Quick — name three things besides the global pandemic that happened in 2020. Did you remember that:
- Kanye West ran for president?
- A mysterious monolith popped up—and then vanished—in the Utah desert?
- Elon Musk and Grimes named their newborn infant X Æ A-12?
If you did, give yourself a pat on the back! If you didn’t, there’s no need for a facepalm. In the modern world, speed is everything, and headlines that seemed important three months ago now feel like they’re so last year.
The same is true in application development. Consumer demands change on a whim. New legislation arrives with the stroke of a pen (or the tap of a smartphone). Novel apps launch almost daily, many of them threatening to outperform the apps you have in the market right now.
For IT teams, keeping pace isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. In fact, if it takes your company six months or longer to launch an app, you may already be behind the times.
Why You Must Move Faster
According to our recent report, The Speed of Change: How Fast Are You?, more than half (57%) of IT professionals told us their companies can launch apps in four months or fewer. In fact, 20% say they can launch an app within one to two months. That means they’re delivering solutions to their customers while other companies are still coding. It also means they’re meeting emerging trends head-on and leaving their competition far in the rearview mirror.
If app development slowdowns are keeping you from leading the pack, start catching up today. Take notes from these companies that respond to market forces and pivot quickly, measuring app development timelines in days and weeks, not months.
Keeping Ahead of a Global Market
Insurance is a relationship business, and AXA became the #1 ranked global insurance agency by forming great relationships with 3,000+ brokers. But independent brokers with AXA Commercial Lines had become frustrated. They wanted easy online access to claim information from any device. Instead, they had to call AXA’s customer service center and waste precious minutes on hold.
AXA felt the pressure. These independent brokers could move their business anywhere, and they would if the bottleneck wasn’t solved. But there was another complication: The AXA IT team spent most of its budget managing existing applications and outdated legacy systems.
Still, they found a way to win the race. Discover how they built an insurance portal with legacy system integration in just 3 months.
Responding to Massive Product Demand
Keeping up with the latest headlines helps companies respond faster. It’s a fact that Dorel Juvenile has become the world’s leading juvenile products company. Its products are used by parents and children in more than 100 countries.
In 2019, new legislation in Italy mandated that parents and caregivers outfit children’s car seats with “anti-abandonment devices”—alarms that sound when a child is left alone in a vehicle.
Dorel Juvenile needed to develop a potentially life-saving app quickly, in time to meet the expected massive demand for these devices. How did they accomplish it—and perform IT staff training at the same time? Read their story.
Pivoting During a Global Pandemic
Estafeta is one of Mexico’s largest logistics companies, and its 8,200 employees handle nearly 43 million shipments per year. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, they suffered a tremendous blow. As COVID-19-imposed lockdowns occurred worldwide, Estafeta saw its traditional logistics traffic fall by 83% in just one week.
This left the company with a host of challenges. Estafeta needed an app to help pharmacy store managers request and monitor deliveries. It needed another app to fulfill those orders. It needed an app to enable contactless sign-offs for proof of delivery or package drop-off. And it needed an app to engage a small army of third-party logistics partners who made last-mile delivery possible for B2C customers during the pandemic.
How fast did Estafeta create these apps? Discover how they launched not one, but six new apps in days, not weeks.
Get Up to Speed
Make sure the speed of your app development keeps pace with the world around you. Read this fun infographic. You’ll get more lightning-fast solutions that helped other companies roll out new apps swiftly. And you might even see a funny meme or popular streaming title that you missed in 2020, because, you know… that was so last year!
Source: OutSystems Blog
