Written by Xuan Luan for I-Net Dynamics

The risk of developing a new business centered solution lies within the ability to bring new offerings to the market at an accelerated pace. Building a new cloud-based solution and launching it in the market sounds like an expensive and daunting endeavour that requires a significant amount of effort and resources. This may lead to the reluctance of investing in a new offering or platform and choosing to watch from the side-lines, whilst other players in the market are willing to take the risk and make the first move.

In this era of digital transformation, our clients are not the only players that are being forced to keep up with the rapid changes in technology, it is also essential for the business to stay relevant. According to several analysts and research firms, it is said that the global cloud-based solution application market is steadily increasing by over 30% per annum. Therefore, by allowing any potential fear of risk, market failure, and uncertainty get in the way, it will cause this incredible opportunity of gaining an early share in the market slip past your fingers.

To not lose out in the market while staying on par with other players that have taken a step ahead. Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a single end to end solution for managing finances, operations, sales, and customer services like no other software on the market. But keep in mind that Dynamics 365 Business Central brings the full power of proven dynamics and view to the cloud and has at its foundation a set of trusted proven technologies that have served 160,000 customers and million of users worldwide.

We will go through the best practices that will help to reduce the potential risks while developing a new business central solution.

In an on-premises world, the traditional Linear software design approach is often used, which includes various sequential stages such as; requirements definition, analysis, design, development, testing, deployment and more.

This approach was first introduced in the manufacturing and construction industries; where the highly structured physical conditions implied that the plan turned out to be restrictively exorbitant much earlier in the development process. This method fits in well for projects with distinct requirements and certainty, but it lacks when there are changes and uncertainty. There is an inevitable high level of risk when taking this approach, due to the long duration required with results that only appear in the latter part of the process. The greatest weakness of this method is that the original requirements are often wrong, and customer validation, as well as feedback, does not happen until the final stage.

In order to leverage an agile or lean approach that will breaks the development cycle into two to four-week incremental steps, with feedback and validation occurring frequently, and much earlier in the process. This will greatly reduce the latent risk. We recommend a rapid and minimum viable approach by using the Lean Development Approach with 3 core steps:

• Analyze and understand the customer’s root problems and pains.
• Quickly build a minimum viable product.
• Test and validate the product with customers early and throughout the process.

Once feedback is received, you may need to pivot, modify, and release again. The stages are then repeated and iterated again.

Following that, research has shown that companies are 25% more productive when they employ a high rate of lean and agile development methods and are able to introduce a product into the market 50 percent quicker.

If you are looking for a new cloud solution to manage your business processes but do not have the investment available for an in-house system, do consider Dynamics 365 ERP solution as an option.

With knowledgeable engineers that assist you with training through to the support and maintenance of your system, our I-Net Dynamics team has the capabilities to handle them. Contact us here for more information!