What is Application Support?

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Congrats, you built an app!

It’s out in the world, and users are loving it. Until… someone calls with a problem; you discover a bug; need a patch; a new API update drops; or the threat of a security breach occurs.

 

Now what?

 

You’ll need a custom software application support team. Custom software application support teams monitor, correct, and improve your apps.

 

About 90% of their time is spent calmly checking messages, monitoring the system, and working through process improvements. However, the remaining 10% of the job involves quickly diagnosing problems and restoring systems.

Four services Augusto’s custom software application support offers

Whether Augusto built your custom application or not, we’re here for you. Our customizable support service allows us to meet and address your specific application needs.

Application Monitoring:

We keep an eye on your application, so you don’t have to. Our monitoring tools will alert our helpdesk on key items like your domain, SSL, and application uptime.

Helpdesk:

Submit tickets and report bugs, then our team will follow up with questions and troubleshooting to help prioritize the issues. Helpdesk is the primary way to communicate with our support team, as it allows a single point of contact for you to get assistance. We’ll provide the status, priority, and all other information around your issue.

Corrective Maintenance:

Corrective maintenance, commonly referred to as addressing “bugs” or issues, is the most typical change associated with support. These bug fixes often come in the form of small, rapid updates.

Adaptive Maintenance:

The technology environment is constantly changing—with new security threats, version updates, and software dependencies. It’s critical that you update your custom app regularly. Adaptive updates focus on the infrastructure of your app, providing the foundation to keep the system up-to-date and running smoothly.

Don’t let your hard work developing a custom software application go to waste.

Apps are not something you can set on a shelf and forget. Call Augusto for fast, convenient, and seamless application support.

 

Our expert team is willing and ready to ensure your application is properly supported. Give us a call today.

Schedule Meeting with an Augusto consultant.

Investing in Software After Launch

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We’ve been exploring the real software investment, examining all the cost factors teams must consider when building a new digital product. The process of preparing for and building software is naturally where our minds go first when thinking about investment levels. However, the investment must not stop after the launch of the product. In this blog, we explore why it’s so important to invest in a product after launch and help you prepare for these costs. These are not new concepts, but rather ones worth reminding ourselves of often.

 

I believe there are four critical areas of investment to consider after your product launches:

  • Onboarding & Adoption
  • User Support
  • Engineering Support
  • Product Management

Onboarding & Adoption

As you share your new product with the world, expect to invest time in manually onboarding new users, including:

  • Data migration
  • Set-up configuration
  • Unique organization or data structure
  • Integrations
  • Product training 

Your users will likely share with you needs and reactions you haven’t yet anticipated. That’s because people often use products in a different way than we expect – so keep your eyes wide open, going shoulder to shoulder with your new customers—and aim to discover how they’re using your software to solve problems. This will allow you to not only smoothly deliver onboarding solutions but also inform the next investments in the product.

 

In the early stages of your new software, don’t measure success in terms of hours spent on manual activities—as it’s easy to become frustrated here—but rather measure the value you’re delivering to your new customers as you collaborate with them and discover their obstacles.

User support

If you fail to answer questions or troubleshoot the software, your users won’t remain users for long. So be sure to dedicate real people to respond to tickets, create a knowledge base with instructional articles, or create a chat function.

 

To determine the level of investment needed for user support, examine your software’s complexity, user sophistication, service level agreements (SLAs), support technology, and user support content. Consider an investment in help desk software to manage requests and create content for users to gather on their own. Being organized and ready to communicate and collaborate with your users will increase customer satisfaction.

Engineering support

The first two areas of investment focus on your customers while this one focuses on maintaining and improving your product. No software product launches in a perfect state; and, even if it did, competing products would soon overtake it.

 

So expect to face investment costs related to fixing bugs and troubleshooting, changing existing features, building new features, and supporting development operations.

 

It’s also important to encourage your engineers to prioritize work, balancing demands for fixing bugs versus adding new features.

Product management

Too often product managers are thought of as a “nice to have” when allocating time and resources. However, to achieve a successful software product, you’ll need a plan for product management.

 

Product managers are an important investment because they understand and maintain the value proposition and work closely with the onboarding and adoption team to acquire insight from customers’ needs. They also ensure that the software product delivers on the needs of the business so it can continue to receive the resources it needs to exist.

 

Please note: in small teams, the customer success manager, user support person, and product manager might all be the same person. The important point here is that you need a strategic person willing to balance customer needs versus business drivers.

 

The bottom line: Failing to invest in product management can be one of the most expensive mistakes you can make.

Conclusion 

We’ve said this before, but when it comes to digital products, the hardest challenge is building the right software that solves your customers’ problem(s). That’s why so many of us in this industry champion the agile methodology. It’s not worth striving for perfection up front because the real learning happens after launch.

 

When you shift into this mindset, you realize that you must plan for a bigger investment after launch than what you actually put into the first iteration of the software itself. At the same time, no digital product receives unlimited resources. Consider planning for 6-24 months after launch, giving yourself time to develop the product and guide it into maturity.

We start our engagements with an intro call. Schedule one today to see how our product centric approach can revolutionize your process.

Schedule Meeting with an Augusto consultant.

The Real Software Investment

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Imagine you are appointed the responsibility of building software. Where do you begin? How would you allocate your team’s time and budget? Do you have enough resources and the right talent?

It’s a challenging assignment, and one you want to get right. I’ve learned that many managers phrase their request along these lines:

“I want to accomplish X. How much will that cost and how long will it take?”

 

Essentially, they’re asking about budget and scope. However, budget and scope for software products are highly variable. While it’s an appropriate question for a supervisor to ask, I’ve learned that answering it directly as its presented is not the wisest thing to do. Budget and scope are incredibly complex, and the approach to how you actually invest in software development should be much more phased.

Fortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way early in my career.

For example, I was once asked to produce a multi-app B2B and IoT platform and, following the precedent of my company, went to my vendor partner and asked: “How much will this cost and how long will it take?” Over several discovery sessions, the vendor and I discussed desired features and capabilities to form the basis of our scope. They provided me with the cost and length of the project, which I then reported to my supervisor.

 

At that point, I had committed myself to being held accountable to that specific budget and scope. As you can imagine, we quickly realized just how complex the product would be. Three-quarters of the way through our set budget and time, we were nowhere near the end of the project. Eventually, we delivered the software – far over budget. Worst of all, it didn’t accomplish the key items we needed it to do well. At that point, I realized there had to be a better way to build software.

 

I wanted stronger consulting and leadership from future vendors—someone to tell us from the very beginning a better way to invest. Someone to save us from the question “How much will that cost and how long will it take?” This lightbulb moment contributed to the creation of Augusto, alongside my partners Jim Becher and Joel Ross. At Augusto, we coach clients to remain agile and invest smarter.

 

Our core piece of advice comes down to this: Until you build tangible software and release it to the marketplace for validation, invest the smallest amount possible.

 

Following minimally viable product (MVP) best practices, don’t try to build the entire product at once. Simply identify the one or two most important features that create immediate value for your audiences. By making the smallest investment possible, you’ll deliver immediate value.

 

Value builds trust, which leads to longer runways for the remainder of the product life cycle.

 

Throughout my new blog series, I’ll dive deeper into three critical components that contribute to what we call “the real software investment.”

The Real Software Investment

1. Compose a team that can scale as your product grows

 

2. Prepare key business processes for continued work after your initial product launch

 

3. Reinvigorate your team culture by removing the pressure of fixed budget and scope

 

Our goal is to adjust your mindset regarding investing in software, so that you always build the right software for your audiences.

 

We start our engagements with an intro call. Schedule one today to learn more about how our approach may apply to your business goals.

 

Schedule Meeting with an Augusto consultant.