7 Deadly Sins of the DIY Cloud

Transcription

1 7 Deadly Sins of the DIY Cloud Uncovering the Hidden Impact of Custom App Development in the Cloud The Do-It-Yourself Cloud Revolution Cloud computing has brought a revolution to application development. Salesforce.com, Amazon, Google and many others have allowed developers to take a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach to quickly deliver custom applications through SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) delivery models. One-man shops to large enterprise IT organizations have developed custom apps in the cloud that require much less effort than traditional application development. A pay-as-you-go approach allows developers to keep costs low, while elastic computing ensures applications can quickly scale for rapid growth. Instead of struggling to customize and deploy traditional applications, many companies have developed and rolled out custom cloud apps to thousands of users in just months. But even though cloud development is easy, DIY apps aren t always the right choice. For simple, low-value or extremely specialized use cases, custom apps make sense. However, if trying to save money is the main reason to build an app that s already available on the market, DIY apps will often backfire resulting in missed revenue opportunities, unexpected costs and unhappy customers. 7 Deadly Sins of the DIY Cloud There s no doubt that the DIY cloud makes development of custom apps easy. And if you have some developers with some time on their hands, you basically incur zero development costs to create your own app. However, there are seven key factors you need to consider before going down the path of custom app development in the cloud. APTTUS Corporation apttus.com US: (650) EMEA: +44 (0)

2 1. Wasted Time and Money: Time is by far the biggest issue with custom app development, especially when you consider the cost of delay. How much money could you be earning or saving each month if you had that app today? For each month it takes you to define, build, test, deploy and conduct training for your DIY app, you re leaving money on the table. Let s suppose an app can save you $100,000 per month, and creating and deploying a DIY app takes 6 months. If it takes one month to deploy a packaged cloud app, you ve lost $500,000 [(6 months 1 month) x $100,000/month] because you re late to market. And if the app creates a strategic differentiator for you, the benefits of a faster deployment are immeasurable. Generally it s only when you re considering traditional on-premise software that developing your own cloud app makes sense. 2. Development Support: Deployment and training isn t the end; it s just the beginning for any app. Once you ve rolled out your DIY app, your team will have to support it for the foreseeable future. Users will have questions about how to use your new app. Your app will have quality issues and bugs. Have you tested all the use cases your business will go through? Do you really want yet another custom app that you re responsible for fixing? When your team is trying to put out the next big IT fire, will you be able to meet your SLAs? Or will you be dealing with angry executives because you don t have enough bandwidth? The 7 Deadly Sins 1. Wasted Time and Money Cost of delay is biggest issue with DIY apps. It takes time to define, design, develop, test and deploy app. 2. Development Support How will IT team handle user questions, quality issues and SLAs for yet another app? 3. Developer Churn With high IT turnover, who will resolve issues 2 to 3 years later? 4. Stuck in the Present Custom apps are focused on current requirements only. 5. Technical Limits Does IT team know the best way to optimize code for cloud platforms and integrations? 6. Poor Governance Need for documentation, standards and audits 7. Technology Isn t Everything What are best practices in the industry? How should processes be structured? 3. Developer Churn: Let s be honest. All companies have to deal with a growing job-hopping culture. And for software developers and IT professionals, turnover is even worse. Chances are that your developer rock stars won t be around 2 3 years after go-live. After they re gone, who will resolve issues, fix bugs or develop new enhancements for your DIY app? And if your company is trying to grow, it s virtually impossible to simultaneously staff up to meet demand while dealing with IT turnover. 4. Stuck in the Present: No matter how visionary your developers are, a custom app is almost 100% focused on present-day requirements. Even worse, the scope of the app is usually limited to just the most important use cases and scenarios. As your business changes new product introductions, mergers and acquisitions, new markets your custom app that was built for today will likely limit 2013 APTTUS 2

3 tomorrow s growth and business agility. What s your plan for improving your DIY app? Also, what about platform upgrades? Your cloud platform will evolve, but will you be able to take advantage of new features? How do you ensure that anything you ve done won t be broken by platform upgrades? Cloud development is harder than it looks 5. Technical Limits: No matter how good the cloud solutions you re thinking of using, they and you have limits. Are you sure you re optimizing your code to get the most out of your cloud platform? Or are you introducing issues that can limit responsiveness? Which use cases are you forgetting about? Are there certain API call limits that you need to consider? What about integrations? Cloud solutions provide many pre-built APIs and web services to integrate with other systems, but do you know the best way to approach cloud integration? 6. Poor Governance: So you have a killer app. What about documentation? What about training materials? Do you have to pass certain standards? If you re in a regulated industry like financial services or healthcare, you need to ensure you have the proper amount of documentation and process controls in place. Your IT team may be great at development, but they won t be thrilled when they have to document and audit your new app. 7. Technology Isn t Everything. While cloud apps can help you overcome many challenges, there s much more you need than just technology. Success is highly dependent on how you manage your people and processes. What are the best practices in your industry? What s the best way to structure your processes? How do you overcome organizational change management issues like user adoption, organizational alignment and internal politics? It s Harder than It Looks On the surface, developing custom apps in the cloud seems easy. But it s much harder than it looks. Take Quote-to-Cash process for example, which includes configuration, quoting, contracts and more. At a glance, it looks like just a few tabs, objects and fields in a browser. But that d be like saying Salesforce.com is just a bunch of tabs and objects. You wouldn t build your own CRM system, so why would you build your own Quote-to-Cash solution? Those few tabs, objects and fields in a cloud-based Quote-to-Cash solution can include over 100,000 manhours of development, testing and customer feedback. And that s not including all the best practices, implementation experience and domain expertise involved in a packaged app. Even if you had 5 software developers that were 100% dedicated to building a custom app, it would take them over 10 years to do what you can get out of the box with a Quote-to-Cash app! Why is building a Quote-to-Cash solution so hard even on a cloud platform? Here are just some of the key capabilities that leading Quote-to-Cash solutions provide: 2013 APTTUS 3

4 Sophisticated pricing engine and recommendations Configurable product and bundle rules Product constraints Proposal and document generation Automatic upsell and cross-sell recommendations Workflow routing, auditable approvals and esignature Automated renewals through contract term integration Best-practice contract templates and clause libraries Deal parameters and guidance Quote creation in Excel Contract creation in Word Enterprise collaboration for quotes Integration to CRM, ERP and other systems Mobile support Domain knowledge, UX expertise and much more! ha rd Consider best practices and domain expertise in build vs. buy decisions And unlike most in-house development teams, software vendors typically have refined their solution to embed years of best practices working with hundreds of customers hearing all their ideas, testing key use cases and optimizing the code. Because Quote-to-Cash solutions have a direct impact on revenue, risk and customer satisfaction, you want to ensure you have the best solution out there, not a hastily defined and coded DIY app. Furthermore, software providers often continue to enhance their apps, release new products, and provide ongoing support and training. So before you take on custom app development, remember that it s not as simple as you think. Tales from the DIY Graveyard Building a custom cloud app can seem very appealing, but unfortunately, reality can be a bit more sobering. Before you go down the DIY road that s paved with good intentions, consider these real world tales. Six Months for a 2% Solution Manual processes were creating a contract bottleneck at a mid-sized software provider, potentially threatening its growth and business responsiveness. While some business users were interested in purchasing a packaged solution, the company s IT department felt that it had both the bandwidth and skillset to create an automated contract management system. Unable to get consensus across the company, business users reluctantly agreed to let IT develop its own solution. Six months later, the company found itself with nothing to show for its efforts. One IT employee had been assigned to build a custom app, but misjudged how much bandwidth he would have, especially with other technical fires that he had to put out. Instead of an automated contract management system, the IT person only had enough time to build out just 1 of the 50 contract processes that the company needed. Poorly defined project timelines and deliverables, unclear requirements, and limited testing environments further derailed the DIY app APTTUS 4

5 After several people resigned in frustration, executives at the software provider realized the errors of their ways and are now looking at a packaged Quote-to-Cash solution. While they feel they re now on the right track, the company has unfortunately squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential cost savings that it could have realized if it had deployed a packaged app to begin with. Been There, Done That As one of Fortune s 100 fastest growing companies, a media and services provider was hoping to grow its revenue even more dramatically. Unfortunately, it was shackled with a custom-built sales ordering system that it had developed years ago. While it had served the company sufficiently, company executives knew that their DIY app wouldn t be able to scale. And despite years of trying, the company had been unable to figure out how to develop more automated pricing models, instead relying on extensive manual intervention to help sales people prepare quotes and sales orders. The company was very knowledgeable about cloud platforms, and it even sold its own custom-built software solutions to their customers. However, the company realized that the functionality it needed already existed in the market, and that replicating it was a poor use of everyone s time. Executives knew that their DIY app faced many issues with integration to other systems, inconsistent data, and ongoing support and maintenance. And even though their current system was considered a success, it had many negative financial consequences inaccurate invoices, excessive discounts, limited sales productivity and lack of traceability. The company decided that they couldn t risk building yet another DIY app that could seriously jeopardize their revenue goals. Instead they evaluated a number of existing solutions many with capabilities that met most of their business requirements before selecting a cloud-based Quote-to-Cash app. Instead of waiting months or even years for a DIY app (that likely wouldn t have met their requirements anyway), the company has dramatically improved their chances of success. Don t Be Penny Wise and Pound Foolish The cloud has clearly revolutionized how companies develop apps. Thanks to the cloud, both independent software developers and large IT departments have been able to quickly roll out custom-built apps. But just because you can build your own DIY apps, doesn t mean that you should. You need to think carefully about all the costs and risks of custom-built apps across the entire lifetime of the app. Don t be penny wise and pound foolish. Trying to mimic existing functionality can save you a few development dollars initially, but it can severely hurt you in so many ways. Every second that you re collecting requirements, building out features and running tests, you re wasting valuable time and money. And what happens if you spend all that time developing your DIY app, only to find out that it doesn t really work? Custom-built apps in the cloud can help in some cases, but you will likely commit at least one of the 7 deadly sins of the DIY cloud APTTUS 5