Every App is a Passion Project

Companies need mobile solutions, and Lextech’s Will Scott finds them by understanding the workflows necessary to survive in the mobile market

Will Scott helps companies create their ideal mobile apps with a proven roadmap process. Photo by Caleb Fox

Will Scott lives and breathes by the mobile code—a fervor that has translated to Lextech, one of the largest enterprise mobile-app developers in the country. Scott has been with Lextech Global Services now for more than five years as president and integrator, where he’s a dedicated mobile leader and a self-described “mobile passionista.”

Companies and organizations reach out to Lextech when they need assistance with mobile strategy or developing mobile apps that support business goals. Lextech is not only an expert at developing custom apps, but developing the right app at the right time. Scott and his team work with a number of different sales, operations, and IT teams on these mobile solutions with clients such as John Deere, H&R Block, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.

According to Scott, Lextech excels in taking a strategy-first approach and working with companies to develop apps around the workflows that support their wider business strategy. “We specialize in apps that help businesses succeed and transform those businesses in powerful, measurable ways,” he says. Lextech is less a bunch of developers than it is a group of business experts who also happen to deliver apps.

In order to evaluate a client’s needs, Scott and his team weigh a number of factors. “We identify with the business and their strategy, understand what workflows support that, and then consider what they want to do with their business.” It’s a series of tasks and questions that Scott and his team tackle. How does this company process success? How do they manufacture? How do they market? All of these questions and the possible solutions should be reflected by the app.

There’s a map for that

Scott and his team promise a high ROA—Return on App—for their App Roadmap Workshop, a two-day process for businesses that allows them to identify the best possible app for their purposes. These are the eight crucial steps for clients in determining their mobile goals.

1. Learn why mobile matters. Start with a broad overview of how mobile is making an impact on businesses.

2. Determine strategic goals. Answer the question: What are the metrics that will drive business forward?

3. Discover how to map a workflow. Determine the workflows     that best support strategic goals.

4. Identify workflow issues. Walk through the workflow and discover if any issues are wasting resources.

5. Generate app concepts. Participants brainstorm app concepts that align all the measures identified previously, defining what the app does, for whom, and why.

6. Calculate the ROA. Determine the financial impact of each app.

7. Score your apps. Rate each app on key criteria such as implementation and user adoption.

8. Make an app roadmap. The results are turned into a prioritized roadmap of the top apps to focus on.

Scott has found that many organizations come with a sense of which mobile app might be best for their business, but after completing a Lextech-run App Roadmap Workshop, they discover the apps that can deliver the best return. Lextech provides a guarantee that the client will achieve a 100 percent return on app (ROA)—the only company of its kind to do this. In fact, clients can expect a full ROA within a matter of months. For example, Lextech’s solution for Sonic Automotive reduced the typical four-hour sales cycle for selling a vehicle down to just 45 minutes by applying its workshop roadmap.

Scott also knows that there is more to Lextech’s approach than the technical acumen his team demonstrates. In addition to his role as the mobile passionista, Scott champions culture. He is driven to provide an environment where employees thrive so that they can be their best selves; Scott believes in the importance of both the physical environment and the defined cultural core values.

He is also intentional about his business relationships, including the one that brought him to Lextech. Armed with a software background, Scott went to lunch with Lextech’s CEO Alex Bratton one day in 2010. “At the end of the meeting, Alex asked how we could work together,” Scott says. “We have been very successful together, and the company has grown about 40 percent per year to eighty-five people today.” The company has opened offices in Champaign, Illinois, and downtown Chicago and made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing US companies twice.

Lextech is changing and growing alongside the mobile-enterprise industry. In the last five years alone, the rise of smartphones, tablets, and wearables have irrevocably altered the mobile game.

“We’re doing a lot of work with companies to help support their mobile commerce and point of sale,” Scott says. “Beyond mobile commerce we’re seeing new demand in the contextual Internet-of-Things area as well as solutions for enabling hardware connections across the business and the consumer markets.”

At Lextech it’s about more than simply apps—it’s about connecting the systems behind them to accomplish the business strategy. “At the core of business and mobile strategy is always people,” Scott says. “That’s why the Lextech logo has the human icon in the center of it. Lextech is centered on helping companies succeed and improve the lives of their team members.”

That focus is evidenced by a project with SKF Industrial, one of the world’s largest industrial companies. SKF partnered with Lextech to create an inspection app that ended up shaving 70 percent from a core workflow time. But the most remarkable thing was hearing from the workers that this app changed their lives and improved their relationships with their families. “Now that,” says Scott, “is succeeding with mobile.”