Why MVP for your mobile app?

Why do so many software products start out as MVPs?

The reason is due to the significant benefits MVP software brings to the development process: faster, more affordable development, and reliable, resourceful market validation. Essentially, a MVP is a quick method of validating your product via customer feedback. But before we get any further, let’s go over what “MVP” actually means.

MVP stands for:

Minimum – the minimum set of features a product can have while still remaining…

Viable – to provide value to customers, so they are willing to engage with the…

Product – which is ready to be used for consumption.

The development of technological products has always lent itself to that of a MVP – from Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone to the 1998 startup named Google, MVPs have had a huge impact on the way users and products co-exist and co-benefit from each other.

Well-known MVPs

It wouldn’t be fair to say that the following products should still be considered MVPs presently – but rather that they started out that way, and over many iterations, have become the products, services, and platforms they are now.

Facebook

Back when this social media giant was known as The Facebook in 2004, the product offered was most definitely a MVP. During its 1.0 phase, Facebook was a website available only to Harvard students – the intention behind this limited release was to collect feedback in order to create a more robust and user-friendly product. At this time, Facebook was nowhere near what it is today – the website comprised of a profile page, friend requests, and a “send message” feature.

AirBnB

The story of this internationally-used app is the perfect example of a successful MVP product. An idea thought up in 2007 when roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were unable to afford rent in the expensive real estate market of San Francisco, the app now known as Airbnb was originally a website by the name of airbedandbreakfast.com.

The site’s first listing (Chesky and Gebbia’s apartment living room) was a true MVP experience as well: an air mattress in a room, along with a cooked breakfast. These are the amenities users of the original site were offered. After the addition of Nathan Blecharczyk (the creator of the website) and the Industrial Design Conference of 2008 held in San Francisco created a need for extra lodging in the area, the company was able to host its first guest.

Now, the company is considering the possibility of opening its own airline. This is the power of MVP products; they can start out as a single air mattress in your apartment’s living room, and develop into international companies with revenues measured by billions of dollars.

There are many more MVP success stories, like that of Goupon, Amazon, Buffer, Snapchat, and others – but for now, let’s get into what makes a product a true MVP.

MVP theory

As previously stated above, a MVP is a product that provides users with the minimum set of features required to provide a marketable and consumable experience. When Bell invented the telephone in 1876, his product provided a usable method of long-distance communication, and not much else. His original telephone model required users to speak into a standing receiver, and hold another speaker to their ear – and after decades of feedback from customers, phones morphed from rotary, to corded and cordless, and eventually to cell and smartphones.

It is this evolution that is the hallmark of a MVP.

While MVPs do come with quicker development cycles (making it easier to beat competition to market, as well as capitalizing on untapped markets), the most beneficial aspect of a MVP is the direct customer validation.

The market (and your users) will very quickly determine if your product is viable. If the idea is interesting enough, or the solution to the pain point is useful enough, users will jump on board. Therefore, by the usage of a MVP, you can quickly and cheaply prove your validity on the market without wasting time and resources on preliminary marketing and focus groups.

The next step is the most important – listening and reacting to customer feedback. The idea behind a MVP isn’t to build a product with the minimal feature set and then leave it alone – AirBnb didn’t stop at a single air mattress, after all – it’s to create the foundation for a fully-fledged product, platform, or experience.

Take the feedback you receive from early adopters, and implement it – this creates a strong brand for two very important and distinct reasons: your company proves to customers that their voices are heard and matter, and customer-requested features ensure a UX that has been tested against multiple scenarios, environments, and use cases (and lacks any excess features your users don’t want).

MVPs prove your worth

With market validation comes revenue – which can then be used to present a case for your business to investors. After AirBnB’s debut in 2008, the company received their first round of seed money in 2009 from Y Combinator, and by 2010, had raised over $7 million. By 2014, the company was valued at $10 billion, and now, in 2019, boasts a valuation of $35 billion.

MVPs naturally lend themselves to the continual update cycles apps (and all software) are beholden to, and create an environment for meaningful, impactful improvements to your users’ experience. MVPs are more than just a quick way to develop an app – they provide you with the foundation to create a community based around your brand.

Custom inventory solutions for the enterprise level business

There are many inventory management solutions out there, but many are ill-suited to the reality of enterprise level environments that currently exist on legacy systems, or lack the ability to integrate with entrenched ITSM using languages like .NET.

For these reasons, and more (which we will cover below), a third party proprietary inventory management software system won’t make the cut when stacked up against the vast scale and needs of the enterprise level.

The scope of inventory management

Inventory management software can either be used as a standalone system, or integrated within your ERP. A basic inventory management system would provide tools used for:

  • Tracking products
  • Alerting when product levels are low
  • Barcode scanning
  • Generating accurate accounting and financial data

There are many free inventory management software platforms that will offer most of the features listed above, but few include barcode scanning, and many lack reports that can integrate into a larger ERP system – and all are limited to a set number of transactions – such as 100 products in total, or 20 orders every month.

For any additional features, or the ability to scale up, these free software platforms will charge monthly fees, usually dependent on the number of users, number of products being managed, and number of orders processed.

For any company that operates at a scale larger than that of a startup or boutique, these pricing models can create exorbitant invoices for your company – and at the enterprise level, these solutions lack any form of ROI, and quickly become a burden to your bottom line.”

Even enterprise level software can fail to truly meet the standard of market fluidity national and multi-national brands face. While many ERP systems are designed to be customized to various industries, this is akin to designing your own app with a drag-and-drop software.

Options such as these also lack true integration within your environment – these platforms are intended to replace aspects of, or even the entirety of your enterprise environment, and not to work within the architecture your company has worked with for years.

Enterprise environments take years, sometimes even decades to truly be implemented, and they are continuously adapting and upgrading as technology improves and markets dictate more speed and customer value. Brands that can truly be classified as “enterprise level” are no different – cultivating a national or multinational brand is an undertaking that can take a full generation, and requires continuous observation and tinkering to keep growing, and stay relevant in the public’s eye.

For a brand that took twenty years to rise to the level that it is now, it is much smarter to invest in the future, rather than the present – and using an proprietary third party software for inventory management is investing for the short term rather than the long term.

Finally, many inventory management systems lack mobile integration – a necessity to maintain speed and efficiency in a truly connected enterprise environment.

Customized solutions increase efficiency

An inventory management system can do a lot more than tell you when levels are low on a certain product. With a custom platform fully integrated within the rest of your ERP environment, you can track detailed data points such as a product’s physical location in your warehouse, or the system can automatically determine the optimal time for re-ordering products: based on data points such as available shipping routes or closest supplier, and even down to weather patterns that might effect delivery schedules.

A more sophisticated inventory management system goes beyond tracking the sale of a type of product – with RFID integration, when scanned by your POS system, individual products can be tracked and recorded as they are sold. With data as intricate as this, a custom inventory platform is able to aggregate sales data in order to automatically generate reports that provide insight into optimal production times and when demand increases or decreases.

When working with a custom inventory management system, all of this data will automatically populate in their respective reports for your different departments, warehouses, and offices – whether spread throughout town, or across the globe. Via realtime integration, your service team in St. Louis will be aware of a part being shipped out from New Delhi, and your accounting firm in New York will receive the purchase order.

A system such as this provides you with a detailed view of the entire history of a product – from production to the final sale. This can be further broken down into the order history of each part, that when pieced together create a finished product – meaning you can analyze the intricacies of your entire operations through a single program.

Most importantly, all of these features can be accessed and utilized via mobile device – meaning your business developers out in the field have the latest data, and your CCO in Denmark has access to the latest numbers.

A major benefit to custom inventory management solutions is the fact that your internal IT department needn’t learn new systems architecture and languages, or restructure to fit the limitations of a piece of third party software – when built custom, languages that are commonly used throughout legacy systems, like .NET or COBOL are valid options. This isn’t so with proprietary software.

Improve customer value and satisfaction

A custom inventory platform, when fully integrated within your enterprise environment, is an efficient method for increasing your customer satisfaction. This is the ultimate goal of an inventory management system – customers can reliably count on your item stock, and B2B connections can trust your operations and records.

With the additional insight big data analytics can provide your production and sales, your enterprise can take the next leap towards continual improvement in efficiency.

MVP + Agile methodology

Developing a MVP app using the agile methodology of project management is a powerful combination for any enterprise, appreneur, or startup seeking to prove the validity of their idea. Before we get into this combination, however, let’s first look into what a MVP is, as well as agile methodology.

What is a MVP?

A MVP (in regards to app development) is an app that utilizes the smallest number of features possible in order to a) cut the time of production, b) reduce the total cost of development, and c) gain customer validation and insight.

MVP stands for:

Minimum – the minimum set of features a product can have while still remaining…

Viable – to provide value to customers, so they are willing to engage with the…

Product – which is ready to be used for consumption.

While a MVP app is a great way to get to market both faster and cheaper than a conventional app, the true value is the customer insight a MVP provides. Due to the utilitarian nature of a MVP app’s feature set, early adopters of your app are able to request additional features based upon the core functionality of your app, and you don’t send time backtracking and re-developing entire sections of your codebase in order to replace features your users didn’t even want.

The feedback your MVP will receive will also be much more precise and reliable than if you were to spend resources conducting preliminary product focus groups; customers will use your app in many different situations and settings, will compare its usefulness to other apps they use regularly, and will have more time to engage with your app before providing feedback.

What is Agile?

Agile is a widely-popular methodology for app development. Agile development, at its core, is about incremental improvements; teams work in sprints to complete objectives, such as “successfully implement in-app payment,” or “build out user profile UI.” During these sprints, developers will meet to discuss what they have accomplished, and what they are stuck on.

A developer’s code will be tested, and after passing code review, will be added to the true codebase of the app, known as the master branch. Once an objective has been successfully implemented, the team will move on to the next feature. Over the course of development, this process will continue until a complete app is built.

The benefits to an Agile method of development are numerous, but three stick out: speed, reliability, and adaptability. This development methodology is fast because code isn’t implemented until it is tested and reviewed, therefore creating a robust codebase, which allows for easy post-development updating.

Due to these aforementioned benefits, Agile methodology has practically become a standard for developers; each dev shop will put their own twist on things, but the overall process of adding to the master branch incrementally remains largely intact. With user retention being so closely entwined with app updates, having a reliable and structured codebase like that provided by Agile is important; developers often must push out app updates on quick timetables when a new OS releases, or a new device is released to market.

MVP + Agile

Just like Agile, MVPs are based around quick development cycles, and just like MVPs, Agile methodology revolves around improving a codebase via continual, incremental updates. Due to their overlapping nature, these two methodologies fit perfectly together, and create a development environment that is both highly stable and cost efficient.

In order to successfully merge these two methodologies, you will need to make use of careful planning to ensure product market fit. While every app will face different development hurdles, and therefore travel a different path, a MVP app developed in an Agile environment should include the following steps after the initial development cycle:

1 – Testing

Testing is the number on step on this list for a reason – without it, all the following steps are based on flawed data. Apple makes conducting a beta test simple with TestFlight, a service which allows you to host an app for a limited beta test release.

This is why we recommend developing your MVP app for iOS.

This gives you the environment you need to allow beta test users to download and engage with your app. In order to ensure your beta test has enough participants, you’ll want to cultivate a following on social media beforehand.

2 – Community engagement

By engaging with your early adopters, you can drastically reduce the total cost of your app’s development through crucial customer insight. This benefit is the reason so many big names in the tech industry started out as MVPs: Google, Airbnb, Dropbox, Buffer, Uber, Facebook, and Snapchat, to name a few.

The crucial aspect to customer insight is true customer engagement. Throughout your beta test, respond to criticism and compliments alike – and when users request a feature, implement it. If a user leaves a rating and review after your MVP has launched on the App Store or Google Play, respond, and if they have requested a fix, implement that fix.

By showing this level of care, you will ensure the customer feedback you are receiving is truly insightful – while simultaneously creating an engaging and value-producing product.

3. Continual updates

Going hand-in-hand with step 2, continual updates are key to any app’s user retention metric. Users are constantly demanding new innovation and a better experience – which is a huge driving factor behind the need for UI design updates. Security risks play a significant role in this as well.

Incremental, insightful improvements

With a MVP product developed using Agile methodology, you are ensuring the development of your app is both fast and cost effective; with direct and low-cost customer insight and structured code implementations leading to robust user experiences, your app can quickly collect and retain a growing audience that both proves the value of your product and adds to it.

Improving your company’s productivity with an enterprise app

Every business stands to boost their employee productivity, and therefore their revenue through the integration of their internal systems with an enterprise platform. The development of a true enterprise platform doesn’t just mean an app your employees can access via their smartphone – in essence, enterprise platforms are designed with the purpose of optimizing your work processes, systems, and communication.

There’s never been a better time to deploy your very own enterprise app – AI enhanced analytical services are more affordable than ever before, and industry legacy systems are quickly getting outpaced by their big-data-optimized counterparts – soon, companies that don’t make use of their own enterprise platform will find their speed as a company lagging behind competition, and their employees leaving in favor of a company more engaged with its workforce.

The impact of enterprise app deployment

According to a report from software giant Adobe, companies that invest in an enterprise platform see a 35% ROI. A substantial number of companies reported increased productivity (51%), as well as better employee communication (47%), and reduced operating costs (31%).

Numbers like these are nothing to ignore – which is why, according to the same report, 67% of businesses are using an enterprise app. Many of the same problems enterprise apps help to alleviate are widespread concerns throughout different industries: 55% of companies site the need for improved communication, and 54% of companies struggle to keep up with their ever growing mobile workforce.

Enterprise apps, are, of course, the best tool for improving employee communications and connectedness – whether in the office or out in the field.

Productivity through connectivity

Over half of the companies from this report acknowledge that staying connected with their employees out in the field is a prescient issue, and according to a poll from Gallup, 70% of the workforce is disengaged – reasons reported include:

  • Lack of feedback or direction from their manage
  • Lack of socialization with their team
  • Lack of understanding of company mission and values
  • Lack of proper communication between the employee and manager
    • When you’re an employee out in the field doing maintenance on an HVAC system or switch hub, or a business developer building relationships with potential clients, it’s easy to feel detached from the company you work for.

      It’s even easier to fall out of the loop – today’s business environment is one of continuous change, every minute of every day. A business developer needs to know the latest market forecast based on stock data, the latest environmental regulations for building permits, if the potential client’s favorite team is playing that week.

      Knowing the fine details your clients will care about is key to driving sales – and no business developer has the time to keep up with all of these data points for every potential client. Building client profiles based on specific verticals that automatically aggregate pertinent data is the most efficient method of keeping your business developers who are out in the field continuously on top of their game – and continuously impressing clients with their personalized conversations and service.

      Enterprise systems do more than keeping your employees in the loop; they are highly efficient at tracking and organizing physical inventory as well. Via an enterprise platform your sales, service, and accounting departments can view the same inventory data in real time. Enterprise systems are built to work within your already existent environment, and can therefore connect the individual systems these departments use.

      For instance, if your service department sells an item to a customer at a store, your accounting team will be notified of the sale immediately before submitting a new revenue report – just as your sales manager is made aware of the change in the item lot size before shaking hands with a client who wants the same item.

      Enterprise systems don’t just connect individual departments’ ability to manage inventory – it also helps your company predict when sales will happen, and when the optimal time to order more inventory will be, based on patterns that are recognizable through big data analytics. When you can optimize your ordering times, you maximize your inventory turnaround, and increase your ability to manage more product, or more types of products.

      Big data is the key to optimization

      When combined with AI, analytics, and machine learning, big data gives enterprises the information they need in order to stay a step ahead of their competition through inferred business intelligence.

      Overwhelmingly, throughout recent years, the vast majority of data that has been created is classified as “unstructured” data – meaning it is data found in documents like emails, recordings, telecommunications, video – and only 0.5% of it has been analyzed.

      Enterprises, unsurprisingly, sit on a proverbial mountain of this unstructured data – and via predictive analytics and other forms of data aggregation systems, these companies can access and analyze big data more intricately and faster than ever before.

      Through big data, companies can recognize patterns that interrupt workflow and productivity that might otherwise be unrecognizable without viewing the problem with the scope big data analytics makes possible.

      Take, for instance, the decision of UPS to not make left turns; they invested in a software that mapped the United States (as well as most of the world), in order to nearly eradicate left turns from their parcel delivery truck routes. This decision ended up saving the company over 20 million gallons of fuel every year. Without big data, creating these avenues for efficiency is impossible, or less efficient than it would be with big data integration.

      Venture ahead via enterprise platforms

      Improving your company’s productivity requires more than just a mobile app – a truly integrated system must work within your enterprise environment as soon as it is deployed. For more about proper deployment, visit our blog on the topic: Enterprise app development.

      An enterprise platform gives your company the ability to improve productivity, communications, systems management, and employee loyalty via one system – and simultaneously gives you a leg up on your competition.

Enterprise app development

Enterprise app development is more than simply building an app for a business – an enterprise developer must account for a multitude of challenges, including complex and vast internal systems, legacy software, manual processes, deploying within an already existing environment, and much more.

Having the ability to quickly integrate a corporation’s highly intricate and intertwined internal business systems within a single mobile software solution requires an entirely different skill set than other forms of software development; it necessitates that the developer understands both the corporation’s systems as well as their app’s system architecture.

In short, there’s a big difference between developing an app for an entrepreneur with an idea, or an enterprise level business with a plan for complete mobile integration throughout their existing systems.

Developing for enterprise

Successful deployment in an enterprise environment is akin to changing a car’s tire while maintaining speed – but with careful planning, clear documentation, and the creation of replicative test environments, it can be achieved.

The following are processes most enterprises should consider when planning for the development of a system-integrating app:

  • Change management
  • Project management
  • Approval gates
  • Environment integration

Also be aware that for your own internal IT department, a software development project precludes the signs of increased risk and systems maintenance – below, you’ll find steps your development partner can take in order to minimize the burden put on your own IT department.

Enterprise structure

Structuring an app to the enterprise environment requires significant communication and documentation – the ultimate goal of any enterprise software development is to ensure your development partner properly manages the project, so you own IT department can continue to focus on ITSM and ITIL.

In order to achieve this, your development partner should always provide you with a statement of work that covers all assumptions – this helps to ensure time spent in development is used efficiently, and helps alleviate speed bumps if changes arise such as an increase in burn rate.

There is no such thing as too much documentation – it’s a good idea to make it a rule that in order for any change to pass through your change approval and governance gates, the change must include supporting documentation. This helps to take some of the burden of learning an entirely new system away from your internal IT department.

Doing so will also both simplify and quicken the process of ultimately handing off management of your new enterprise software to your internal IT department – the proverbial changing of the tire.

Before any development begins, it’s important to make sure your BSA has throughly run through the entirety of the proposed app’s feature set, systems architecture, process structure, and risk assessment. After the entirety of the tech stack is defined (define your tech stack as early as possible), and requirements gathering is complete (for enterprise apps, this usually consists of large quantities of data aggregation), development can begin.

Deploying in the enterprise environment

Most enterprise systems are spread out across multiple environments – requiring communication between multiple types of applications, devices, APIs, and data.

Gone are the days when an ESB (enterprise service bus) would suffice – this centralized methodology of technology and teams causes a bottleneck in the flow of information and delay integration between the components of your business systems. A distributed system architecture with multiple reusable endpoints such as this is both more robust and more adaptive than the old ESB model as well.

In order to effectively integrate with an environment that allows for communication between multiple systems and layers, you’ll need to ensure your development partner allocates enough time to test your under-development app in a replicative environment. If your environment exists on premise or in the cloud, you’ll need to account for that during testing. Utilizing all devices that will be integrated – from routers to smartphones – is essential too.

To fully integrate your various systems, you’ll need to make use of messaging, application connectors, data streams, enterprise integration patterns, and APIs throughout your enterprise environment – depending on your data and architecture needs, some of these may be unnecessary.

Messaging

Messaging provides a channel for the various components in a distributed system through which to communicate with each other. This allows components to both send and receive messages in different languages, compliers, and even operating systems – messages can all be read with the use of one unified format and protocol.

Application connectors

These architectural elements provide the rules for how components interact with each other. Because they are standard class connections that are customizable to APIs, they can be quickly integrated with new endpoints.

Data streams

Aptly named, data streams provide an avenue for a continuous flow of data that applications distributed throughout your architecture can add to or consume from, independent of the data that is being transferred.

Enterprise integrations patterns

Referred to as EIPs, these are collections of solutions to common integration problems – these rely heavily on proper and through software documentation.

Application programming interfaces

APIs are a set of tools, definitions, and protocols that provides functionality in the form of a feature set by communicating with, and requesting data from a different set of software that does not require implementation.

How to choose your enterprise development partner

While it may be tough to convince your CFO, it’s much more important to pick the development company with a robust management structure and portfolio over the developer with the lower hourly rate.

Knowing your app is properly managed during development is a much better factor for determining the total cost of its development than comparing hourly rates. Mismanaged software can lead to delays measured in months, or sometimes, even years.

Take this example of the nationally-renowned web dev company Accenture and their mismanagement of website redevelopment for the car rental company Hertz. Hertz paid the web developer $32 million – and still didn’t have a functional website.

If you want to ensure smooth development for your enterprise-level app, always choose the partner that displays the most knowledge about your specific needs as a business. If you’d like examples of how enterprise apps can improve your company’s efficiency, culture, and other aspects, we’ve written quite a few on the topic:

Hiring an app agency vs. an app freelancer

What is the more cost effective option; an app development agency, or a freelance app developer? While there’s plenty of pros and cons to assign to either, it is our belief that ultimately, when presented with the entirety of an app’s lifecycle, hiring an app development agency is the better choice.

Why? Because apps are never truly finished products – they exist in a medium that necessitates constant and continuous improvement. When your product exists in a space that sees users demanding the best features, the fastest loading times, and the most up-to-date UI, you need to ensure your app’s code is accessible, modifiable, and organized.

Below, you’ll find the pros of cons of hiring an app development agency versus a freelance app developer, via a comparison of both options throughout each step in the development process:

Finding an agency vs. finding a freelancer

Whether you’re searching for a freelancer or a development agency, you’ll want to begin online – however, do your best to stay away from Google or other search engines.

For freelance app developers, sites like UpWork or Clutch or The Manifest. All of these sites function very similarly; you can search for developers based on certain criteria, and find contact information (whether through the aggregate site or their own) in order to begin the vetting process.

While it’s (usually) easier to find a freelance developer, you’ll find development agencies are (again, usually) more responsive.

Hiring an agency vs. hiring a freelancer

The difference in vetting a freelance app developer versus an app development agency marks where the process starts to noticeably deviate depending on which route you take. You’ll find freelancers’ CVs and portfolios to be very skillset driven – this is because freelance developers tend to specialize in developing one type of app.

App development agencies, on the other hand, will usually focus on presenting potential clients with examples of past projects and experience – this is because agencies employ a team of developers who each specialize in different aspects of app development – this diversity of knowledge allows agencies to work on a wider array of apps.

Agencies rely on steady clients, and therefore tend to take NDAs (and business partnerships in general) more seriously than freelancers – freelancers are, however, more likely to adjust to client demands.

Agency capability vs. freelancer capability

The complexity, scale, and scope of your app will largely determine if freelance development is even a viable option. As previously mentioned, freelancers tend to specialize in developing one type of app: such as eCommerce, productivity, or event apps, for example. Not only does this specialization narrow freelancers’ capabilities to the development of a single type of app, it often means freelancers are only capable of deploying in one environment, and developing for one platform.

Development agencies, however, will make use of the multiple skill sets available to them. These full-stack agencies can create any app, large or small, for any system, and for either platform: Android, or iOS (because Android and iOS utilize different code bases, it is exceedingly rare to find a freelancer capable of developing both Android and iOS apps).

Even when coding for a single platform, programming an app requires two different skillsets – frontend and backend development. For this reason, app agencies will employ programmers for both; frontend developers build out the UI and connect the functionality of the app’s features to the UI. Backend developers program the app’s logic architecture, set-up and implement servers, and connect APIs to their respective endpoints.

Agencies also utilize other tangential skillsets in order to improve the quality of the product that is developed; UI/UX designers create the visual design and flow of the app, providing a roadmap for the frontend developers – QA engineers create test environments in order to throughly analyze the robustness of an app before its initial launch, and project managers ensure every task is completed on time and in order, therefore maintaining a consistent and efficient development schedule.

When you hire a freelance developer, you are relegating all of these tasks onto either the freelancer, yourself, or your company. As an example – while a freelance developer might be efficient at developing the systems necessary for the entire feature set of an eCommerce app, they might not be the best UI/UX designer.

A freelance developer, in this situation, would most likely make use of an app design template (meaning your app will look cookie-cutter) – or run the risk of designing the app themselves – or, if their client was willing to pay for it, bring on a supplemental freelance designer.

Agency app management vs. freelance app management

Due to the nature of their work, freelancers tend to move from client to client very quickly – small projects have quick turn around times. Your app’s lifecycle is neither short or hands-off, however. All apps require updates for aesthetic purposes, improved security, and new feature implementation. Continual analysis of your app’s status via analytics and crash reporting is a necessary task as well – and with every update released by Google Play or the App Store, your app will need to follow suit. Even updates for changes as simple as new screen resolutions require time spent in development.

Agencies have this app lifecycle management structure built in to both their build teams and business model – freelancers generally don’t.

The cost of an agency vs. the cost of a freelancer

For all of the reasons stated above, the lower hourly rate freelancers are known for doesn’t equate to more cost effective development. For a freelancer to successfully develop the entirety of an app, they must have a mastery of a wide array of skills – and when they are lacking in an area of development, must spend time learning said skill, adding to the overall time your app spends in development, and bloating your budget.

Agencies specialize in producing complex apps efficiently; freelancers specialize in client acquisition, not app lifecycle management.

eCommerce and ERP integration: Improving your B2B operations

Speed, efficiency, and long term goals – successful businesses in 2019 live by the pivot, and live for the future.

Integrating your ERP (enterprise resource planning) with your eCommerce is both a quick pivot, and a good investment for the longterm – and if your B2B operations lack this integration, now is the perfect time to do so.

Choosing the wrong ERP software, however, can spell doom for your company – many ERP platforms are insecure and pose a risk of data breaches. ERP software is meant to bring extra value to your customers, and increase efficiency in your daily inventory and account management – security breaches will have the direct opposite result.

Let’s get into why ERP is important, and what you need to know in order to effectively implement your own ERP integration with your eCommerce.

What it does, and why it matters

When you integrate your ERP with your eCommerce, you create a system that automatically coordinates your customer-facing storefronts with your backend inventory and accounting management systems.

This is important because it drastically increases the efficiency of your B2B operations – when an item is purchased by a customer through your eCommerce site or app, or even a physical store if you have one, your backend inventory will automatically update itself to reflect the change. At the same time, your accounting system will also update to show the transaction.

Integrating your ERP with your eCommerce creates a bi-directional flow of data – when your backend inventory management system is updated, your customer-facing digital stores will automatically in realtime update as well.

This bi-directional realtime exchange can keep track and manage your main types of data, including order, inventory, item, customer, and shipping and tracking data. For example, if you were to add a new item into the backend of your inventory, all of the information would automatically populate on your eCommerce site and/or app.

If you were to edit the description of an item in your backend to include a sale discount, the frontend would reflect that change automatically as well. As soon as a customer puts that item in their cart, your inventory management system will be made aware. As soon as that item is purchased by that customer, your accounting system will automatically note the transaction.

This saves you time that would be spent manually entering multiple sets of duplicate data – meaning you don’t have to spend as much money on menial tasks.

Integrating your ERP with your eCommerce also increases customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, which ultimately leads to larger or more frequent orders.

A great example of the value add integrating your ERP with your eCommerce brings to your customers is their ability to access their live account info 24/7 – data such as order history, invoices, realtime pricing, and realtime stock can easily be made available to them.

When your customers feel like they’re included in the inner-workings of your business, they’ll feel more in control – which increases their loyalty, satisfaction, and spending.

Even slight increases to efficiency can have lasting impact. Consider the 20 million gallons of fuel that were saved by UPS trucks not taking left turns on their delivery routes. Simple changes can have profound and lasting impact.

The investment required to integrate your ERP with your eCommerce will always be worth it in the long run – and according to Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vaynermedia and Chairman of VaynerX, if your business isn’t thinking about the future, you’ve already lost.

With great efficiency comes great responsibility

When you integrate your ERP with your eCommerce, you’re essentially collecting your business’s most important data in one place – it’s accessible by individual systems, but the data is shared amongst them, and the transfer of data between them can be breached.

If this happens, it can dramatically decrease your customer loyalty – which is the direct opposite of what integrating your ERP with your eCommerce is supposed to achieve.

Due to the tempting nature of this proverbial digital honeypot of business and customer data, it’s less a question of if a cyberattack will happen, and more a question of when. A recent report by Symantec found that this is a problem for companies large and small – 43% of cyber attacks are now against small businesses.

Not only do these integrated hub systems present a tempting target for data thieves, they usually tend to be implemented through third-party software. These integration systems can leave your company open to many vulnerabilities, for a few reasons:

1 – Lack of updates

When you don’t own the software, you’re unable to change the codebase to keep up with new security risks. If your company uses third-party ERP integration software, your data is at the mercy of when your provider updates their security. Lack of updates can leave your systems wide open to data breaches.

2 – Poor configuration

If your ERP system isn’t set up correctly, you’ll run the risk of leaving cracks for hackers to exploit. These vulnerabilities can include open ports, access parameter credentials that are unlocked, or issues that come from vulnerabilities left in the system.

3 – Lack of access controls

If too many people have access to your system, or have the ability to access too much data in your system, you can run the risk of an account being compromised, which would then grant access to your entire system. Use the principle of least privilege wherever applicable.

4 – DOS attacks

If hackers find a vulnerability and gain access to your system, the can use DOS (denial-of-service) attacks to shut down your operations. When all of your operations run off one system, this can bring your business to a standstill.

Due to all of these risks, you’ll want to ensure the highest level of security possible. Custom software development will always be your best option for security because it is tailor-made to your system and specifications. Also, the code is your own, so whenever you need to update your system to defend against a new security risk, you can do so without waiting for another company.

If you’d like to learn more about integrating your ERP with your eCommerce and custom inventory solutions, visit our blog on the topic.

Efficiency and speed are the keys to success

By integrating your ERP with your eCommerce, you can reduce your time spent manually entering data, streamline your systems synchronization, enable auto-notifications for customers, manage price and product changes, and integrate multiple online and offline sales channels. All of this integration is scalable as well – giving your business the ability to not only increase its demand, but handle that increased demand as well.

Improving your business development process with an internal business app

If you work in business development, sales, outreach – or any facet of business that deals with the exchange of goods or services for economic gain – you know the struggles of dealing with client expectations, leads going cold, client acquisition, and all the other challenges that come with the territory of selling – either emotional or job-wise.

We’re living in the age of user experience – clients expect your engagements to be even more personalized and targeted to their needs than the native ads they see on social media. In fact, 79% of your communication efforts will go ignored by clients if the messages don’t meet your clients’ standards of desired personalization.

We’re also living in the age of speed – not only do your communications need to be personalized, you need the ability to react to changing demands and needs, new challenges, and new opportunities – and sometimes, even quick reactions aren’t enough – predicting your clients’ needs is the only true way to stay on top of your game and reduce client churn, dead ends, and increase your numbers.

The most effective way to accomplish this is by integrating your business development process with an internal business app.

For more examples of how you can improve your company’s efficiency, culture, and processes, check out these blogs:

In this blog, we’re going to go over the different features and capabilities an internal business app can add to your business development practices.

Lead management

Introducing yourself is easy – it’s keeping track of who’s who after the fact that’s the difficult part. It’s already hard enough when meeting prospective clients in face-to-face networking events, let alone when dealing faceless customer profiles aggregated through your website’s analytics.

Keeping track of leads, both at scale and speed, is crucial to your company’s success in today’s market. With the mobile revolution and the burgeoning IoT, large corporations aren’t the only businesses with global reach – the interconnectedness of markets and systems means your client can be halfway around the world, or right down the street – your methods for selling to them will largely remain the same, but their expectations will vary.

Measuring data is key to predicting your clients’ needs. By utilizing an internal business app that can keep track of customer relationship analytics like how often you speak with your most billed client, pending orders, or previous support inquires made, you can more accurately predict their requests or questions.

With an internal business app, you can automate both your relationship analytics, and your mid funnel marketing processes; such as marketing and re-marketing campaigns that utilize email or text to keep your prospective clients engaged with your business.

Even for businesses with smaller budgets, who lack the ability to implement complex backend systems necessary for such automation, a small backend system that auto-imports client data to your business developers is achievable – when a client fills out their info on your website, the backend system can then add it to their customer profile in your database. Small increases in efficiency can provide a huge boost to your employee’s productivity.

When your sales team adds contact information to a customer profile from a lead they just created, the data all ends up in the same place. Not only does this make it impossible to lose or create duplicate pieces of client data, it means that if a sales representative is no longer with your company, the lead’s info stays within your database – not on your employee’s personal phone.

Client communications

A small business in Virginia is expected to communicate with a client in London in the same manner as a large corporation with a London-based office would.

Customer service means a lot more than being polite and knowing your client’s first name – it means being able to answer their questions before they ask them – using the same phrases and language someone from their corner of the world would. Before you can achieve this capability, however, you first need to develop and maintain a personal connection with your clients.

The easiest way to create a personal relationship with a client is to know their personal needs – this means past interactions, as well as possibilities for potential business they have expressed to you.

Every business knows customer satisfaction is the number one key to success, and failure to meet customers’ expectations will spell the doom of any company. Knowledge is power – and in this case, knowledgable employees means happy clients.

Customer service and a personalized experience are important – in 2016, out of customers that switched services, 64% reported their reason was because of lack of a good experience with the company that was serving them – not due to the cost of services provided.

With the help of an internal business app, you can make sure every interaction with every client is measured, strategic, personal, and under control – meaning there’s no surprises for either you or your client, and everyone is sure to be happy.

Referral mangagement

Everyone knows the power of a good referral. Other than reengaging with an existing customer, it’s the most cost effective method for driving sales.

It’s truly a small world – but without a data management system made possible by an internal business app, networking and business development can look like a vast, disconnected landscape.

Through the backend client data management system made possible by an internal business app, you can connect the dots to figure out who knows who. Maybe one of your best clients knows that lead your business developer just added into your system? As soon as the data points connect (which, with the implementation of real-time updating, can be near-instantaneous), your entire business development team will know.

Your employee out in the field can start a conversation with the new potential client about your company’s work with the existing client, or, you can get a head start on communicating the request for a referral from your best client.

Having the power to connect referrals with new leads both at speed and in the field is a great tool to increase your lead generation: customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate.

With an internal business app, you can, of course, add these referrals to your lead’s contact information that is stored on their personal profile – so all the data you would ever need to know about a client is stored in the same place, and is accessible from anywhere.

Account Management

When was the meeting with David? No, the other David. You know – the one with the on-demand dog walking app?

An internal business app mitigates these wasted minutes. If an account representative schedules a call with David-the-dog-walker, your account manager will know as well, because all the information David and his business can be found in the same place – his client profile in your internal business app.

Assigning tasks, scheduling meetings, making sure follow-up emails are sent, and phone calls are placed is simple when it’s automated. You can even set up automatic notifications to make sure no task is left by the wayside, as a double layer of redundancy to ensure your clients’ satisfaction.

Strengthen your customer relationships

There’s no better system than an internal business app for keeping the ever-changing world of business development in check. By managing and analyzing client data, you can increase lead generation, and solidify existing customer relationships through your internal business app.

We hope you’ve found this blog informative! If you’re interested in learning about the cost of implementing the capabilities we discussed, check out our How much does it cost to implement backend CRM software? blog.

MVP development: Market research and pain points

Most companies and entrepreneurs conduct some form of market research before beginning the development of their app. The reasoning behind the methodology of this research is often flawed, however – and not geared toward seeking out the kernel of truth that promotes powerful product ideation.

If the answers you’re searching for don’t lead to the proper insights, your app’s user retention will suffer. Knowing which questions to ask comes from understanding the purpose of your market research – and that’s exactly what we’re about to cover.

Speed doesn’t mean rushed

Chances are, if you’re researching strategies on how to optimize the development of your app through the creation of a MVP, you value your time – MVPs are the quickest and most efficient way to market, after all.

Despite their reputation for speed to market, however, MVP apps require ample planning, careful thought, and plenty of foresight. The app marketplace is constantly evolving, growing, and competing against ever-increasing user expectations – it’s up to you and your app to keep up with these rising standards.

Tomorrow, the next Lyft could arise. The next Google could shake things up. The market, and the technology that coexists with it, rests for no one – and neither will your users.

That’s why we wrote this blog – to give you a detailed roadmap to the strategic and creative headspace that you need to occupy in order to ensure your MVPs development is smooth, and your launch successful.

If you want to read more about MVP app development, check out our other blogs on the topic:

Market research means understanding the problem, not a consumer profile

First things first – the beginning of every app comes from the discovery of a consumer pain point – whether that discovery is made through your own ideation, from being confronted with the pain point in your own life, or through explorative market research – a pain point is the foundation of your app. It’s the first step in the conception of virtually every tool, product, or invention throughout all of history, in fact.

Even the most basic of tools solve a pain point. Horses helped people get to their destination faster. Wheels helped them carry more. Written language helped them keep track of the goods they traded with each other.

Pain points are the reason people bothered to tame horses and engineer the wheel. If the world was only a few miles in diameter, the wheel probably never would have seen its day in the sun. Pain points are also the reason why products phase in and out, markets evolve, and consumer expectations grow – there’s always a better solution. It’s why we all know the name Henry Ford.

Sometimes, through solving a pain point, a tangential, unexpected discovery is made – Ford might have set out to make cars, but his true legacy was the assembly line.

What do these ancient-to-early-twentieth century inventions have to do with MVP app development? They were based around solving a pain point – not tempting a specific target audience. Ford’s cars were successful because they were affordable – and they were affordable because they were made at a speed that had never been seen.

In order to be successful in terms of development, budget, and marketability, your MVP app must have the singular focus of the wheel, and the status-quo shake-up-ing of Ford’s assembly line. Inventiveness of this sort doesn’t come from understanding the buyer profile of a target market – it comes from having a true understanding of the problem they face.

Now, the wheel and the assembly line are great examples because they were so groundbreaking in the change that they brought to the world. The digital landscape (and the app marketplace especially) exist in a much more subtle ecosystem, however.

This is due to the power that is afforded to app users over any other type of consumer – a dissatisfied user is perfectly capable of finding an alternate product through Google Play or the App Store in a matter of seconds, and downloading that new app within minutes.

User ratings and reviews give consumers even more power; not only do they give potential users the ability to form an opinion of your app before downloading it, they also play a role in determining your app’s ranking on the App Store or Google Play (along with other user-based metrics such as user retention and engagement).

This problem affects a full quarter of apps – 25% of users abandon apps after one session.

This is how Lyft was able to capitalize on Uber’s success; like Ford’s assembly line, Lyft sped up the process of finding a ride by removing a single step from Uber’s process – and in doing so, won over a significant chunk of Uber’s users.

In the early days of Uber, and before Lyft forced the app to change, users were given a list of available drivers to choose from – on a surface level, this makes sense, and even seems like another way to bring added value to the user experience.

No one really cares enough, however, to compare and contrast the qualities of potential drivers, – and to Uber’s users, this was an unnecessary step in the process of getting from point A to point B.

Uber understood that people didn’t want to have to wave down taxis. Lyft understood users didn’t care who drove them – they just wanted a ride, and they wanted it now.

Your MVP app doesn’t need to invent a wheel of its own, nor does it need to reinvent it – it just needs to do one thing better than everyone else. Lyft took out the driver selection step in their app’s process, and because of this, their users were able to find a ride faster. So, users abandoned Uber in favor of Lyft.

The only way to have both the knowledge and confidence to take away previously-perceived value from a product, and then compete based upon the lack of that missing feature, is through careful analysis and understanding of the problem consumers face – not their buying behaviors.

How do you gain such intimate insight into the pain point consumers are presented with? Don’t seek out the market – seek the problem.

Put yourself in the user’s shoes

In order to understand the problem, you need to first experience the problem. How you go about this largely depends on what the problem is; if the problem is a real life situation – let’s say finding craft beer enthusiasts to trade brews with – you need to try out all of the beer trading avenues available to you.

This would entail going through the process of finding and trading beer through facebook groups, subreddits, or other social media channels, as well as going to any local beer festivals, tasting events, and brewery events – if it has to do with beer, you need to be there. Immerse yourself in the culture of craft beer.

Don’t just search for what it’s like to not have a good beer trading system – become so invested in craft beer culture that you need a better beer trading system to satiate your hobby.

Once you’ve truly experienced the pain point you’re trying to solve with your MVP app, you can begin to figure out the best solution to the problem. This is how we came up with the idea for Brew Trader.

If there’s an app that you believe has the potential to be streamlined, or could be improved by the implementation of a different feature set or business model, do the same thing – but tweak it to the digital landscape of mobile app use.

Use the app you’re going to compete against in every situation imaginable – be it location, time or day, the mood you’re in, or the people you’re with. Analyze every step in the app’s process, and make a list or scatter plot of the flow of the app.

After you have identified the parts of the competing app’s UX that work, and those that don’t, create your own flowchart using your firsthand knowledge of the users’ experience.

If you’d like more info on competitor analysis when developing a MVP, don’t fret – our MVP development: Competitive analysis and feature sets blog will be coming out soon.

Find the pain point

The solution will follow.

Knowing the crux of the problem is key to understanding what will constitute a good user experience. A strategically implemented ASO campaign, strong social media presence, and good user reviews and ratings will serve to drive your app’s growth – not your market research. When it comes to app development, the true power of market research comes from understanding the pain point of your users – not their buyer’s profile.

If you’d like more information about creating your own ASO campaign, check out our How to build a mobile app: ASO 101 blog. In the future, we’ll cover all you need to know about building a user base with your MVP app, so stay on the look out!

How much does payroll software implementation cost?

There are certain expenses every business has to accept – and one of the largest contributors to those reoccurring, inescapable costs is payroll. The time it takes to manage your payroll process will always need to be accounted for in your budget, but the time (and the resulting costs of the time and resources) spent can be diminished through the help of payroll software.

When it comes to choosing a payroll software, there are a multitude of options to compare – but first, we’re going to cover the reasoning behind paying for payroll software.

It’s about time

The goal of payroll is to be done in as little time as possible – there’s no profit to be made from it. Any process that cannot lead to income generation should be practiced in the most efficient manner possible – unfortunately, HR administrators tasked with payroll can spend up to ten hours a week on payroll alone.

So, when weighing the two options of either paying for payroll software or continuing to do it yourself, there’s an easy question to ask that will provide the answer as to which is more cost effective:

Which costs more – a quarter of my employee’s salary, or the payment model of a payroll SaaS?

For fun, let’s say the employee in question makes $35,000 a year – divide that number by four, and you’re left with $8750 – if your payroll is processed in house, that’s your yearly expense – for an administrative task that can never lead to income generation.

Let’s take that number and compare it to the cost of some of the more popular payroll software, apps, and APIs.

Freeware

There’s plenty of payroll software out there for free – and for small businesses, these are a good option. While not as comprehensive as proprietary software, free payroll software can help you accomplish simple payroll administrative tasks like payroll and tax computation and submission, direct deposit, new hire reporting, and year-end tax information.

There is one area that freeware can’t compete, however – scalability. There’s also a lack of options for customizing the software to your company’s needs – in the case of free payroll software, what you see is what you get.

If you’d like to try out your options before settling on a software for your payroll needs, there are many freemium versions of software that allow you to try out their service before purchasing payroll software.

One such is Gusto, which also has a proprietary software version that is purchased through a subscription. Let’s go over the cost of a subscription model payroll software:

Monthly subscription

While there are much more well-known payroll softwares out there (like ADP Workforce and Quickbooks) we think it’s important to showcase an up-and-comer like Gusto for two reasons: small businesses understand the needs of other small businesses in a more intimate way than large corporations, and there’s plenty of information already other there about both ADP and Quickbooks.

Despite a less well-known reputation than payroll software household names like Quickbooks or ADP Workforce, Gusto can do a lot: manage payroll administration, HR, and benefits administration and compliance, as well as automatically computing your business’ local, state, and federal payroll taxes (including payment and submittal of payroll taxes), and the option of paying your employees through either direct deposit or check.

Its inviting look, and simple UI make it the perfect option for someone in a small to medium business who either doesn’t have formal training in HR operations, or needs to make more efficient use of their time in the office.

Gusto offers two subscription options – their Core Plan and Complete Plan.

So, with a company of 10 employees, the Core Plan comes out to $1,118 per year, and the Complete Plan totals $3,228 per year. While still fairly priced given the automation and services Gusto provides, its costs can quickly increase as the scale of your company grows. On the Core Plan, a company with 100 employees would be charged $7,688 per year, and $16,188 on the Complete Plan.

Let’s continue looking at our options.

Per-user pricing

While this form of payroll software obviously suffers from the same issue as Gusto’s plan, they are definitely worth mentioning – for small businesses, per-user pricing payment models can be extremely cost effective.

PayrollHero offers employee attendance tracking, as well as scheduling, and time tracking and analytics – all available through a master platform that can be customized with product add-ons such as secure communication channels, data recovery, and unlimited storage. These add-ons do, of course, come with an additional price tag.

PayrollHero, like Gusto, has two payment options:

With 10 employees, the Small Business Plan comes to just $420 per year, and the Enterprise Plan comes to $540 per year. While these are extremely affordable options, PayrollHero doesn’t offer too much in the way of customizability or payroll tasks that aren’t directly related to employee attendance. For a small company that only needs a lean payroll system, however, PayrollHero is a good option.

Let’s look at a more customizable payroll platform and payment model:

Quote-based pricing

You can think of this option of payroll software as a pick-and-choose model. The perfect example of a quote-based payroll system (and one of the most widely-used payroll platforms out there) is Paychex.

Through the PayChex Flex platform, you can build your own payroll system out of pre-made sections of software – each option runs completely on its own, and they all seamlessly integrate with each other. These selectable options are as follows:

  • Payroll
  • Time & attendance
  • Retirement services
  • Recruiting and application tracking
  • HR records
  • Benefits administration
  • Hiring and on boarding
  • Reporting and analytics

Due to its customizable nature, it’s difficult to give a set price range for Paychex’s software – and prices can vary depending on the scale of your payroll operations.

Paychex is continuously improving their software through the Paychex API Developer Center.

Now that we’ve covered the different payment models of payroll software, let’s look into the costs behind the actual coding of the feature sets that make up a payroll system:

Custom payroll software development

If there are all of these great options, what’s the point in developing your own payroll software?

Lifetime value – yearly expenses add up after awhile. For example, let’s look back to our first payroll software example, Gusto. After 10 years, their Complete Plan will total $30,288 – and that’s if your company experiences zero growth over ten years.

Let’s pretend a company that started with 10 employees now has 100; at a rate of 100 employees, Gusto’s Complete Plan comes out to $16,188 per year. In just two years, that’s almost a much money as the yearly salary of a single employee.

A custom-made payroll platform has a much more cost effective lifetime value – there is only the upfront cost of development, and after your initial expense, the only extra associated costs come from maintenance or further additions to your custom platform.

Essentially a very complex backend system hooked up to different UIs, custom payroll software can cater to any business need – every feature listed in this blog can be implemented (and more): including commission management, and split payment management.

You can also integrate a custom-made payroll platform into your already existing internal business app.

Custom-made payroll software is undoubtably the most affordable option at scale – since the code is owned by your company, and not loaned by a third party, you can scale your custom-made payroll platform to any size of workforce and company infrastructure – and with mobile integration as well.

We’ve stated it many times throughout our blog – but it remains just as true; the cost of software development comes down to time, not type of software being developed. For a fairly complex custom-made payroll platform, designing and building the backend will take up the most time – this includes building out the logic, creating the backend architecture (how collections of data will communicate), and building out servers to store your payroll data.

Other costs include UI design, as well as the coding of the front end of your platform. All in all, an average estimate could range from $50,000 to $250,000 depending on your desired complexity. Those are big numbers – but keep in mind, they are truly one-time costs, and the product developed is fully scalable, at no extra cost (other than server maintenance).

Let’s compare those numbers to the expenses of a company with 1,000 employees using Gusto’s Complete Plan. After 10 years with 1,000 employees, Gusto’s costs come out to $121,490. If you’re planning ahead for your company’s future and growth, a custom-made payroll platform will end up being the most cost effective option.

Empower your HR team

When your company makes use of payroll software, your HR department has more time to do what they’re supposed to do – build and disseminate your company’s employee culture. Internal culture and employee happiness are directly related to productivity, speed of business, and employee longevity and loyalty.

When your HR team is working for your people, and not your money, your business can grow into a more efficient, productive, and happy workplace.