A Beginner’s Guide to Building an Enterprise Application

An enterprise application or software is representative of a company’s core activities, operations, processes, values, and culture. The primary purpose of an application is to create value for customers interacting with the business. An application acts as a connection or interaction point between the customer and the business. Therefore, businesses pay extra attention to creating the perfect enterprise application that reflects their image.  

Enterprise application development is the process of creating, designing, and developing software applications for companies. Enterprises are always searching for reliable, self-sustaining, robust, and scalable methods of creating applications. These apps facilitate business processes. Enterprise applications are tailor-made and customized, targeting specific customer, demographic, and business needs. The goal of software developers is to create a stable, scalable, flexible, cost-effective, and efficient app solution for the company. An enterprise app fulfills the following goals and functions: 

1. To keep company information and content updated and streamlined across all channels and systems 
2. To align and direct different departments, divisions, and teams toward common goals 
3. For cutting-down handoff expenditure between different departments  
4. For facilitating the management to make data-driven and informed decisions 
5. To centralize a place for managing company processes 
6. To bridge the gap between a customer and the brand  
7. To market company offerings to the potential customers  

Following is a process of building an enterprise application  

1. Form a development team  

Admittedly, the application is a lot easier nowadays with advanced and state-of-the-art tools, software programs, programming languages, codes, and app builders. But this is not enough for developing an enterprise application that fulfills all the above-mentioned goals. The app development process undertakes the skills, crafts, experience, and expertise of a group of people. For this purpose, the first step towards application development is to gather or form a team of developers with different backgrounds, knowledge, certifications, expertise, specializations, experience, and skills.   

2. Perform market research 

When there are more than 5.6 million apps available for all Apple and Android users around the world, you must be aware of what you are contending against. It is important to know how and why there are so many successful apps in the market. What are others doing that audience loves? App development requires thorough market research of the competitor apps and the app industry as a whole. You can begin by researching and studying your competitor’s apps and what they are up to. Studying their failures and success stories will help you gauge the necessary details of your customer preference. Your market research should also include studying your potential customer. Understand your user needs and wants and market gaps that you could fulfill with your enterprise applications.  

3. Map out technical specifications and app features 

 Before beginning the app development process, sketch out the technical specifications and features that you want to add to your app. Establish the core features that would make your app stand out among competitors. The technical specifications of your app should include the tech stack, platform, codes, wireframes, programming details, etc.  

4. Develop mockups or app prototypes  

After registering the technical specifications and features of the enterprise application, develop a mockup of the app. The mockup version will demonstrate what to expect from the original app. The prototype will have the actual appearance of the app with the relevant color scheme, basic features, and layout. It will give the development team a hint and idea of how the app would work and look. 

5. App development 

This is the most crucial step where the development teams and engineers actually build the final product or application. This stage follows multiple steps to substantiate and solidify the app development idea finally.  

6. Testing 

In this step, let the QA (quality assurance) team take charge. When the app is ready, it is tested for its performance, merits, and quality before commercializing it and releasing it to the audience.   

7. Commercialize the app 

The last step is usually commercializing the app, where the company launches it on the app store. You submit the app to different forums and platforms, such as Apple Store and Google Play, for iOS and Android users, respectively.  

Every enterprise has a different process for building the enterprise application. However, the basic steps remain the same everywhere.