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There are a lot of frustrated business people out there who want to get mobile apps for their business but can’t. If they have IT departments and when they ask for app development, they are reminded about how many other projects the company has and are told about the backlog of apps that are yet to be done ahead of them.

In every organization there is a severe shortage of programmers and especially the mobile app developers and it is not about to get resolved any time soon. In fact it is getting worse. Requests continue outpace supply and it is a real bottlenecks for business people.

That’s why many business people then try to find programming resources outside of the company. When they bid the app development out they often get sticker shock how much a domestic company wants to charge them. I personally heard many stories about six digit price tags for relatively simple apps.

So the search inevitably brings them to consider app developers in South or Central America, Eastern Europe, India or China and other places. The prices seem a lot more reasonable and there are plenty of app developers ready to take on your projects.

That said, buyer be aware. This approach is riddled with problems and more often than not you will not get the app you want. Let me highlight a few problem areas

• 1. Language barrier. It is hard enough to clearly express yourself to a developer here in the States. What one person says and the other hears can often be 2 different things. Now imagine how much worse it is trying to explain to someone whose native tongue is not English. If you are developing a business specific app that requires some understanding of what the business is all about your offshore developer will most likely have no clue about your business because she or he has never been exposed to such business which may not even exist in their country.

• 2. Time zone difference. Unless you are dealing with Central or South America the time window to interact with your developer by voice is really short. In many cases just a few hours so a day or no overlap at all. The day may have just started for you and it is really late for your offshore developer. How attentive do you think he or she is going to be?

• 3. Specs are never complete enough or good enough. If you have done a lot of software development you know that no matter how comprehensive the specification you write. it is never complete. It is practically impossible to capture every detail and nuance of what you want the app to do. Yet when you are dealing with an offshore developer your main way of communicating will be using specs. When you start reviewing the prototype apps you begin to realize that it does not do what you have envisioned in your head.

• 4. Cultural differences. You will very likely encounter a difference in taste when it comes to use of color, graphics, and language. This is very normal as there are huge differences in people’s preferences around the world. Even more important is cultural norms when it comes to telling the truth and saying “no”. In some countries especially in Asia saying “no” is not culturally ok. So when you ask about task status you often don’t get the straight scoop. You think your app is finished and then you get an unpleasant surprise.

• 5. Transferring Business specific knowledge. Very often we take for granted how much domain specific knowledge we possess. We If you have been in a certain industry for a few years, you have learned a lot of specific business details which you may not even realize you did. Now you want to create an app which will automate a business specific process. You will have to spend a lot of time educating your offshore developer about this business process. The more specialized your business is the more challenging this will be as your offshore developer may not even seen anything like your business because it does not exist in his or her country.

Empowering Ordinary Business People to Make Apps Themselves

Software development technologies have improved a lot over the past 40 years. Computers have gotten much faster and they have plenty of memory. It is no longer necessary to code programs in hard to understand, symbolic languages with strange syntax that only programmers can decipher.

The age of visual application development has arrived. It is now possible to let anybody. Not just the programmers, to build apps visually by simply picking the needed features and assembling them visually using a drag and drop approach. You simply draw what you want on the screen and it is the platform’s job to generate the code to transform your “picture” into a working app.

Over the past 4 years my team and I have developed such a system. We call it “Snappii”. (www.snappii.com) It has been used any thousands of people and today it is by far the most powerful and flexible visual app development platform on the market. Short of making games, you can build any app you want using Snappii.

What makes it so powerful is that it has a lot of built-in features such as:

• No limitations on how your app looks. You have 100% control over UI.
•  Create Tablet specific apps or universal apps
•  Database service on device, in the cloud or inside a company.
•  Ability to present information in lists, galleries and maps
•  Data collection and reporting
•  Ability to do any calculations
•  Integration with Social networks
•  Ecommerce and payments
•  Bar Codes and QR Codes scanning and processing
•  Automated submission to App Stores
•  Immediate App updates on thousands of devices
•  Generates native Apps for IOS and Android systems as well as HTML5
•  View and generate PDFs, watch YouTube, Capture photos, locations, GPS etc.

With Snappii anybody can build app 30X faster than programming them in native languages and since changes are inevitable, you can make the changes yourself. You don’t have to wait for anybody

We welcome you to try Snappii for 45 days at no cost. Simply register here on Snappii.com. We offer live human support to assist you every step of the way and help you build your app. Visit us today!