The use of business applications has a number of significant benefits for companies. There are at least three reasons why companies need business applications. I will invite you to discuss these reasons.
First, is operational efficiency. Business applications are claimed to be able to help automate business processes which can increase a company’s operational efficiency. Processes that previously took a long time and were prone to errors can now be done more quickly and accurately with the help of applications.
Second, increase employee productivity. Business applications can be an indispensable tool for employees to increase their productivity. This includes applications for project management, warehouse management, task tracking, sales data management, as well as accounting applications.
Third, help analyze data. Business applications can also be equipped with analytics features that allow companies to analyze their data. Analysis of this data can provide valuable insights for companies to make better business decisions.
I have struggled with creating applications, both for my company and for other people’s companies. But I don’t always work alone. In many cases, I always collaborate with people whom I consider experts in their fields. However, things don’t always go smoothly. There is always something that gets in the way and what is fun, there is always a way to develop a “product” that is better than planned.
I have a professional colleague, a programmer, and sometimes a business colleague, with whom I still occasionally meet in certain work areas, who defends an idea that he has repeated to me several times: “I don’t make simple programs on purpose. I don’t want them to be able to call anyone to modify them later, and me to be left without a job. I want to be essential.”
The truth is that it is something that I do not share, but it is an uncomfortable truth that several colleagues follow, although this is one of the few who, although in “petit committee”, has the guts to admit it.
I am not unaware that similar cases may occur in other professions, but perhaps the abstraction of automatic processes makes this “bad practice” more likely in the field of programming.
But not all is lost. By following a series of tips, managers of companies that must hire computer services can avoid excessive dependence on a single professional, which in the long run can lead to, and I have seen this, that due to the lack of that professional, a company has had to replace the entire computer application because no one could maintain it or adapt the changes.
Property
Legally, a company owns the code if it has been developed in its company using its systems, but if this is not the case, the manager or director of the company receiving the software should, to the extent possible, have and be the owner of the software source code. It is not a trivial topic, far from it, and it is perhaps the most important of the tips described here. There were many companies that, due to the arrival of the EURO, or the change to the year 2000, and because they did not have the source code, had to abandon their custom applications and buy or develop new software. Technically, using server backup software can protect the “software” from copyright infringement and worse, losing everything.
Control
Directors, managers, or in larger companies, those responsible, must meet regularly and learn about software development. To do this, it is necessary that those responsible have a certain level of literacy. Developers often sin, we sin, of a certain lack of assertiveness. The language used is too technical without realizing that on the other side, most of the time, there are no developers. That is why mastering a little technical language is desirable in these cases.
Documentation
Another of the cornerstones of the control of the software developed for our company is its documentation. And I don’t mean an explanation of what the program does. Any advanced user of the software can write that. I am referring to technical documentation that can later be understood by another developer. There are several types of technical documentation, everything will depend on the size of our solution and the languages and systems involved. Any technical document that developers can give us or we can demand from them is an investment in the future. Not only due to situations of “disappearance” of the developer or development company, but as support to analyze the implications of future modifications or extensions of our software.
Conclusion
We must trust the professionalism of our software developers, but this trust must not be blind in any case. These tips can save us in the future and not incur unnecessary costs in an application in which the investment was already made to implement it.
