How a roll of duct tape will help you build your business app

The title is odd, we know but if you give us five minutes, we’ll not only show you that it is true, but how it can also save you a large chunk of your development budget and stop you wasting time.

You are probably thinking that building an app to help support your business seems like a costly exercise, especially when the use case is not well defined, or the cost benefit may be unclear.

As you may know, an app is a great way to support your current customer base and provide your team with insight into customer behaviours as well as improve the flow of information within your business.

While there may be situations where you think an app can produce tangible benefits with time savings and customer behaviour insights, the project can still fall at the first hurdle. It doesn't take long for you to realise that the cost of investment in your dream business app is way outside the scope of your budget and even though you strongly believe the investment in your business is a good one you simply cannot risk (or afford) the capital outlay.

Simply put, apps can seem too big a risk!

At Cariboo, we work with many different sized companies on many different app development projects, from improving data flow to giving customers a better user experience. We provide businesses with a team of skilled app developers who understand how to deliver positive outcomes for your key stakeholders, but we need you to take the first step!

This is a problem we have faced many times; the client was willing to "push the button" and start the app build but the budget was simply unachievable especially if the app fell in the "nice-to-have" category and not the "must-have". Thus, we faced what seemed like an unsolvable problem, how do you build an app if the client doesn't have the budget?

We struggled with that problem for a while and our research led us to discover AppGyver - Before we continue and for those old enough (and possibly also American) you may remember Richard Dean Anderson as the TV action hero MacGyver. MacGyver didn’t have a cape or a pair of shiny tights, no, he was a non-violent problem solver, with his trusty Swiss Army Knife and roll of duct tape in his back pocket to defeat foes of all types, all without resorting to the use of firepower, gadgets or masked sidekicks.

That's the inspiration for the AppGyver name and there's a good reason for it, as it allows you to quickly and efficiently create a production-ready app to deploy through the app stores. Like it's (almost) namesake the app solves problems with minimal resources, and on a much (much, much) lower budget meaning you can build, deploy, and test your app in a real-world situation and decide if it is worthy of a higher level of investment to build the full version.

AppGyver gives you the same level of finish without the same hole in your bank account and after years of experience in interface design and UXD, we can use this tool to deliver a polished, user-ready app for your business without sacrificing the quality of the end product.  

It's much more than just a beta-test vehicle and in some circumstances, it may do everything you need it to do while staying in-budget! With AppGyver we can develop apps for all current form factors; including mobile, desktop, browser, TV and others, and can just as easily analyse and implement improvements along the way.

There are two main areas we believe businesses will benefit from rapid app deployment:

1) Workforce management; in-field engineers who can quickly feedback reports and status updates to office-based staff who in turn can then update the engineers with further information.

2) Ecommerce; it is difficult to create an app that represents your brand well. Many businesses will take advantage of more integrated shopping experiences as users expect a seamless cross-device shopping experience, but using tech to support brick n mortar, means you can deliver a much better shopper experience.

At the moment, we are all facing some real challenges but the use of technologies such as AppGyver give us the chance to quickly iterate your business ideas and reduce the overall cost and risk to your business when looking to improve your team's communication or your end user's experience of your services or products.   

So, if you have an idea for an app, but think it is out of your budget range or you may have had a quote that just seemed unachievable then give us a call. Your business could benefit from our MacGyver-like skills to deliver your vision to the world and create a better future for your business. We're here to listen, learn and help your business achieve better results from budgets that are squeezed, and we know a thing or two about apps, user-interface and user-experience design.

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