Many companies struggle with off-the-shelf business software that doesn’t exactly meet their needs, but because of over-extended IT staff, lack of capital, or the pressure of time they are forced to simply live with less than satisfactory tools. This is quite often the case in small and medium businesses.

I am always on the lookout for tools that can help companies create their own applications, and make apps match their true needs.

I was introduced to a new and highly intuitive platform for creating custom business applications this week, called Zengine. Zengine has been developed by Wizehive, which has also released Wizehive Buzz and Wizehive Select.

Zengine is similar in spirit and general architecture to the application development capability built into Citrix Podio (see Podio introduces “Workflows”). The platform reminds me of Smartsheet (see Smartsheet is a social tool with an image problem) because of the cross-connections that can be made across different datasets in Zengine — like Contacts, Companies, Opportunities, and Correspondence in the Sales/CRM app that comes as built-in app in Zengine — and the close integration with a task management capability that integrates with all the apps.

I have had a few hours to explore the software, and I found that I could negotiate the tool with nothing more than watching the three minute intro video. My bet is that someone who has a good handle on spreadsheets could quickly get up to speed with the tool, especially if starting with and modifying an existing app.

Here’s a screenshot of me selecting the Sales/CRM template. As you can see there are a list of others.

I opened the Opportunities form — part of the Sales/CRM app — and as you can see the form is made of typed fields.

That form specification is the basis for this form, and the expected checking of inputs — like dates and dollars — works as you’d expect. The ‘Calculated Opportunity Value’ field demonstrates a calculated field, based on multiplying the ‘Expected Sale Amount’ by ‘Probability of Sale’.

As I mentioned, tasks can be linked to specific records in the apps. Here’s the activity stream in the Sales/CRM application, and at the top  you see that I created a task for me to follow up on a lead — Mac Jones of Jones Bones (fictitious company) — and that is linked to the opportunity I had created earlier. Also, the task created in the Sales/CRM app was accessible in my home screen in my list of tasks, so I have a unified view of all my tasks from all apps.

Obviously, I didn’t take the time to create an app from scratch, but I can see that it is a relatively fast process. Also, those that have existing data being managed in spreadsheets can import them as a starting point, which for some companies would shave a great deal of time off the development effort.

One way that Zengine goes beyond the capabilities of its competitors is that new ways of presenting the information being managed in these apps can be created through javascript extensions, which they call ‘plugins’. For example, a developer could add a UPS tracking status, a customized dashboard presenting information from an app in a specialized way, or a button to pass data to an external application. Wizehive plans to launch a marketplace in the future where templates and plugins will be accessible, which would make it even easier to craft specialized apps.

Another focus area is highly granular permissions. For example, I could — as the administrator — set rules for the Opportunities dataset that determine which records each user can see or edit. This opens the door to sophisticated applications that work quite differently for different users.

The Bottom Line

It’s very early days for Zengine, but the direction they are taking for the platform is promising. The basic architectural bones of Zengine are in place, and what’s there is considerable. Zengine is clearly a strong entrant to the marketplace of products like Podio and Smartsheet, both of which have been successful, but neither of which have become a dominant force.

The combination of a platform like Zengine with an ecosystem of active users, building and sharing app templates and plugins is an exciting prospect. We’ll have to see is Wizehive can attract a community of users and developers to make that dream a reality, but it’s a good start.