Application development solutions

Every organisation has several applications that support its business processes. Business-critical processes use standard applications that offer the required functionality based on best practices. If these applications don't meet the requirements, your organisation must make choices. You can modify the application itself, but this can be an intensive and costly investment for more complex processes. You may also want to support certain processes that are not standard. In both those cases, developing a new application is the most suitable solution.

In the past, developing applications was a time and resource intensive process. Technological developments in recent years have made the development of applications much more accessible. New methods such as Rapid Application Development (RAD) drastically shorten the development process from months to weeks or even days.

What impact should your application have?

Besides speed, other factors play an important role in the development or modification of an application. One is the complexity of the application. Is it an existing or new application? Are the processes variable or standard? How many users are there and what about the integration with other applications? The most important question is what impact the change should have. A clear description of all the factors and requirements enables you to define what type of application you want to develop. You may already have the functionality at your disposal without knowing it, or you may actually need a completely new application.

For example, there are roughly three application development possibilities when dealing with an SAP-oriented application landscape:

• Classic extensibility: the extension of core standard processes, such as the ERP environment. This offers you freedom and the opportunity to influence the process. However, the adjustment of the extension requires a lot of manual work during updates.
• In-app extension: minor core adjustments using standard available tools. This usually requires no in-depth technical knowledge and extensions remain available during new updates.
• Side-by-side: the development of additions and completely new applications outside the core. This offers full development flexibility and is easier to integrate with other applications. This is possible with the Rapid Application Platform Mendix and with various development languages such as ABAP, .Net or Java. Other benefits are that it allows you to keep the core clean and make the applications cloud ready.

What do you need?

If you would like to know which option you should use to develop a new application or modify existing applications, we will be happy to help you clarify things. Together we will find out which method best suits your business processes and IT environment.