Innovative software ideas for corporate by TH-EY
Context
As a custom software design, development & consultancy company, we worked a lot with startups, implementing multiple innovative greenfield projects.
Although, working with startups is exciting and fun, we’ve done multiple interesting projects for the corporate clients, which were more challenging.
You know how it is with the corporate world – NDA’s, policies, procedures etc., we can’t openly talk about the details of these projects. So, let me describe a couple of potential ideas of what we could work on, for a corporate client 😉
TL;DR
Frontend application development
Big companies sometimes prefer to keep their backend and the business logic in house as this might be the core of their business or, at least, some product. At the same time, they might not have enough resources and experience, building great UI / UX for the given solution.
Here appear TH-EY, all in white (and black) to the rescue.
We have damn good frontend developers in our company. Specializing mostly in React. Also, in our main architecture, we are using the REST API for accessing our backend. (Industry standard).
With this approach, we are only responsible for building the frontend app, and it is connecting with the company backend through the REST API. We can’t break anything in the database / business logic, (not that we ever did so) this part remains the part of the internal development team.
Our responsibility is to design and develop the best possible user experience and usage of the given backend. Additionally, we incorporate our extensive knowledge of startups, new design trends and fresh frameworks.
Also, as a pretty small company, we bring the quick, agile and flexible development, to our bigger customers. They seem to like our approach and sometimes even adapt some of our processes.
Escaping the Excel hell
Once there was an article Escaping the Excel hell. Worth reading. It can be applied to any tool that is overused: Google Spreadsheets, CRM, Wiki etc.
We see that this problem also exists in bigger companies, where most of the processes are already described. But for the new cases, people seem to have the tendency to work with the spreadsheets, as at the beginning it’s quite intuitive, simplifies stuff and keeps everything in readable and ordered form.
Potential problems we recognized for the shared spreadsheets:
- Multiple people working with the same data, breaking each other’s work
- Tracking history is a nightmare (who changed what and when)
- ‘I’ll duplicate this sheet not to break your work, and later we will merge it’ Yeah right.
- Somebody created the formula, that works perfectly. The same somebody left the company. After 1 month, the change to the formula is needed. Nobody has any clue, how to fix it, so a new formula is created. Other part of spreadsheet is broken / It does not work as it supposed to / we need external consultant to help.
- Any change in the spreadsheet takes 3 minutes to refresh because there is 21k rows of data
For all above – been there, seen that.
Again – TH-EY and custom software to the rescue ( we need to design some cape to the logo )
Sometimes the clients know what they need, sometimes we have to spend some time on the consulting to understand the problem and propose the solution.
Most of the time, in this case, the custom web application solves the issue. Sometimes it requires external integrations, parsing huge spreadsheets or re-implementing the formulas.
We provide the design, architecture, data structure of the potential solution, which is an answer to the most complex issue the company has. Other features, improvements and processes optimizations comes after as ‘nice to haves’ while we are already solving the main issue.
Automation, that there is never enough time and resources to implement
We all have been there. Current projects / products / customers are always the most important for the company. Internal teams are working hard to deliver the KPI’s, expected growth and management orders – that’s how you do money, we get it.
BUT, what if some tasks are repetitive, boring or are burning the creative power of your highly paid consultants?
< You know what I wanted to write here, so I’ll save it to myself >
Sometimes investing upfront into automating, simplifying or getting rid of some company processes, can save you tons of money and let your people do what you are paying them for.
In this case, the custom software again can be the answer. Additionally, you don’t have to engage an internal development team into creating it. You just need 1 product owner / subject expert, that will take care of defining the requirements and communication with the external company.
Some even say, that working with the external company can be like having the internal team. Automation of 1 small process can be easy and useful. Additionally, the external company is focusing 100% on your needs and won’t be distracted by the ongoing problems.
Research and Development
Similarly to the automation that there is never a good time to implement, same happen with the innovations in the company.
That might be the problem, that you are solving manually. Or implementing some solution for every customer is custom. Or there is an algorithm, that only partly is automated, and you feel that there must be a better way.
This can also be done by the external company. From the legal perspective, it is not that hard to write proper NDA and contract, that can cover any case of your company IP.
Imagine that your team can stop whatever they are doing and start to implement the solution, that can put your competition way behind.
Or that you can hire a consultant who was dealing with the similar problem 3 times in the past in different industries, and he is backed by great engineers and designers, to wrap his (and yours) knowledge into the custom software.
R&D doesn’t have to be done by the internal team, think about it.
Summary
These are only potential ways of how TH-EY could cooperate with the clients – hypothetically.
What is your idea / need / problem / challange?
Let’s talk!
Filip Kubala