CIO’s DILEMMA: CHOOSING THE CORRECT APPLICATION STRATEGY

In choosing the correct application strategy, CIOs must decide on the most effective way to keep up with current technology.  Do you add new applications or reengineer the existing ones?  The wrong decision can put your company at a competitive disadvantage.

The options may include:

-                      Building a custom application

-                      Purchasing commercial applications

-                      Purchasing a BPM/BPA Suite

-                      A combination approach

Building a custom application

Building a custom application option has traditionally been the preferred solution for meeting the exact business needs of a desired application, and truly tailoring functionality.  But building comes with unique resource requirements, longer timelines, and rigid change management that prevent agility.  Add in the standard requirement of Line of Business System integration, and even small applications can require large teams with diverse skill sets to deliver.  For this reason, many organizations leverage 3rd party partners to help with development, which adds to overall project complexity. If managed correctly, you get exactly what you want.

Commercial applications

Whatever core business function you may need: from accounting to human resource, from security to market analyzing, on and on, you can find commercial applications to meet your business needs. Because they are off-the-shelf solutions, typically they will fit about 80 percent your requirements.   Many applications offer APIs to add functionality and facilitate the missing 20 percent, but this requires custom development or hiring the 3rd party’s services team to extend.  There are some key questions to ask when evaluating focused apps:

-                      How well will it integrate with my LOBs? Code or configuration?

-                      Will it fit our requirements or is it overkill?

-                      How difficult is it to manage? Will I need additional qualified staff?

-                      What is the cost to extend and maintain?

Some organizations settle with the already-made application. The benefit is that you can get on schedule quickly, and can gain advantages and ROI and no need for development or build time.

Business Process Management/ Business Process Application suites  

BPM/BPA application suites are very converging category, but there is often some core resistance to them from the development teams.  These platforms can be perceived as a threat, but smart development managers see them as powerful tools that can lead to reduced delivery time, increased agility and as a driver for accomplishing more with less.  The benefits are shorter development times, agility when it comes to modifying the applications, and creating process centric applications that map to the business.  These platforms have evolved into a realistic alternative that can be used as plug-ins to provide solutions around all types of requirements.

Combination approach:

The combination approach seems to be quite common for organizations looking for BPM/BPA platforms to round out their existing inventory.  Adding a workflow engine or a data integration layer to an existing application is a way to provide additional core capabilities.  You could have purchased an off the shelf application and need to extend it, or wrap it with a more capable forms or reporting engine.  The true benefit of this hybrid strategy is that you can have all the benefits of the core BPM engine, and use extended capabilities through the APIs to add value to other existing applications or projects.

 Contact inFORM Decisions for more information.