On The Fence About Creating Custom Apps? These Tips Will Get You Up And Running

By Andrew LeCates, Director, Americas Sales, FileMaker, Inc.

In its report, The State Of Digital Business 2016 to 2020, Forrester found 46 percent of executives surveyed believe that in less than five years, digital will have an impact on more than half their sales. Digital transformation is everywhere, affecting every industry and individual. Enabled by mobility trends and a more flexible workplace, business can happen anywhere, any time.

Organizations of all sizes and types have embraced the use of apps to productively manage this transformation. To have apps that meet their unique needs, it might seem the easiest and best solution would be to buy them off-the-shelf. However, it’s important to consider apps of this type tend to be generic in order to appeal to a wide audience. They may get the job done, but there’s little to no personalization available. You may pay for features you don’t need, and you may not get the features that would best serve your team.

These apps also cannot be updated to accommodate business growth and change. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee an off-the-shelf app will be compatible with external data or existing business systems. Fortunately, there is another option: custom apps.

The Rise Of Custom Apps

Organizations and teams turn to custom apps to fill specific gaps in their productivity and efficiency. Apps can be made based on a new idea, by modifying an existing starter app, or by importing data. Businesses use multi-platform custom apps on iPhone, iPad, Windows, and across the Web. They enable employees and customers to securely access vital information at any time, from any place and extend mission-critical business processes far beyond the boundaries of the enterprise.

Anything a user wants to access — medical files, documents, signatures, forms, and so on — can be made available via a custom app. Custom apps can be developed in organizations of any size but are very often done by small teams that consist of fewer than 25 people, be it entire small businesses or teams within larger companies.

In the not-too-distant past, small and mid-sized organizations did not have the means to create custom apps, but that’s no longer true. It can be faster and less expensive to build a custom app from scratch than to buy and try to customize off-the-shelf software. And by designing the app in-house, you’re sure to get the features that you want at the budget that you set.

Goals, Needs, And Scenarios

A well-conceived planning process is critical to the success of custom app creation. One of the first steps when it comes to implementing custom apps is to evaluate the goals of the solution you’re setting out to create. Define the needs and requirements of team members (the app users) to ensure the app will address their specific pain points.

It’s vital to create user scenarios that describe how users will use the app. This will help define the necessary features and functions required. User scenarios tell stories about how users get tasks done and how they use data; they help create the requirements for your app. Determine what people and groups will use the app and then write a user scenario for each role. What are the users’ roles and responsibilities? Will multiple users use the app at once, and are their roles similar or different?

After this step, it’s time to consider what in particular users need the app to do. What problems are users trying to solve? For example, a manager cannot efficiently collect, manage, and share a list of customers and assets with the main office. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of current processes and the requirements of different teams.

Another thing to understand is the likely use patterns for the app. Will it be used in bright light? How about at night? Will users always be able to connect to the server? What devices will be used to access the app? How will the custom app need to interact with current systems? Think about when people will use the collected information, and also think about when you need your custom app.

At this point, you need to define your requirements. Include an overall description of how your custom app will work and a detailed list of features and functions based on the user scenarios you have already written.

Integrate And Secure

It’s essential to address not only integration but also security and deployment. What good is a custom app if it won’t integrate with the other systems you already have in place? First, the access you have to a data source is a major factor in determining the complexity of your custom app. If you own and control your data sources, you can build and deploy more easily. If you need an administrator or other system to provide access your data, the complexity increases.

Security will be a critical component of your custom app. Before building your app, carefully consider whether you will be storing customer or employees’ personal information. Will you be storing other sensitive material, such as trade secrets, future product plans or credit card information? What, if any, regulations — such as HIPAA — must you comply with?

There are several ways to address security authentication management. One way is to create user accounts and passwords using app software. Alternatively, you could use external authentication using outside systems, but this may add complexity. If you need to encrypt your data, that may also add complexity. If your team has IT support, find out what options might be available.

Test And Refine

It’s time to design your custom app. Start with a prototype, or draft; it can even be a paper prototype. By showing a prototype to your users, you can test functionality and usability early in the development process. This ensures that users understand the direction you are taking and agree that it will meet their needs.

Good development is iterative. Validate your design with the users before spending too much time in development. Keep revising and refining your design, while getting feedback from users about each revision.

Gather Your Resources

Custom app platforms today enable anyone to create an app, but it will take a little extra time at first as you start to explore the possibilities and how all of the pieces will work together.

Getting clarity about your own interest level and aptitude is important. Gauging your technical understanding first will help you determine the best way to proceed. For instance, do you like learning new software? Have you designed webpages? Even if the answer to these types of questions is no, that doesn’t preclude you from going the DIY route. Whether you decide to develop on your own or bring in outside help, there are online communities, forums, tutorials and more to guide you along the process.

Building A Solution That’s Right For You

While not an exhaustive list, the above recommendations for implementing custom apps for your business are important ones — even before the creation or deployment processes begin.

The world of business is moving at what seems like the speed of light. Understandably, you want to get an app up and running as quickly as possible. The conventional wisdom would be to grab an off-the-shelf solution, but that may lead to wasted time as you struggle to customize the app to meet your needs. It may also result in wasted money as you must pay for features you won’t use. Now that new platform offerings have arrived on the scene, though, you can build a custom app from the ground up — and you don’t have to be a huge corporation or have an advanced degree to do it.