Businesses everywhere are turning to “appification” of their key business processes to maximize the benefit of their digital transformation, and it goes without saying that apps are the future for any thriving enterprise.
However, as web apps emerges as the market’s “go-to” prescription for delivering functionality across both desktop and mobile, we’ve seen a parallel increase in the number of customers wondering if web-based apps are the only answer. So, what are there alternative frameworks for developing key business apps? And, what does one stand to gain by considering these alternates as a complement to, or replacement for, web app development?
In this blog, I’d like to share an anecdote and key learnings from a recent customer encounter that highlight some of the challenges of looking to web apps as a potential panacea, and what stands to be gained by those who take a serious look at Native Channel Architecture (NCA) as an alternative to web apps.
The customer in this case is doing around $10B in annual revenue by supplying communications products and services to the US and foreign governments, as well as to many prime contractors within the aerospace and defense industries. They have a large IT staffing; around 300 people.
Like most organizations, their digital transformation has involved identifying the key business processes that would benefit most from digitization, mobilization, and simplification. And they, like many, have been approaching their digital transformation mostly as an exercise in developing or customizing web apps.
Here was the problem: as internal demand increased for new or customized web apps across all lines of business, so did the queue to the organization’s IT desk. For this customer, the resulting wait times for new web app functionality had grown to exceed 6-12 months. Many analysts and line-of-business managers can relate to this!
In this case, the organization had an SAP analyst familiar with NCA and Liquid UI. To him, the opportunity was obvious: leverage a NCA platform to deliver key Quality Management functionality sooner than would be possible with web apps alone. His specific need arose from data quality issues and lapses in product quality stemming from the limitations and inefficiencies of SAP’s standard Quality Management (QM01 & 02), Quality Assurance (QA02), Purchase Order Display (ME23N) transactions. He needed a better UI, and fast.
Because there was no off-the-shelf web application available to suit his specific needs, and because of the long wait times and likely cost for web app customization – by his estimate, around $250K per web app – he knew there was a huge potential to both save money and expedite productivity by pursuing a NCA solution with Liquid UI.
“Our IT team’s development backlog had us waiting 6-12 months for functionality that would be saving us a lot of money in that same time frame. With Liquid UI, I was able bypass the backlog and develop the solutions I needed in days, free up IT resources and end up saving our business unit millions in what would have been lost productivity.”
With requirements in-hand, the analyst worked side-by-side with a member of the Liquid UI Professional Services team for four days and was able to build four business applications (that’s an app per day!) that tailored SAP’s Quality Management functionality to his specific business processes and end user preferences.
The advantages offered by NCA and Liquid UI in this context were many, including the ability to leverage his organization’s existing SAP architecture and business logic without needing to touch the backend. This, in turn, created the potential to democratize control of the SAP UI, free up IT resources, and deliver meaningful business results much faster than would have otherwise been possible.
The result here is that the minimal cost of building business apps on the Liquid UI Platform ended up outweighing both the cost-of-delay and the inevitable web-app development costs. The process was re-affirming for the analyst and fortified his optimism for Liquid UI’s Native Channel Architecture. He put it like this:
“People expect a 'web' look because we’re in a fast food world where people want it to look a certain way, you know? The reality is that Liquid UI just works.”
If you can sympathize with this customer, I encourage you to email me at ben.bradley@guixt.com and share your experience!
At Synactive, we’re ready to fast-track the development of your key business apps by leveraging your existing SAP infrastructure and resources, today. We can help you identify the best apps to shift from your web backlog to the Liquid UI NCA platform. With more than 20 years experience building industrial-grade, mobile-ready business applications, we can help you to immediately extend your SAP Digital Core, and catalyze your digital transformation!
QUESTIONS? Visit us at liquid-ui.com to learn more or call us at 1-650-341-3310 to see how Liquid UI technology and NCA can fast-track your digital transformation!
