When you think of a web app development company, your first association might be they code. We just wanted to tell you there are so many other ways your dev team may help you gain the upper hand. They can supervise the whole development process, taking weight off your mind, thanks to firsthand experience, solve problems that you thought were unsolvable, or introduce the newest technologies and technical knowledge into your company. And sometimes it’s the case you just can’t see the wood for the trees and an external IT provider can help you to understand the big picture.
The area of interest will naturally depend on the stage your business is at, so let’s have a look at sample use cases that we’ve tried to categorize into possible scenarios – from a start-up to a company on the verge of digital transformation.
A start-up
A start-up in the pre-MVP phase
A common scenario with start-ups is that when you build your first product, namely Minimum Viable Product. You’ve got no prior experience with IT and no web development team at hand. Your proof of concept (PoC) might have been built single-handedly and it isn’t good enough to develop it further.
You can have the best business idea, investment already acquired, but you don’t know how to even start, not to mention estimate costs, resources needed, or specify the technological details required by your investors. For instance, we built an MVP for Matflix which, with virtually no promotional budget, has been downloaded 50,000 times in six months and acquired PLN 1.7 million to develop the e-learning platform further.
A professional web development company will help you to:
- prepare an investor presentation
- specify business model and product development strategy
- build a roadmap and estimate overall costs
- and finally build your MVP, obviously.
A start-up with MVP
How about you already have your MVP, but you need to develop it into a scalable and, most importantly, working product?
A web app development company will give you a hand with:
- an audit of an existing solution – to decide what the next steps should be
- modernizing your product, if applicable
- building a scalable product from scratch – product design from A to Z
- prototyping, proof of concept building, implementing a pilot for your clients
- cost optimization – knowing the way your product will develop in time, it’s possible to anticipate and optimize e.g. infrastructure costs at that point.
A working product
When you’ve got a working digital product and you want to develop it further, the critical issue that you will need to address is human resources. Needless to say, hiring skilled web developers isn’t a piece of cake.
Thus, an external software development company may solve this – and several other – problems, in particular:
- provide resources when you need developers, CTO, or project manager
- hiring an external dev team, you’re not dependent on the technology your internal team knows – you can choose the best solution for your project based on objective criteria
- an external provider can work in a hybrid model, working in tandem with your in-house team
- you can upscale and downscale the web development team working on your project more easily, allowing you to adjust the team size to your actual needs
- introduce cost optimization, such as cloud solutions instead of AWS, own servers instead of the cloud, comparing cloud solutions providers
- modernize an existing infrastructure
- advise on optimal solutions, e.g. building a cloud-native application.
A company with its own IT team/department
You don’t always have to hire a web development company to build your product from stem to stern, sometimes what you need is just some practical guidance. Your team, working on your project only, might not know the newest technologies or effective PM methodologies. Thus, a web development company can provide you with up-to-date technical knowledge and help your team to master it, so you can whittle your supplier involvement down.
The typical use cases include:
- you’ve got junior/mid devs, and need senior developers or a team leader to represent you as a remote CTO
- you’ve got your web development team, but need someone who will introduce processes and optimal work planning, such as agile development, to maximize your effectiveness
- introduction of state-of-the-art technological knowledge into your company
- training your IT team in a new field, such as programming language, tool, or project management methodology, so they can be self-sufficient in the new area
- development process automation
- building hybrid development teams – consisting of your and external specialists. This way they can exchange know-how and brush their technical skills up – and you won’t be dependent on your supplier forever.
A corporation
The corporate environment is characterized by a large amount of data and formalized processes. At the same time, the potential for changes and optimization is huge here, because it affects a lot of people, departments, and even more customers at the same time. Hence, solving even a small but company-specific problem can have a profound impact on your business and the profits generated. A good example of this is when we’ve introduced NAS Drive for Comcast to combat the problem of weak internet connection in their business units in some parts of the world.
A web application development company can assist you with:
- audit of processes and identification of bottlenecks
- advice on what to do with and how to take advantage of the raw data amassed, so they can work for you and help you arrive at better decisions
- optimization and automation of business processes. Take as an example scanning invoices to convert them into fully editable data instead of typing them in manually, automatic counting and classification of bacterial colonies on Petri dishes instead of countless hours spent by laboratory technicians on the task, or customer support automation taking the form of an advanced search engine that provides answers within seconds
- integration of a variety of systems in use to speed up processes
- solving a specific, particularly non-standard problem in the company, that has been identified or not already identified. The problem might have generated costs or cause frustration among your employees.
We’re aware that choosing an IT company in the case of a corporation is associated with numerous security requirements, thus we recommend taking the necessary precautions, such as choosing ISO-certified software development companies only.
A company on the verge of digital transformation
You are aware that many processes in your company or factory can be managed in a better way, and you also know that the competition has already been introducing digitization, so you don’t want to be left behind. You are aware of the role it plays to be prepared for any unforeseen circumstances, also external ones (as Covid-19 has shown to all of us). You know how important it is to keep knowledge within the company and know the worth of process automation.
An example of a beneficial tool in this particular area is our learning management system (LMS) Samelane that helps companies manage knowledge, automate training, and analyze training data. You can also have a look at our nsFlow platform dedicated to manufacturing, offering remote collaboration with experts, interactive work instructions, and hands-on training.
Yet other examples are:
- automation, lead tracking, CRM software
- internal audits – particularly data and tool analysis, silos identification, process optimization
- solving problems that couldn’t be solved with classical, out-of-the-box methods.
No matter what stage your company is at – building your first product or being a corporation that handles innumerable data every day – a web app development company can assist you on many levels. It will help you prepare investor presentations, estimate costs of building your product, optimize costs and processes, solve non/technological problems, as well as, needless to say, build and modernize your apps.
Last but not least, If you’re looking for a trusted web app development company, these questions to ask might be of help.
