The Virtue of Little Web Apps
How Marketers Can Bypass Bureaucracy and Ship Solutions Fast
Most great software applications aren’t born from grand visions. They start as spreadsheets—the ones your team Frankensteins together to solve last week’s fire drill. But when you realize those spreadsheets could work better as connected web tools, you hit a wall: IT, Legal, and Procurement timelines. Spoiler alert: By the time they approve a “strategic enterprise solution,” your campaign window—and your team’s morale—will be long gone.
So, what’s the alternative? Stop waiting. Start building. Not massive, enterprise-wide systems, but Little Web Apps—small, utilitarian tools that fill the gaps IT can’t (or won’t) address. These apps are low-stakes, high-reward, and designed to prove their value before anyone even thinks about scaling them. And if the org ever decides to bring them in-house? Great. But in the meantime, you and your team aren’t stuck in purgatory.
Why Little Web Apps? Let’s Talk Scenarios.
Imagine this: Your marketing team needs a store locator app for customers. Simple, right? Not so fast. IT doesn’t have the data sets merged or in a usable state. Another team controls location updates. And none of that data is readily available to your customers, you know, the ones you want to show up to your business. Months go by. Your team grows frustrated. Customers grow impatient. Sound familiar?
Or this: Your CMO has a brilliant campaign idea that requires tracking some offer details and managing some back-end reporting. It needs to rely on a bit of tech infrastructure. IT dismisses it as “not mission-critical” or, worse, a vanity project. The idea dies on the vine, and so does your team’s willingness to propose innovation.
Or how about this: Your marketing team needs call tracking to measure inbound call performance for your campaigns, but the call center doesn’t have the resources to support it. Or they need a simple way to test emails before they go out, but IT’s firewall process is so clunky your team skips testing altogether—risking typos, broken links, and a 40% drop in open rates.
These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re real challenges we’ve seen—and solved—with what more than one of our colleague-friends in IT have [somewhat derisively] referred to as [our] Little Web Apps.
What’s the Problem? IT Isn’t Built for This.
Let’s be clear: IT isn’t the villain here. They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do: maintaining infrastructure, ensuring stability, managing data, and keeping the lights on. These are critical functions, but they are fundamentally misaligned with Marketing’s need for speed.
Here’s what IT is good at:
Infrastructure and Stability: Keeping core systems running smoothly.
Security and Data Management: Protecting your organization from breaches and ensuring data integrity.
Enterprise Software Management: Overseeing multi-year, multi-department projects that require deep integration.
And here’s where IT gets bogged down:
Heavy-Handed Processes: Overwrought workflows involving procurement, compliance, risk reviews, and code releases.
Gray Areas: Systems that don’t connect or work well together, leaving gaps that no one has the bandwidth to fill.
Risk Aversion: A tolerance for failure that’s calibrated completely differently from Marketing’s “fail fast, test & learn” approach.
The result? A gap between what your team needs and what IT can deliver. And that’s where Little Web Apps come in.
How Little Web Apps Solve the Problem
Little Web Apps are low-risk, high-reward solutions designed to fill those gaps. They’re not meant to replace IT or bypass governance. They’re meant to prove value quickly, so you can move fast without waiting for the stars to align. Think of them as “temporary bridges.” You are taking a calculated action now to solve a current need with the resources you have available.
Here’s how they work:
Solve Now: Deploy a basic store locator in 2 months using your team’s data—no waiting for IT’s 18-month data lake project.
Prove Value: Show the app drives 20% more in-store visits? Suddenly, IT prioritizes integration.
Scale Later: Convert your MVP into a business case for a commercial solution whenever the org is ready.
For example, instead of waiting another two years for IT to buy that enterprise-grade scheduling software that promises to integrate with Outlook, Teams, and single sign-on, you stand up a basic appointment web form that matches leads with a sales team eager to support your demand gen campaign. These apps aren’t perfect, but they’re good enough to get the job done—and they’re built in weeks, not months and years.
Why This Approach Works
Little Web Apps solve a fundamental challenge: how to navigate a slow-moving IT organization without defaulting to “buy” (through procurement) or “build” (through IT). They allow you to:
Move Fast: Operate at the speed of Marketing, not the speed of IT.
Think Differently: Approach problems with a mindset that prioritizes action over perfection.
Create Leverage: Prove value first, then secure organizational buy-in.
You are assessing the risks associated with building and launching your own solution and deciding those risks are acceptable and less costly than not taking action today.
Some might call this approach “Shadow IT.” We call it proactive leadership.
The Long-Term Value of Little Web Apps
Here’s the best part: Over time, these Little Web Apps can become game-changing assets. As they’re refined and trusted, they create a foundation for solving new problems. The store locator app you built as a stopgap? It becomes an extendable platform for location-based marketing. The email testing tool? It evolves into a robust system for optimizing campaign performance.
The cost/benefit of these extensions is huge. Low-cost improvements on a long-term, well-trusted asset create opportunities for big wins. And as trust grows, so does your team’s ability to innovate.
Be the Hero of Your Own Journey
The challenges of navigating IT won’t disappear overnight. But with Little Web Apps, you don’t have to wait for someone else to solve them. Be proactive. Be a leader. Build the tools your team needs to succeed, and let the results speak for themselves.
Ultimately, the best solutions aren’t the ones that come from the top down. They’re the ones that start with a spreadsheet—and a little ingenuity.