Rapid Application Development: A RAD enterprise lifeline for continuous improvement with resource constraint

Resource constrained? Solve resource constraint with Appify’s Rapid Application Development Platform

The United States (U.S.) has experienced a surge in inflation, with an average quarterly annualized increase over 2021–22 in personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices of 5.8%. Despite this recent inflation, U.S.  unemployment remains historically low at 3.6%, and thousands of jobs remain unfilled. Help is still hard to find. Achieving successful hiring and onboarding is a topic that enterprises across a variety of industries broach with us. Hiring is a theme that is a constant across all the business leaders we talk to, whether it be Information Technology (IT)  executives solving for their lack of resources, Operation Executives with a technology and speed of implementation problem, or Innovation Executives who are trying to find a way to overcome,yet again,their lack of resources. According to the Korn Ferry study of Global Talent Crunch, the current talent shortage could create 85 million unfilled jobs and close to $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenues if unaddressed by 2030.

While the obvious advantage of Appify’s Rapid Application Development (RAD) approach wherein everyone can quickly configure an application themselves is the reduced time to market, cost savings, and productivity increases, more and more RAD is becoming a necessity to combat a dwindling workforce. The biggest organizations are out in front of this movement, realizing that their only hope to maintain a competitive advantage – or to compete at all – is to go the RAD route. Entrenched attitudes favoring traditional development are falling out of favor from business leaders to technical teams. Team members are stretched thin for time and resources and faster solutions support team goals cross-org.

This is not to say that RAD will replace traditional software development. It won’t. There are still many areas that are better suited to custom software development. But doesn’t it make sense to do as much as possible with the RAD approach so that your development team can focus on their core competencies?

How IT executives can leverage Appify’s rapid application development

The Appify team is talking to companies on a regular basis and we are seeing similarities in the challenges they share with us. IT executives all have the same problem: a lack of developer resources. According to ZDNet, IT leaders say the shortage of talent is the biggest barrier to adopting new and emerging technology. It is increasingly difficult to support all the requests from their business users and they have been forced to look at new ways to service them, many times — somewhat begrudgingly — embracing our RAD option. My message to them: we’re not here to replace you, we’re here to help. We know our role and are very clear regarding where our platform is best suited.

How operations executives can leverage Appify’s rapid application development

We also encounter the operations executive who has an IT problem, which again is tied to resources. Operations leaders are not getting the love and attention they need because IT is overwhelmed and working on other projects. Prioritization puts these business users at the end of the queue, and they struggle to run their business units efficiently.

How innovation executives can leverage Appify’s rapid application development

Another person that the Appify team is talking to more is the innovation executive. Innovation executives are tasked with finding a way to achieve more for the organization and move forward with continuous improvement using less resources – and to get this accomplished  quickly. In this situation, all roads lead to a RAD approach. Functioning as somewhat of an independent agent within large organizations, innovation leaders are less likely to rely on traditional methods of development and more likely to embrace a different approach.

Rapid application development solve cross-org resource constraint for all industries

Digital transformation has not yet happened for many organizations and their technicians are still working with paper, pencils, and clipboards while IT deals with the more pressing infrastructure challenges with ERP systems, CRM and a whole host of fun stuff. The ramifications of this lack of digitization impacts customer retention, lifetime value and, maybe most importantly, the retention of employees. No one wants to work an 8 to10-hour day and then spend three hours a night doing paperwork – especially when there are rapid application development options that enable your team to handle administrative tasks in minutes. Digital transformation and a RAD approach to building mobile apps answers this problem and it does so very quickly.

I am a hands-on SVP and I participate in discovery calls, demos and industry roundtables and one thing is very clear, it’s tough to run a business these days. The theme of doing more with less is ubiquitous. Every executive is worried about the same thing, hiring qualified, talented people. It is certainly still an employee’s market right now and it is very clear that there’s not enough talent to go around. I cannot help but feel that we’re offering a lifeline to these organizations by providing them with a viable means of quickly and effectively addressing their business challenges.

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