The Business Agility Blog

‘Tis the season to think about giving – why not give the gift of business agility? Here are three applications that have outstanding return-on-investments. Happy Holidays…

1. Single View of Customer

What if you could see all of the data about a specific customer in one convenient dashboard view? No more signing into multiple systems to gather the customer’s data manually. With a ‘Single View of Customer Portal’ you can organize data from source systems so that your systems work for the people in your organization – not the other way around.

Renew Value in Source Systems

Many organizations are forced to deal with multiple source systems that do not easily integrate. This can lead to underutilized technology and the high cost and human error that come with it. By giving employees an easy-to-use single view of a customers, they will get the most out of data provided by source systems.

With a simple web portal, you can access just the information that you need regarding a specific customer from any web browser. Pool your information resources together to make them work for you. Your CRM, ERP, and billing software can all be a part of a user friendly web app. Best of all, it will be customized to your organization’s needs, and extremely easy to expand.

Simply put, agile development tools like Mendix make small IT departments work like big ones. You can make the changes your business and your industry require, without large upfront investments. Manage data from multiple sources through your browser in an easy-to-configure web application

2. Spreadsheet and Database Migration

While spreadsheets and databases can be extremely useful, it’s easy for organizations to find themselves unable to manage tons of Microsoft Excel files and Microsoft Access Databases. Data stored in this manner can be difficult to maintain because it is not integrated with source systems, and is all too often controlled using clunky macros. Mendix makes it easy to migrate data from spreadsheets and Access databases to an online environment that can be managed quickly and easily.

• Keep your data in one centralized location in a user friendly online application.
• Add logic and workflows to automate manual processes.
• Allow multiple users access to a web application – no more email attachments!
• Manage the application with administrative user permissions.
• Integrate with source systems for up-to-date, dynamic data.
• Scalable applications mean high data volumes won’t diminish performance.

3. Flexible Front End Solutions

Front end solutions are an extremely important part of your organization’s information technology. An intuitive and easy to use interface can change the way people use software, and in doing so, change the way they do business. These interfaces become even more important when they are used to integrate multiple source systems into a single view.

By giving employees an easy to use front end system, they will get the most out of data. Legacy systems don’t have to stop providing value for your organization. Older technology can be revived with a flexible front end system, increasing ROI on an investment made years ago. Data collected in disparate systems can be managed and interpreted easily in a front end system.

Mendix was recently mentioned in a nice post on the GetApp blog about the top cloud stories in 2010. Always happy to hear from our friends at GetApp, we’re even more excited to start seeing Mendix apps populate the GetApp marketplace now that Mendix is listed as a platform. The enterprise world has gone app crazy this year, and I’m proud to hear that Mendix apps are regarded as true game-changers by their users.

If you’re not familiar with GetApp, it’s an enormous marketplace for business applications of all kinds. Talk about options – there are thousands of apps for every purpose, ranging in every possible characteristic you can imagine. The sheer number of choices here reminds me of the philosophy of the Long Tail. You think there will be a long tail of apps?

The Long Tail

In his book, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson explains the value in harnessing the web for free distribution of content. The long tail philosophy refers to a normal distribution of goods, where most merchants are selling those that are in highest demand; the aggregate value of goods not being sold is actually larger than that of the limited number of high-demand goods.

Here’s a [very] quick example: In a music store, each album takes up a certain amount of shelf space. In order to pay for that space, they must sell say – a minimum of ten copies of that album per year. In order to make sure ten albums get sold, they have to only sell albums that will sell that many –AKA: the short head. By selling a virtually unlimited number of albums online, including the ones that only get sold say, once every five years, online retailers are utilizing the long tail. The five million albums that sell once per year generate more revenue than the five thousand albums that sell 100 albums per year. Do the math.

The Long Tail of Apps

So then, if apps can now be created more quickly and easily than ever before – a world of customized applications for every possible solution is coming of age. Therefore, the need for ‘boxed’ solutions – or those that are meant to serve a myriad of industries or organizational departments with the same application – may be diminishing in the same fashion online retailers are winning business from retail stores.

Crowed-sourced by their originators, online marketplaces like the Mendix AppStore and GetApp will offer tons of apps for every possible purpose. The jury is still out on how this will change the way enterprises buy software (politics and blue chips seem to always play a role) – but if we can learn anything from past executions of this phenomenon, CIO’s may be buying apps in the future the same way they buy their MP3s today.

While entering durations and work estimates in your project plan, you will most likely find your project timeline doubled in size given the above levels of testing required when following the standard SDLC. Relief, however, is only a few mouse clicks away.  The Mendix Business Modeler’s consistency checker virtually eliminates four of these testing cycles!

Real-Time Error Checking

The Business Modeler provides a real-time error checker which verifies the completeness and consistency of your entire project, i.e. the database schema with its associated forms and business logic.  Double clicking on a warning within the viewer brings you to the exact location within your project to fix the given issue and provides suggestions and even auto-fix options.  No broken links, infinite loops, missing images, etc.  Mendix Business Modeler’s consistency checker guarantees that your project is deployed without any technical errors.

Change Request?  No problem

We pride ourselves on agility and flexibility.  If you make a change to your data model such as altering the name of an attribute (aka a column within a table), this modification is automatically persisted within your forms and business logic.  Regression testing is therefore eliminated!  Performance Testing (Load Testing, Stress Testing, Configuration Testing, etc.) is not necessary due Mendix’s optimized queries and extensive performance upgrades (like automatic gzipping of static content such as .html, .js, and .css files to allow faster response times for low-bandwidth connections).

In the event that Java actions are used (if custom Java code is chosen for integration with existing infrastructure components versus web services), traditional testing methods apply to Java code.  The Mendix Business Modeler integrates directly with Eclipse and allows testing to be completed during development, not postponed until the end of the project lifecycle.

Satisfied Customers

Of course you will need to confirm your back-end systems are working as expected (Integration Testing).   Otherwise your focus will turn to Functional Testing and User Acceptance Testing, i.e. making your end users happy!  But even these testing cycles are minimized due to the fact that with agile development end users are either directly involved or indirectly offer continuous feedback so that the end product is a custom fit.  Because your project is a visual model, documentation is automatically created, defining your entire technical and functional specifications!  Detailed requirements specs are not a necessity; requirements are defined throughout the process allowing for adoption to changing business processes and future-proofing your application.  Non-technical users will finally be provided with transparency into business logic!  Documentation is reduced to use cases which services the end users needs and defines the application flow.

Another benefit within the Modeler is related to Internationalization and localization.  Adding a new language, for example, is only 3-mouse clicks away.  No extra testing cycles or code required!