Five Killer Trends that Would Redefine Business Apps

New year is the perfect time to party, go on a vacation, relax and enjoy. But at the same time, it's also the perfect time to give everything a fresh outlook, and resolve to do things better than the previous year. So why not start the new year with a fresh look at the way you deploy, run, and manage your business apps? In this story, we highlight five key trends that promise to help you do just that

Thursday, January 03, 2008

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The world of business applications is undergoing some radical changes. No, the core business applications like ERP, CRM, SCM, etc are not going away anywhere. In fact, the Open Source world has been very active in churning out lots of business apps. The latest count on sourceforge.net revealed 374 different Open Source ERP projects.

So apart from Open Source ERP, the world of business apps will continue to thrive and gain more importance amongst enterprises, and there are many interesting trends taking shape to suggest that.

The impact of these trends will be felt by everyone in the organization, right from end-users to the IT department, from the top management to even external stake holders like customers, suppliers, and partners. But before we can understand and fully appreciate these trends, it's important to know the challenges they'll overcome for the various stake holders.

Let's start with users. One of the biggest challenges when introducing a new business application to users is to have them accept it and eventually train them to use it. The reasons for this are obvious. Users are quite used to working with their existing set of applications and don't want to be moved out of their comfort zones.

Most of them use common productivity tools like office suites, email clients, and web browsers to manage their data. The moment something new comes along, resistance to accept it is only natural. Plus of course, there are the hassles of switching between so many different applications.

“Something is needed to minimize the learning curve of new applications for users.”

For the CIO and his team, part of the challenge stems from users' resistance to change. They first have to convince users about using a new application and its benefits, and then train them on it. After this come the challenges of managing and maintaining the application, ensuring that it's always updated with the latest security patches, and keeping it tuned to give optimal performance.

Every time a new application is introduced, the cycle starts all over again. As more applications get added, multiple islands of data start forming, and the management says the dreaded 'I' word to the CIO and his team-Integrate. The hunt then begins to find the best and least disruptive way to integrate so many enterprise applications.

“Something is needed to reduce the management headaches and make enterprise application integration smoother.”

The top management is busy driving the business forward. With rising competition and ever more demanding customers, they need something that will give them a 360 degree view of their organization. It should be able to show them their company's performance data so that they can take timely and accurate decisions.

“Something is needed to help management gain insights into its company's performance.”

Finally, the organization faces many challenges while dealing with external stake holders as well. Ensuring timely delivery of raw material and dispatch of finished goods to the customers is a challenge as there are many manual processes involved. These processes can be automated if an organization can integrate some of its business applications with those of its customers and partners.

“Something is needed to speed up communication between an organization and its external stake holders.“

In this story, we'll take you through the key trends that would help meet the challenges described above. So in the pages to follow, we've explained these trends in detail along with hands-on examples and illustrations wherever possible. We sure hope that these new trends will help your organization make the best of your business apps in the new year. Wish you a great one!

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