Leveraging custom software applications to drive business growth is quickly becoming a game-changer for organizations around the world. From transforming end-user experience, creating new revenue channels, and allowing innovation-ready businesses to target a wider customer base – continued application maintenance is one of the single most important elements within an organization. This has made custom application development and maintenance a strategic requirement for all of those looking to add value and improve business outcomes.
Application maintenance is the continuous updating, analyzing, modifying, and re-evaluating of your existing software applications. This must be an ongoing task to ensure your applications are always running to the best of their abilities. Due to evolving customer expectations, the fight to survive in an existing market, and technological advancements, modifying and implementing new strategies is critical in maintaining sustainability and staying competitive. Every competitive business needs to constantly enhance and manage the IT solutions that have been developed in order to stay relevant and meet the wavering needs of users. This is where application maintenance and support come into the picture.
Contrary to popular belief, application maintenance is not just about fixing defects, but modifying a software product after delivery to correct faults, as well as to improve performance. Application maintenance and enhancement to existing applications begin with a thorough study of existing applications to identify areas of improvement.
Updating 3rd party libraries & frameworks
At Vervocity, developers feel it’s better to update often so that you notice any problems early when they’re easy to fix, instead of jumping over several versions and letting potential problems accumulate. Software updates are a pain, but an aggressive update strategy offers benefits to our clients.
Urgent and security-critical updates can be integrated and deployed rapidly and efficiently at Vervocity. The risk from code changes is minimized because the changes are only very small each time and automated tests safeguard software quality. We maintain and modernize business-critical applications, enhance their stability, eliminate downtime, reduce support costs, and get maximum value from your applications, around the clock.
3rd party services change their API or authentication methods
Our developers know that APIs change all the time. We also know those changes aren’t communicated as often or as clearly as they should. Usually, you only find out about what changed when it’s already too late — and the only choice you have is to react by adapting your integration with the API that changed.
If the API version changes, URLs will also change, meaning that you’ll have to update your client code to reflect those changes. Sometimes previous API versions will stop working completely, leaving you with a client code that is making calls to dead endpoints. Our challenge is being able to react quickly and change the URLs used by your API client code. If you’re using a third-party library, things can get more complicated because you’ll have to wait for the third party to be updated.
Some companies simply remove functionality from their APIs without giving any prior notice or, in the best case, giving very short notice to the API consumers.
A way for us to mitigate problems that might occur with a third-party API integration is to periodically run tests against all the relevant endpoints. If an integration fails it means that your implementation might be broken and we should investigate further and implement the necessary changes.
Application platform (iOS, Android, etc) change application requirements
Apple and Google like to change application requirements frequently in order to coax developers to release a new version of applications. They’ve even taken some applications down because they didn’t meet some new guideline that wasn’t set when we originally released the application. Apple is currently requiring some of our applications to be rebuilt and submitted for review or they will be removed.
This can also be an issue on web applications when the hosting environment decides they will no longer support the version of PHP the application was built on. Thankfully we have a team that is on your side. Let us handle the behind-the-scenes work and keep your application platform running smoothly and available to your audience.
User behavior is different than expected or users request additional features
In the simplest of terms, user behavior refers to the way users interact with particular software. To analyze user behavior, you need to set up various user metrics to measure usability and intuitive design. There are countless user metrics you can monitor and analyze, such as clicks, navigation, session length, and conversion rates.
Vervocity developers identify the design variables that may have influenced the changes in user behavior. Namely, have you started using a new CTA (Call-to-Action), played around with the placement of buttons, or added fresh colors? We’ll explore that for you and ensure that the end-user is getting the most from their app experience.
We don’t underestimate the value of feedback. Feedback from software platforms or from in-app interactions, for instance, contains tons of value-packed data you can use to pierce through the “hows” and get into the “whys.” We use these treasure banks to fine-tune your journey maps, revamp your business goals, and enhance your products.
Increased demand requires infrastructure upgrades or application optimizations
Choosing the right approach to optimizing your infrastructure can be a challenging task. You need an experienced technology partner to design, plan for, and implement an optimization and transformation plan.
Managing application traffic requires continuous monitoring of network and application performance across the cloud and network infrastructure. This is needed to get a true grip on capacity issues that are impacting end-user productivity. Traffic to any app can come in bursts and require a closer look at optimization. Vervocity clearly has shorter resolution times than you may have experienced previously. We plan for network capacity that makes the most of your budget and optimizes the end-user experience in the process.
Don’t be Left Behind, Contact Us to Maintain Your Custom Applications
At Vervocity we build custom applications that meet security and reliability requirements for organizations of any size to increase productivity, streamline workflows, and provide greater visibility & control. We can enhance your existing custom application’s look, feel, and functionality by integrating custom features and creating new designs to improve aesthetics, navigation, and mobile responsiveness. After developing and deploying your custom application, we provide support and maintenance to ensure that it performs at optimal conditions and that no errors are present.
Maintenance is one of the most crucial stages of the mobile and web app development lifecycle. That’s why you should set aside a separate budget just for the maintenance. Your story doesn’t end with development. A robust application needs maintenance, which is quite similar to maintaining your electronic devices. It is imperative to monitor the performance and ensure that users are getting upgrades at regular intervals. When our team proactively handles downtimes, it’s quite simple that you curtail heavy losses and also earn happier users. We’re ready to chat with you about your custom application needs. Contact us today to chat!
