Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

What's the worst part of building apps for your business?

Sep 12, 2016 7:34PM PDT

I’ve been researching how small-to-medium sized business build apps. By “build apps”, I mean develop custom, user-facing software for core business processes. By "core", I mean unique and essential to the business, not common. Like, if I were a deli, I wouldn’t try to build a custom food ordering app: I’d get an account on Seamless or Grubhub.

So, assuming no commercial off-the-shelf solutions exist, the four top options for getting a customer-facing or even just employee facing app seem to be:

Consulting Agencies / Dev Shops
Hiring Developers as contractors or employees
Doing it yourself.
App Builders

The first three seem pretty expensive or difficult. I’ve heard that “App Builders” are supposedly the best mix of “easy” and “productive”, but in my experience, most of them seem “cookie cutter”. Great for content on websites, and not so great when users need to go through complicated, business specific flows.

That said; what is your perspective on building apps for your business? What part of the process is the most aggravating and time-consuming for you?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Usually it's the deluge of companies selling app development
Sep 12, 2016 8:22PM PDT
http://exisweb.net/how-much-money-app-store is reality. If you want to part with your meager earnings, you go with what this company proposes.

For Android our programmers only needed to know we would do Android apps and in about a month, they could create Android apps.

The biggest pain of outsourcing is that you lose control of your company and its apps.

Post was last edited on September 12, 2016 11:27 PM PDT

- Collapse -
Process based apps?
Sep 13, 2016 8:51PM PDT

Great response!

Do you think that the apps you get your contractors to do are process based? If so, do you think those processes get transformed into the User Experience you desire?

In my research, apps tend to be much more task oriented than websites, with lots of little details in their user flows, so I'm not sure if external dev-shops can deliver the best product.

- Collapse -
Yes. The apps we did were process based.
Sep 13, 2016 10:47PM PDT

These were tech apps. Apps that setup and report the status of, say for example motor control systems. Think industrial control. This is not something our company would consider outsourcing since when we need a change it can be next day as it's just one of the in house programmers.

- Collapse -
Big process
Sep 12, 2016 10:46PM PDT

I can not say that something is aggravating and time-consuming. All is important. And when you understand this the process become more easy. You should determine your goals, make a plan, test all the process. Sometimes you can be confused if you considered all factors or not. And so on. But all of this are parts of the big process.