11 Tips to Build Scalable Enterprise-Grade Applications

What is your best tip for a business to build a scalable, enterprise-grade application?

To help business owners create an enterprise-grade app that can grow with their company, we asked business leaders and CEOs this question for their best advice. From considering low-code options to understanding user behavior, there are several suggestions that may help you design an enterprise-grade application to scale your company.

Here are 11 tips for developing a scalable, enterprise-grade application:


Investigate Low-Code Options

As your business grows, always look for ways that business processes and workflows can be automated. There are AI-powered enterprise software solutions that can digitize core competencies to support the needs of a growing organization. To build a scalable business model, consider a low-code and hyper-automation enterprise software like Comidor, so you can customize your company’s digital transformation. Keep in mind that low-code application builders can be leveraged in many industries, so the benefits of automating processes can truly be enjoyed by the masses.

Spiros Skolarikis, Comidor

Keep IT Resources Minimized

Minimize the IT resources required to deploy your application. At Lightkey, when we wanted to develop the enterprise edition of our text prediction software, our initial thought was to use a central server that will be deployed in the organization. However, this would mean that a business that wants to pilot or deploy our technology would need to set up a server, which can be a bureaucratic and lengthy process that eventually requires heavy maintenance. Therefore, we worked hard to find a creative way to deliver our software serverless, making it super easy for organizations to test and deploy it while requiring the minimal approval process possible.

Guy Katabi, Lightkey

Incorporate High-End Tech Solutions

It is important to compete with the current industry trends by adopting cutting-edge technologies to fulfill business needs. First, it is important to consider the scale of business needs and the options available to conceptualize those needs. Second, incorporate flexibility to transform the application into an enterprise-grade depending on the success rate. Use prevailing high-end tech solutions to have flexibility while developing. At Terkel, our application is an omnichannel platform for small businesses, internal users, and external experts. Terkel has every server and framework on Azure to ensure scalability to transform into an enterprise-grade application. Also, Terkel uses deep learning graphic automation and content intelligence to reduce human intervention for day-to-day process optimization.

Sri Sagar Kalisetty, Markitors

Value the Expertise of Others

Building a scalable and enterprise-grade application is not an easy task. Hire development experts who have in-depth knowledge about creating an enterprise-grade application with the least resistance. Outsourcing companies can easily provide you with talented individuals who can create a scalable, enterprise-grade application for you. Moreover, you can also contact hiring and staffing agencies to help you hire development experts.

Jessica Robinson, The Speaking Polymath

Leverage Caches Where Possible

Keep in mind your database must have the bandwidth to withstand scalability and avoid reduced processing speeds. Leverage caches to optimize database performance whenever you have the opportunity because it reduces the database load. Caching outside of a web app helps to increase bandwidth for faster performance. You can also cache queries that are frequent or take the longest to load so they can be retrieved quicker, reducing the database load.

Michael Scanlon, Roo SkinCare

Understand User Behavior

When my co-founder Dan and I were developing our app, we took lessons from previous experiences and chose to have fewer vanity metrics. One specific was not including subscriber counts in the community profiles. We wanted the users to feel like they are a part of a community and not pitting against each other for views and follows. Since beauty trends cycle almost quarterly, we leaned on growing our community through word-of-mouth concepts and organic reviews to help consumers make purchasing decisions. Our website is an extension of our mobile app. Here, we looked at behavior analytics to see which site pages users are most going to and how they interact with product pages and the article content we feature. And then, the app feed is also on our landing page, and these metrics are different. So it’s important that we track the user retention for each experience and that the content is easy to navigate.

Savannah Scott, Supergreat

Separate Layers to Scale

Using a standard layered architecture will go a long way toward making sure your software can scale based on need. A layer-based architecture protects your developers from having to update multiple areas of the platform to make a single change.

Alain Sobol, Red Sea Diving College

Keep Track of Changes

When building your enterprise-grade application, make sure all changes are viewable. When making changes to a client profile or adding notes, make sure it continues to date back, and you are able to see who made changes. This will make tracking a lot easier, and you are able to hold people accountable.

Olivia Young, Conscious Items

Create Short-Term Goals

Successful businesses exhibit a clear vision and create short-term goals to achieve long-term sustainability. They understand the importance of scaling proportionally and are adept at change. Learning how to set KPIs with goals attached to increase your bottom line each year will be invaluable. Rather than scaling prematurely, stay as small as possible until you are getting close to reaching product-market fit. Once you have noticed a product is selling well within its current audience, you want to assess its conversion rate before broadening its reach. Slowly scaling enables you to control cash flow better and avoid inventory issues. This will, in turn, allow you to quickly respond to market feedback, experiment with new ideas, and make any necessary changes required to move into the growth stage.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Use the Best Technology

One important tip that I would recommend is to use the best technology available to you. The reason why I recommend this is that good quality software is more efficient and easier to fix. If you build an application with poor software design and bad code, you will end up spending more time fixing bugs as well as having stability issues. Even if you have a small application, the initial cost to set it up properly is often greater than hiring someone who can write quality software code from the beginning.

Katherine Brown, Spyic

Adopt Scalable Processes Early

Knowing when to build a scalable application is essential 一 and that is in the early stages of your business. Often, a startup will plan to automate manual tasks and processes sometime in the future. But going back and automating operations may prove difficult as founders could face resistance from future key players whose interests are not aligned with that goal. Meantime, their solution will be to perform more and more tasks manually, leaving greater room for errors and slowing down business. But by implementing scalable software when you’re starting, your business operations will be scalable from the get-go.

Shaunak Amin, SnackMagic

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

Further reading: 9 Ways To Keep IT Simple In Your Small Business

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