Top 5 Enterprise App Development Challenges and Solutions for Leaders

Modern leaders understand that successful brands in the digital space prioritize:

• Human-centricity
• Speed in technology adoption
• Scalable innovation

Therefore, every enterprise planning to disrupt its industry must create a rock-solid yet clear transformation action plan that addresses human needs and technology advancements.

That said, integrating tech-driven enterprise solutions into old systems has become crucial for businesses to remain competitive in today's hyper-connected environment.

Developing enterprise apps has proved to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and foster collaboration in large organizations.

Despite the scope, enterprise software development is comparatively more difficult than basic software development. Enterprise software entails complex infrastructure and intricate functionality resulting in several challenges.

Let’s discuss in detail what challenges software companies encounter while developing high-performing enterprise software solutions with tried-and-tested strategies to overcome them.

Most common enterprise app development challenges and their solutions

Unclear requirements gathering process

Global businesses strive to transform their technical architecture based on technological innovations, economic advances, market trends, and large-scale partnerships.

Digital transformations are usually colossal and require major organization-level revamps. These overhauls demand massive energy, time, and money.

Consider a multinational corporation aiming to develop a comprehensive HR management system. In such cases, stakeholders from various departments usually have varying needs, making it challenging to define agreeable requirements.

In a 2022 survey by CodinGame and Coderpad, “rework, changes, unplanned work, unplanned problems” and “unclear direction” were cited as the main challenges for software developers during enterprise application development. A robust requirements-gathering process can mitigate these challenges.

Enterprise applications typically serve diverse user groups and address multifaceted business processes. Gathering and prioritizing requirements in such environments can however be daunting.

Without requirements that correctly articulate the underlying needs of your business stakeholders, projects will fail to deliver value and involve significant rework. In fact, An Info-Tech study found that over two-thirds of projects fail due to poorly defined business requirements.

Ben Dickie Director, Enterprise Applications, Info-Tech Research Group

Solution

Outline a solid roadmap with clear milestones and deliverables assuring proactive project 
Employ agile methodologies that iteratively gather and refine requirements, involving key stakeholders throughout the process to ensure alignment and clarity.

Complex third-party integrations with legacy systems

Legacies are great, but they become outdated. If your legacy system has become more of a burden than an asset, it’s time to rethink and reevaluate your business choices.

A huge organization with a versatile user base cannot always rely on a monolithic application.

These outdated structures imply that every disparate function is interwoven displaying no architecturally separate elements for example data input or output. Besides, different data formats, conflicting technologies, and contradicting business processes are other challenges that impact your integration process.

Depending on an outdated legacy system puts your entire enterprise at performance and productivity risks.

Thus, abandoning your legacy system at the right time and building yourself in the ever-evolving business environment requires massive digital transformation. Third-party integration requires patience, creativity, as well as money, time, and resources.

For example, a retail chain plans to implement a new customer relationship management (CRM) system in its existing inventory management and point-of-sale systems. The stakeholder may struggle with integrating IT systems, tools, and applications across different development stages, departments, and branches — only if they don’t plan and execute well.

Third-party integration or interoperability is a problem for both stakeholders and end-users. People want to connect their apps, software, platforms, or devices with your software solution but making it happen is tough — if your existing legacy system is complex and old.

Boomers really don’t get along with Gen Z quite easily, you see?

So, if you’re planning to integrate third-party APIs you should deeply discuss enterprise solution scope with your team to facilitate their coding and testing efforts and achieve errorless integration of new applications with legacy systems.

Solution

Adopt an integration-first approach, leveraging APIs, microservices architecture, and middleware solutions to bridge the gap between new and legacy systems, ensuring interoperability and data consistency.

Looming cybersecurity threats and poor measures

What comes to your mind when you hear the term security breach? It could be credit card fraud or identity theft. However, a security breach on the enterprise level is not just a credit card fraud or compromised identity. The threat is way bigger and more dangerous.

An enterprise app is designed to handle massive amounts of sensitive data from client account details, private files, and banking information, to social security numbers.

Thus, establishing powerful security protocols is imperative, especially in the age of cloud computing.

So if you’re an enterprise that deals in myriads of financial statements, recently signed a major merger, or are planning to innovate, data leakage or loss can be a looming threat to your business. 

And that’s where you should readily document and practice high-security standards in your large-scale enterprise app development strategy and development.

Sadly, simultaneous adaptation and security maintenance become an issue in enterprise software development if the build journey does not specifically support a scalable, adaptive architecture that caters to change requests and new needs.

Solution

An enterprise application should execute business-critical security features like encryptions and firewalls, user privacy and data protection, punctual data backups, and regular software updates including the latest security patches.

Also, use multi-factor authentication and conduct security audits to add multiple security layers to thwart cyber attackers.

Your enterprise app must ensure user permissions and privacy protection to abide by data protection laws.

Perform regular vulnerability assessments and security testing for real-time error detection and code coverage across the back-end and front-end app architectures.

Moreover, try fostering a culture of security awareness among development teams through training and adherence to best practices.

Dealing with data storage and processing concerns

As businesses grow, managing vast amounts of data becomes increasingly challenging. Storing all this data in large databases demands sophisticated infrastructure which demands valuable company resources.

Without a meticulously planned application architecture, enterprise software may not achieve the efficiency and speed required for optimal performance.

Otherwise, dealing with unstructured data compromises a significant portion, if not the majority, of the enterprise data.

Therefore, addressing data storage and processing challenges is essential to ensure that enterprise software operates efficiently and effectively.

Solution

To address these challenges, consider the following options:

Cloud Storage or Hosting Providers: Use remote data storage by cloud service providers for enhanced mobility, stability, and speed compared to traditional on-premises solutions.

Microservices Architecture: Divide your architecture into smaller, focused microservices, each with its own database. This approach simplifies maintenance and enhances scalability.

Ultimately, the choice of strategy depends on your business needs and the nature of the enterprise solution under development. By carefully evaluating these options, you can effectively manage and optimize your data storage and processing infrastructure to support business growth and performance.

Inexperienced enterprise development team

Finding experienced and reliable enterprise development experts is challenging despite the growing number of software developers worldwide, which is expected to reach 28 million by 2024. 

Hiring experts for your in-house team, particularly those experienced in enterprise development and your industry, can take weeks or even months.

Not every developer has what it takes to make enterprise solutions. So, before entrusting  your enterprise development project to a team ensure these three qualities:

• Know-how of the latest technologies and expertise
• Solution-oriented 
• Support and maintenance

Besides, speed, efficiency, and reliability are equally important in enterprise application development. Your enterprise software development team must offer post-development service responsiveness, which many businesses struggle to afford, leading to compromised app performance and customer satisfaction.

Regular bug fixes and security patches are other building blocks to fool-proof enterprise strategy and development which your development partner must ensure.

Solution

To address talent and hiring challenges, consider partnering with a remote development team like Qbatch. We provide team augmentation services and strive to integrate seamlessly with your team, ensuring a smooth enterprise application development process.