Demystifying Enterprise Application Development: A Necessity for Modern Businesses

9 Aug, 2023

Liam Elliott

Stay competitive in today’s business landscape with robust Enterprise Applications that streamline operations, boost efficiency, and fuel growth. Discover how these strategic solutions can transform your organization and set you apart from competitors, making them an essential need for businesses of all sizes. Find out how custom software solutions can offer you that competitive advantage

What is an Enterprise Application?

Enterprise applications are designed to integrate the many core processes of an organisation (e.g. finance, sales, hr and more)¹². By integrating these processes within one application (or a suite of applications), businesses can find efficiencies and performance benefits throughout their organisation. These efficiencies can be the difference between simply surviving in a competitive environment and dominating your competition. Enterprise applications are mostly (but not always) internal facing, meaning that they are designed for your employees to use, not for your clients. That is, enterprise applications differ from consumer applications in that they are designed to meet the specific needs and requirements of large and complex organizations, rather than individual users. Examples of enterprise applications you may be familiar with are CRM (Customer Relationship Management) ³ or ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) ⁴ software.

What is Enterprise Application Development and Why do I need a Custom Enterprise Application?

Consider the construction of a new home. There are many “project home” builders out there, that have designs that satisfy most families’ needs, some of them even offer flexibility in their designs, different facades, fittings etc. The Off-The-Shelf applications can be thought of as these Builders. Now, the flip-side of this analogy, consider the situation when your needs cannot be satisfied by a project home, you may have a uniquely shaped block or require 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and an underground garage for 5 cars. You will struggle to find a “Project” builder to satisfy these requirements, so you turn to an architect and custom home builder. The architect will sit down with you, discuss your needs, analyse the problem, and work with you to provide a custom solution, the builders then construct the home according to the architect’s plans. This process is the “Custom” approach of Enterprise Applications.

Just as each organisation is unique, so too are its practices and procedures. Your company, like most others, has its own unique secret sauce that helps you stand out from your competition. This uniqueness often means that common “off-the-shelf” applications just aren’t sufficient and don’t solve your problem at hand. These “off-the-shelf” applications are designed with one or two of your organisation’s functions in mind (e.g. Sales, HR, Finance etc). To maximise their potential reach, these products have many compromises and often require significant customisation (if they have the functionality) before they can offer you the promised benefits. You may find yourself with multiple different products each serving related but different purposes as each fills the gaps within the other packages. This can not only add to the cost of licensing fees, but also the additional mental load of knowing how each application works, and what each one is good for.

As described in the above analogy, this is where Custom Enterprise Software can help you. Through a consultation process, We (Encubed Solutions) strive to deeply understand your business, your processes, what makes you stand out, and your unique challenges. Having this deep understanding of your business, allows us to design, build and maintain a solution that directly solves your needs.

Some benefits custom Enterprise software can have for your business are:

Automate tasks
Improve communication and collaboration
Make better decisions
Reduce costs

Pro’s and Con’s of Custom software v’s Of-The-Shelf products

Pro’s

Designed for your unique circumstances
Software can grow and evolve with your needs
You own the software, no ongoing licensing

Con’s

Can take time to develop
On-going maintenance
Hosting the application

Examples

Below are a few examples of applications I (Liam Elliott) have been involved in building over my career:

Custom Sales application: A custom sales application for one of the Free-To-Air television stations in Australia. The application took into account the scheduling across the multiple-channels, TV ratings and various other data points. This tool was used by the sales team to sell advertising slots to their customers.
Data processing and workflow tool: A customer in the automotive industry, collects a lot of data from various clients. Their data collection was a manual process, manually sending emails to remind their customers to send the data, manually checking and reformatting the data in excel before importing it. The tool we designed as part of the whole solution automated the workflow, from sending email reminders, to automatically receiving the files, passing the files (and desired configuration) to the data processing facility, and reporting back to the user. It allows for the streamlined processing of files, whilst also allowing human intervention if there is any discrepancy in the data. By automating this process the company now processes substantially more data than they were capable of previously.

Conclusion

Enterprise applications are software solutions that integrate the core processes of an organisation, such as finance, sales, and HR. They can help businesses improve their efficiency, performance, and growth. However, not all enterprise applications are suitable for every business, as each organisation has its own unique needs and challenges. That’s why custom enterprise applications are the best option for businesses that want to leverage the power of technology to solve their specific problems. Custom enterprise applications are designed and built according to the business’s requirements, goals, and preferences. They can offer many benefits, such as:

Reducing costs and complexity by eliminating the need for multiple off-the-shelf applications that may not work well together or require extensive customisation.
Increasing productivity and quality by automating and streamlining workflows, eliminating errors, and enhancing collaboration.
Enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by delivering faster, better, and more personalised services.
Gaining a competitive edge by innovating and adapting to changing market demands and customer expectations.

If you want to learn more about how custom enterprise applications can boost your business performance and efficiency, contact Encubed Solutions today. We are a team of experts in enterprise application development, and we can help you design, build, and maintain a solution that meets your needs.