Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Top Value Disciplines of Successful Growth Strategy for Software Product Companies

The industry is moving so fast that software product companies must keep pace. If not, they will be left behind. Growth strategies from a decade ago are fossilizing while technology expectations, pricing models, and mobile computing is making things even more confusing and volatile. 

In this article, we will discuss growth strategies that, if appropriately implemented, will not only help grow your company but will also help you stay a couple of steps ahead of the ever-changing industry.

The Value Discipline Model
The value disciplines presented in the 1993 Harvard Business Review report from Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema entitled “Customer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines” established the ‘rule-of-thumb’ for strategists over the years, presenting the three value disciplines that a successful company needs.

The report outlines that Operational Excellence, Customer Intimacy, and Product Leadership are the core values required for a successful company. It went on to bring out, at the time of the study in the early ’90s, that while it was necessary to be competent in all three disciplines, a successful company needed to excel in any one of them.

Since 1993, the birth of companies such as Amazon, Google, YouTube, Facebook and others have completely changed the landscape. Additionally, enhancements in technology including mobile computing have raised the bar for software product companies. Customers now demand more aesthetically pleasing applications, that are low cost and customized, and with the ability to do everything they want, integrated to one unified interface.

Additionally, they want the software to be compatible with all of their other apps and devices, and they require the best on-demand support to make for the best user experience possible.

Conclusion

For growth strategies to succeed, we must implement, adhere to, and excel at all three value disciplines.

Ensure Product Leadership by continually updating our core solutions to meet the demands of the client, providing them with SAAS, AI, and secure platform models.

Software must be produced with Operational Excellence through LEAN methods such as the Scrum Methodology, ensuring the product is of the highest quality. It must align with what the client wants, and it must be delivered within the timeframe promised by sales teams.

The roles within the software development process that understand the buyer persona ensuring the customer gets the product they want must work in tandem with the infrastructure that supports the client before, during, and after the purchasing process. Seeing this level of Customer Intimacy throughout the entire product cycle is the only way to gain ‘share of wallet’ when it is time for the customers to upgrade or go to the next level as their needs change.

To learn more about how Aloha Technology can help you with your software needs, connect with our team would be happy to answer your questions.


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Tuesday, June 9, 2020

The Choice Of Technology Framework And Mobile App Development

Here is a list of factors to take into account when embarking on a large scale mobile development project:

Functionality
The core functionality is essential to understand because it speaks to many different foundational issues in the development process. You must assess whether your product is intended to fulfill simple informational needs or something more complex and interactive. This will inform the next step, which is to establish what sort of platform should support your product.

Platform
The question of which type of platform to develop on, as well as whether multiple platforms are needed, is essential to this process. Much of this is based on the user profile that should be generated early in the user research process. Relevant user behavior to observe in this case includes how many devices they might employ when using your app, and what kinds of devices they are. Other issues to evaluate include maintenance and security.

Bandwidth
Information technology will play a key role in user experience and application performance, among many other important elements and features. Network access must be optimized so that nothing is wasted in the process of providing users the best experience possible. And in the event of disconnected service, offline functionality should be incorporated wherever it is useful and/or relevant.

Software
The programming phase must be planned such that whatever framework is used, the application can be effectively upgraded as seamlessly as possible further down the road. Deployment time should also be factored in, and you should remember that mobile-web based models tend to deploy the fastest.

User Research
Great user experience requires proper user-centric research. Fortunately, there is a lot of tools to choose from in order to conduct this research, but unfortunately, that also makes the process very competitive and at times quite complicated. User research should be planned early on, and the process should really continue throughout the product life cycle (don’t think of it as simply part of the early phase). Great experience design meets their needs and expectations, and should build relationships with users that last and establish brand loyalty. Aloha Technology considers the Factors include information architecture, clear and concise copy, useful and elegant design elements, and trust and security.

Cost
Once all of the above has been evaluated, you should then be able to project a reasonably accurate budget for the project. Generally speaking, mobile-web is typically the most affordable solution, while native applications are normally the most expensive to build and maintain. Aloha Technology analyzes costs and look at market trends in order to attempt an accurate prediction of investment returns.

Mobile application development is far from a simple process. But with the right amount of planning, it can be a huge step in helping your business connect with customers in very meaningful ways. Companies like Aloha Technology are there to help you along this path

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Monday, June 8, 2020

6 Tips to Create an Enterprise iOS App That People Would Love to Use

Here are some tips that can help achieve that.
1. Understand What Your Employees Need
Simply put, every business first needs to understand what their employees need and how an iOS app can solve their problem. In the majority of the cases, the apps are developed to help the employee’s access to real-time data. So, you need to ensure that you have the necessary infrastructure in place which does not crash due to several concurrent users.
The back-end, as well as the front-end, should be given adequate attention so that the app is able to keep up with a large amount of data which will be constantly received and sent even when the signal is reduced.
2. Start with a Smaller App
When the idea of enterprise iOS app development comes into the picture, most of the organizations are excited about how they can revolutionize the entire organization through a behemoth app which can make all the process and data mobile. However, you should understand that the bigger an app is, the higher are the chances to fail.
Think agile and prioritize the functionalities to only build an app which can resolve the most pressing issue. Ignore all the other problems and functionalities until the first version of the app is developed, released and succeeded. Smaller apps are not only faster and easier to develop but also have a smaller financial risk and have better adoption rate.
3. Think About Deployment
Building a great iOS app is only a battle half won. You also need to make sure that your employees actually use the app. You need to look for ways to encourage your employees to download and use the app along with managing OS version control and app version control.
Thanks to the availability of MDAP solutions this is not really a problem anymore. However, a lot of organizations do not focus on deployment until the app is already developed.
4. Let the User Guide App Development
Another benefit of agile app development methodology is that the app can be improved on the basis of the feedback from the users. But you do need to think about how you’ll collect the feedback, prioritize it and implement it.
Although time and costs are greatly reduced when you partner with an iOS app development company that offers a MADP, knowing the user’s greatest pain points and resistance levels helps create a solution that would be used regularly. This can be done by allowing users to guide the development process to ensure that they are excited about the app and take responsibility for ensuring its adoption and retention.
5. Data Security
As per a Gartner report, global businesses only spend 5% of their budget on IT security. If you are planning to build an enterprise app, data security should be a vital consideration. What if one of your employees loses their mobile phone? What if your enterprise app on the lost device and the data within gets into the wrong hands? Apart from this, the rising instances of hacking, malware, and viruses are also worth thinking about.
While the latest iPhone’s now come with features like biometric capabilities, you need a lot more than the pre-built feature of the device to protect your business data. MDAPs come with a host of modern technologies and tools to significantly improve the security of your enterprise app.
6. Think About Signal Loss
Most parts of the world still do not have 4G coverage and many of them even struggle for 3G. As a result, it is also very important to think about signal loss when building the app to minimize the user rejection risks and make the app more effective.
Using data caching ability of the devices and deciding where data processing takes place can help reduce the signal loss problem. A lot of organizations try to eliminate this problem by keeping most of the heavy-lifting processes on the server-side. However, this isn’t always possible.
Partner with the iOS app development company right from the planning stage. An experienced technology team can provide critical inputs to improve the efficiency of the solution, while adding to how attractive and engaging it is for users.

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Thursday, June 4, 2020

Top 7 Components of a Long-term Software Business Strategy

Software development is a rapidly expanding field, and thus requires constant focus on innovation and adoption within the industry. Continual innovation is a critical business component if independent software vendors wish to scale up over time. But there are a number of factors that can get in the way if these companies do not plan ahead of time. If you are planning a software startup venture, then you should consider consulting organizations like Aloha Technology before doing so, in order to make all the right plans.

Below are the components of a long-term software business strategy

Workflow
One of the most important structural changes is automation. Vast sections of the tech industry are being disrupted by automated processes, and this progress is rapidly picking up speed. The goal in your workflow is to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible while meeting customer needs that will diversify over time. Arm yourself with the best automation tools possible and save money, time and other valuable resources. Make sure your workflow is as equipped as possible for continuous modernization in order to remain competitive.

Collaboration
When it comes to picking your staff, it is essential to make sure that all of your bases are covered. Department heads should be smart and cover a broad range of fields. Your workflow should put into place the best communication tools in order to facilitate seamless cooperation across all of your platforms. Your production chain is only as strong as your weakest link, but that link can always be strengthened through effective leadership and healthy collaboration.

Roadmap
If you are in it for the long haul, then you are going to need a clear and well-defined roadmap in order to meet your customers’ needs continually throughout your product life cycle. The goal should be to build a product that can grow and evolve. You need to establish the best available methods, figure out the development timeline and life cycle, and plan your budget accordingly.

Structure
In order to map out your development product and life cycle, you need to understand the structure of your product. You must form the right teams (more on that below) and structure them so that communication is seamless and efficient. A great idea is essential in order to launch this process, but it will amount to nothing unless the proper project management tools and processes are in place. Beware of any gaps and be open to new ideas, because there are structural changes happening in the business of independent software development on a regular basis.

Agility
With your team and workflow in place, you will need to make sure that you are working with the most agile tools available. They will need to be robust and scalable, in order to make sure that quality remains consistently high and operations run as smoothly and swiftly as possible. Companies like Aloha Technology can help you stay ahead of this.

Execution
Now that you have completed all of the prerequisite steps, it’s time to implement them. Your roadmap should be thorough and descriptive enough that everybody can understand it and it makes this part of your product’s journey as simple and error-free as possible. Also, you should create software to track your business’s progress to understand how users are reacting to your products/services. Research is essential during your product life cycle and you will need to have reliable data in order to conduct it.

Evolution
If everything is properly executed, then mechanisms should be in place to allow for continuous improvement of your product. Competition is fierce and it is increasingly ubiquitous. Build your software on a solid foundation and conduct thorough research that provides the information needed in order to continuously evolve.

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