams can use orchestration to automate all of the processes and workflows behind their applications centrally. This coordinated approach can help to reduce security risks, lower costs and speed up cycle times.

 

Bizagi’s low-code platform for enterprise app development

Modern enterprises risk getting left behind if their software development cycle is slow and siloed. A low-code platform can help solve that problem by allowing technical and non-technical teams to collaborate on app development, all in one place, enabling them to build and deploy enterprise applications that deliver real value for your business, fast. Find out how Bizagi can help you build apps faster, become more agile, and maximize resources.  

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