Rapid Enterprise Software Development

Independent software vendors (ISVs), specializing in making and selling software, from seed-stage start-ups to global public companies, look for rapid web development to help scale, drive new business, support its global reach, and accelerate sales cycles. Rapid web development helps modernize software: make a pixel-perfect UX upgrade, develop custom integrations, create new dashboard and analysis applications, or enter the cloud.

What is Rapid Web Development

Rapid web development is an approach to web development that puts more emphasis on prototyping instead of advanced planning. It helps achieve a higher speed of web development than the traditional engineering approach. 

The knowledge obtained from the rapid web development process itself improves the look and feel of the final web solution. We mainly use this method with the Time & Material model and agile methods. 

ISVs' stakeholders want to see the value in the first days and weeks, without the budget blowing up on research, choosing the best frameworks, and gathering non-functional requirements (that could be very important -  but for the next steps).  

Modern users are less patient than ever before. They are less interested in the nuts and bolts of the back-end coding of web apps and just want it to enable them to seamlessly achieve business results or accomplish essential tasks. 

One of the best practices in rapid web development is starting with the UX first. If you don’t have a visually appealing, easy-to-use web app that delivers the best possible customer experience, then you are going to have less engagement, even if the software product code is stellar. 

Your product owners identify the core capabilities and priorities based on the strategic alignment with the business needs. Then prototypes and designs are created to resonate with what the users look for. 

Once you confirm you have the right approach after going through a user testing process, hand it off to your development teams. In this process, the design side helps ensure you understand what you need. On the other hand, the development team ensures the new product is robust enough to survive in a production environment.

Advantages of Rapid Web Development

Rapid web development provides the following benefits:

Better delivery

• The rapid web development team is not trying to build a grand supersystem.
• The elementary system is delivered during the first few weeks or even days after the project start.
• Then, every two weeks, other system modules with increasing functionality could be delivered.  

Better quality

• Users get useful business functionality much earlier.
• The software focuses on business problems critical to end-users rather than technical problems that are interesting mainly to developers. 

Risk reduction

• The earlier a problem can be discovered in the development life-cycle, the cheaper it is to address it. 
• Rapid web development prevents creating too complex or time-consuming solutions that would require a radical rethinking of the entire system in the nearest future.

Rapid Web Development Approach to App Modernization 

Today, providing reliable services could mean meeting the uptime requirements, and giving the headroom to serve thousands of customers across the globe by handling thousands of API calls per minute, and scaling to millions of database reads per minute by using highly available, fault-tolerant data stores. 

To fill in the gaps in enterprise systems, and deliver modern, powerful business applications in a short timeframe, our teams, as part of our application modernization services, often use rapid web development platforms.

Such solutions provide built-in components and strong reporting tools to develop, test, and customize code as needed. 

These platforms allow modernizing software portfolio by building complex applications for any device, browser, and the full range of OSs, after spinning up an industry standards-based development environment in just a few minutes. 

The rapid web development approach avoids the time-consuming rewriting of legacy code and helps modernize systems by layering new product on top of the monolithic application and delivering it to users in a highly consumable way. 

Easy implementation of modernized apps into customers’ day-to-day activities is achieved by integration with already existing backends such as on-premise databases or any data sources, existing logic layers, 3rd-party applications, and cloud service providers.

The infrastructure can be hosted in a private cloud or a public cloud, or be delivered on-premises. 

Common Scenarios for Seeking Rapid Web Development Partner

Maybe you:

• undertake a complete digital transformation of your platform, focusing on completely reimagining the client’s digital experience. It is essential for you to work with newer technologies that are not familiar to your full-time employees.
• have an original idea for a new interface and want to fuse this unique concept with your industry knowledge to produce a new service. 
• have done quite a bit of legwork, creating plans and mock-ups to help define your vision, or have completed a prototype or a proof of concept in-house.
• worked with another vendor first, but it didn’t meet your expectations. The first version of your app has been developed but there are some significant issues.

You made the decision not to staff up internally and started looking at companies that specialized in this kind of application development to extend your development capabilities. 

There is not a large candidate pool in the US and you face challenges in how you’d identify rapid web development talent and find partners to help you address the design, resource, and integration challenges.

Opt to go with Belitsoft to develop a scalable, potentially widely distributed, solid, and reliable in its performance piece of software. Relaunch your web app with the new experience to see dramatic growth in the number of users on the platform, and a massive uptick in usage.

Belitsoft’s Approach to Rapid Web Development

Rapid Prototyping

You don’t neccessarily jump into the engagement on the development side immediately. Use us on a small-scale project. For example, start from a design perspective to build confidence in our understanding of the solutions that you want to build and our ability to execute them.

The initial MVP development and rolling out of the product through various soft launches could be the first major milestone.

Come to us with a prototype (if it has been developed), and guide us through what you’ve done and what you want to do. That may include some code that you’ve developed, screenshots of your rudimentary platform, and customer research. 

We take your plans and designs to the next level, mapping out a development strategy, cost estimate, and timeline. We are transparent about the cost and often give you several different solutions to choose from to keep the price low.

Belitsoft’s design resources can improve your designs and simplify the interface or create a totally new and unique user interface.

We understand that it's really important to ensure that different aspects of the app look or function in a certain way, so it could be challenging to design it if you aren’t an expert. We ask questions in order to figure out the best solution. We listen carefully to your different requirements and unique demands to craft designs and prototypes that answer your needs.

We guide you through a design phase. We realize journey mapping, develop user personas in much greater detail, and create wireframes. 

Rapid Project Management

We provide a point of contact in charge of different aspects of the project.

Your project manager is instrumental in orchestrating the project and keeping the team focused.

We then develop the app in an iterative process using the agile methodology, organized on your favorite project management platform.

You know where the project is on any day, and what to expect going to every meeting.

To be always prepared we have internal stand-ups prior to our meetings to exclude any wasted time for the client.

Once the transition into full-scale development, we can build a cloud-based app in Azure or AWS and release the product. 

We can then move to continued production and engineering support. Work with us on sizeable enhancements to the product.

You also can have us design and develop your marketing website. 

Rapid Web Development Team Creation

We can assign business analysts, flexible project managers, and designers to focus on graphics and visuals, backend developers to work on the database and backend, frontend developers, full-stack developers, system architects, information security experts, QA specialists, software team leads, and cloud professionals to set up dev and prod environments in the cloud. 

We can provide several development teams deeply integrated with your teams.

The team size may fluctuate. These people can rotate in depending on your needs. Some may come and go depending on the expertise you need. On the rare occasion, if you have a resource that doesn’t meet your expectations, we immediately respond to rectify the situation. 

Real Business Cases of Rapid Web Development for ISVs

Cybersecurity ISV: Rapid Web Development & Testing to Maintain Customer Base and Brand Image

Challenge:

The cybersecurity enterprise built and managed multiple complex software products. However, to sell them, they needed to customize the software for each end customer quickly.

In conditions when the in-house R&D team was still busy with products evolution, there were not enough time and specialists for product customization. Thus, the ISV started to delay software products delivery, losing not only income but also clients’ loyalty and brand image.

Solution:

Outsourcing web development to dedicated developers became the most viable solution for rapid web development. To start performing immediately, Belitsoft assigned our most reliable, senior-level specialists from the company talent pool. They formed a team core, set up communication with the in-house managers, and onboarded newcomers, using their valuable knowledgebase in the domain and project.

Thus, the cybersecurity enterprise received at their disposal a well-thought team acting as the right hand to their R&D department.

Up to now, Belitsoft has hired, onboarded, and managed over 100 developers and software testing specialists for the cybersecurity ISV. Our mutual work has allowed the business to deliver software products on time, ensuring both company reputation and a stable client base. Besides, the business saved 40% on development and testing thanks to outsourcing.

Elearning ISV: Rapid Web Development to Scale Startup to Enterprise

Challenge:

The eLearning ISV needed a SharePoint Learning Management System that is smoothly integrated into Microsoft 365 & Teams. To develop such a specific software product, they needed specialists with technical expertise and skills in the eLearning domain. 

Recruiting local US developers was both expensive (US developers have 40% higher salaries) and time-consuming (interviewing hundreds of applicants).

Solution from our Sharepoint development company:

Hiring a dedicated software development team became a go-to option for the ISV that helped: 

1. bring top-level technical specialists and close skills gaps in the domain (Sharepoint and eLearning),
2. start web development rapidly by bringing core specialists from Belitsoft’s own resources,
3. save money in the long run (lower salaries, no need to create infrastructure),
4. deliver the end product faster thanks to the scaling ability of a desiccated team.

Outsourcing software development to Belitsoft saved for the ISV 40-50% of the development costs ($600,000+).

The launch of the SharePoint LMS served as a trampoline for the startup to grow into the enterprise that is currently Microsoft Gold Partner and Microsoft Strategic Partner.

The end software product has 5+ million users and is used on a long-term basis by JFK School of Business at Harvard, Florida Department of Agriculture, and other corporate, governmental, and educational organizations.

HealthTech ISV: Rapid Software Customization to Target a New Market Segment

Challenge:

The HealthTech ISV had a custom-built software product that required customization for specific workflows of each healthcare organization that bought it. The task took 100% of the in-house resources. 

Thus, when the company leadership realized that the legacy framework of their product held back the business growth (cannot be sold to organizations using macOS), they needed extra resources urgently to mitigate the lost opportunities. 

Solution:

To boost the sales volume by entering a new segment (macOS users), the software product required modernization to .NET Core, which gives compatibility with both Windows and macOS.

Hiring a dedicated team is the best option when rapid web development is required. Such an approach brings the business multiple benefits, including experienced developers without time-consuming recruiting, budget savings due to cheaper resources, and urgent scaling on demand.

As a result, app modernization took less than 3 months. During this period, the HealthTech ISV kept on delivering products to the current customer base and got the opportunity to target a new market segment.

Get free consultation from an expert in rapid web development, management, and team creation to find a viable solution for your case that will help you both deliver better results in a short term and save the budget.