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- Custom Software Apps & SharePoint Consulting
Assessing your options for custom application development?
From desktop software to web and mobile apps, we can help you weigh the pros and cons of each to find the solution that is right for you.
Entrance custom application developers are experts with Microsoft .NET, JavaScript, SQL, PHP, & the mobile and web application technologies that you need to power your business applications. For over a decade, we’ve been delivering high quality custom application development services, custom app development services, mobile apps, and web applications to mid-market clients across many industries.
Entrance brings together consulting expertise in custom application development, data management, integration, and software advisory services to provide complete end-to-end digital solutions for your biggest business challenges.
A line of business (LoB) application is one that a business unit relies on to provide critical functionality; without it, they would have difficulty doing their jobs. Why are new line of custom business applications constantly being built, and why do some companies make big investments in custom LoB apps?
From the initial envision and plan process through to the ultimate build, stabilize and deploy phases, Entrance has a proven track record of delivering custom software projects using our standards-based approach. Entrance employs dedicated project managers utilizing agile scrum methodology combined with the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) to deliver projects in a disciplined manner.
Over the years, numerous clients have engaged Entrance to build their customer portal presence on the web. Many leading edge firms have found that customer portals increase customer loyalty (creating “stickiness”) and provide a differentiator from their competition that enables them to win and retain more new customers.
Today, people expect easy access to the data they need to do their job and the ability to quickly interact with vendors on their terms in a self-service environment. Customer portals deliver on all of these points and keep you on the leading edge in your industry.
From the initial envision and plan process through to the ultimate build, stabilize and deploy phases, Entrance has a proven track record of delivering custom application development services using our standards-based approach. Entrance employs dedicated project managers utilizing agile scrum methodology combined with the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) to deliver projects in a disciplined manner.
Many clients come to Entrance with an existing spreadsheet or legacy application that has been built to take a variety of customer needs as inputs, perform some calculations and generate a configuration of products that meet the needs. These applications are common in the manufacturing or engineering industries. Entrance has experience building and modernizing these “configurator” applications to expand their capabilities and provide intuitive graphical user interfaces.
Everyone is going mobile. How do you answer the question “Is there an app for that?” for your business? Entrance has expertise in building Windows and web-based applications which enable the software to work without being connected to the Internet but still synchronize data with a central server when connectivity is available. Offline support is crucial for implementing usable mobile business applications.
Custom Business Applications
In unique verticals where commercial off-the-shelf applications are not widely available or do not meet the needs of a new market entrant, Entrance provides custom line-of-business applications to drive efficiency in back office workflows. Frequently these applications also integrate with a customer portal as well.
Applications hosted in the cloud such as SharePoint can provide an extremely high degree of reliability and scalability without the high IT costs that are usually associated with those requirements. It’s generally seen as a good custom app development process to move apps into the cloud when possible, as these benefits are very noticeable if you have a custom software development team that can work with cloud frameworks like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The best custom application development companies generally regard the cloud as the first choice for hosting new projects. They are generally easier to develop and maintain than traditional hosting. The difficulty in using them generally comes from the sheer number of services that cloud frameworks provide. Hiring a custom app development company that understands whether you need a small bit of functionality that can be hosted in AWS Lambda, a longer running process that requires something like Elastic MapReduce, a full application that can be hosted in Elastic Beanstalk, or a VM-like environment like EC2 is vital. Picking too light a solution will render your custom app unusable, whereas the heavier ones can cost orders of magnitude more if misused for app developments that need a different mix of the resources provided.
Entrance has a long history of custom app development services in the windows environments to fill a wide variety of business needs. Whether you want to automate part of your business, modernize an out of date process, manage your day to day line of business concerns, or solve complex engineering problems, Entrance custom app developers have experience with app development solving a problem similar to yours.
While Windows apps have fallen out of favor at most app development companies, in favor of web, mobile, or cross platform apps, they still provide the best user experience for users on windows machines who are willing to go through an installation process. Windows Apps are still a very good choice for custom applications that have high computational or graphical requirements.
Another reason an app development company may want a custom Windows app as opposed to a web-based solution is that allow a dev team to not have to worry about a substantial number of cross cutting concerns that web apps have to contend with. Windows apps that rely on local storage rather than communication with a server don’t have to worry about asynchronous communication and usually don’t have to worry about user authentication or authorization.
SaaS applications are becoming increasingly widespread because the payment model allows users to pay as they go for small applications that provide direct value. Many app developing companies are switching to this model over the more traditional licensing model because it provides them with a more steady income and their clients with the ability to use the product without a massive initial investment.
If you have a custom app that your users love, it may be a good candidate to convert to a SaaS offering. This is usually relatively simple assuming that your authorization process isn’t overly complicated. Integration with some form of billing and support for multiple tenants will be necessary in order to support customers. If the application isn’t already on the cloud, moving it there would help with scalability and availability.
The benefits of using a bespoke software development services as opposed to a pure SaaS offering is that custom software is tailored specifically to your business needs. A general tool will almost always either be more complicated to use than necessary, or not meet all requirements of a specific company. The best app development companies know when to use an off the shelf service, and when the benefits of a custom application are worth the increased up front cost they represent.
Custom applications & software are often seen as in direct competition with SaaS applications, but the two actually can be quite complementary. A custom app can be extremely useful because it’s tailored to the specific business problem it’s solving, but the costs of app development can be high, especially if you are reinventing basic functionality. Offloading portions of a custom app onto SaaS apps to handle things like user management, payments, or file storage can save time and money while retaining the benefits of a custom application development process.
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