The integral role of developers for companies looking to deliver business outcomes

Last week, Manfred Rieck, VP Individual Solution Development at DB Systel GmbH highlighted an interesting change he had spotted within his team of developers:

“Over the last five years, we have used a variety of techniques to keep productivity levels high within developer teams. Over the last couple of weeks, these developers – as well as most of us – have been working remotely. It’s been encouraging that far from seeing a drop in productivity, owing to new challenges and working away from typical workstations, we’ve actually seen an increase.”

"As we prepared our software production in terms of automation with CI/CD and container services, it was like “changing a switch” moving from business location into the home offices."

As we grapple with this pandemic taking over every aspect of our lives, for me this conversation was a ray of hope pointing towards the first signs of a better work experience awaiting us on the other side.

The productivity and engagement of developers is more important to organisations now than ever before – accelerating app development and transforming legacy systems has now become a key business differentiator. We’re in the middle of an ‘application explosion, with consumers expected to download over 258 billion apps to their connected devices in 2022 – a staggering 700 million app downloads a day. Look at just a day in your life, how many apps are you constantly interacting with? Digital technology and our daily lives have morphed into one digital life – helped, managed, informed and maximised through applications.

For businesses, this can create both opportunities and challenges. They are now being characterised by how fast they can deliver differentiating applications that enhance the customer experience. Customer experience has now overtaken price and product as the key brand differentiator and Gartner predicts that by the end of 2020 85% of the relationship between a customer and the enterprise will be non-human. The stakes have never been higher.

Additionally, with the explosion of information crossing multiple clouds from an infinite number of devices and sensors, the rate of innovation is higher than ever before. With speed the vital component, taking five or six months to develop an app is no longer acceptable.

Enterprises are now reliant on software developers to work at the speed of light, adapting to changing marketplace requirements in an agile manner. The infrastructure developers run software on and the tools they employ must simultaneously be able to deal with these rapid changes, whilst scaling and juggling various types of workloads

 Let’s start simple

To accelerate app development, companies need to simplify operations, and the most efficient way to do this is through software. Creating one ubiquitous digital foundation that enables businesses to modernise their existing apps and create new ones is key. This platform is then able to build, run, manage, connect and intrinsically protect apps – across any cloud – at speed.

The benefits for businesses of getting apps into the hands of their intended users faster than ever before are numerous; from growth in customer base, ROI and lead conversion, to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as better talent recruitment and retention.

 Where next?

Whether you’re in banking, logistics, automotive, retail or any other sector, the modern app has become the definition of success. Your focus might be on engaging customers; it might be on enabling employees – whatever it is, the apps you deliver will determine the experience your users enjoy.

As we all grapple with the changes to the way we work amidst this crisis, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the impact the app explosion has had on your business, as well as what challenges and opportunities you see emerging.