The first question I asked myself, when I spied the title of Harold Hambrose’s article “Building Systems People Love” in the August issue of CIO, was: what sort of systems do people love, and just how and why do we love them?  I don’t know that I love any system—some I definitely don’t even like. I do, however, like (or dislike) what I get from the systems.  It’s all about me, so any system (or application) that delivers what I want, when I want it and how I want it gets favor with me.

As Mr. Hambrose implies in his article, Twitter, Facebook, Google and similar apps have become the defacto standard by which all engagements via computer technology are now compared, regardless of whether they are business or social.  Employees don’t want to be tied to a desk in front of a PC or laptop; they know it’s not necessary because Twitter, Facebook and Google don’t require it. In many cases, mobility is mandatory for the job. Business today is social and is conducted via social channels. Even small businesses today are offering apps to connect with you and tailor your customer experience.  Internally, businesses today are, if not exactly embracing it, supporting mobility.  IT departments no longer can force employees to adhere to a set of standards that helps them maintain control; they must accept and support BYOD initiatives.

So how does a company today deliver what people want, how they want it and when they want it, and do that in a cost- effective manner?  One way I suggest is to select an application development platform that will help maximize the ROI on their application development expenditures. Regardless of where the back-end systems or data exists, corporate users expect mobility—of their choice.  A cost-effective application development platform needs to build responsive web pages and deploy apps for multiple platforms from a single code base (as opposed to having multiple platforms and multiple development teams).

So what do you think?  Do your corporate customers love your systems?  Are you delivering what people want, how they want it and when they want it?  Is your CEO happy with your ability to contain costs while at the same time delivering a great corporate customer experience? If you’re not getting three yes’s here, then maybe you should consider evaluating new application development platforms.–