Businesses invest in newer digital solutions to develop capabilities that ensure smoother operations and increased revenue in a highly competitive digital space. The integration of digital technology into all areas of your business changes the way it operates. It equips your business with the right tools to deliver more value to end customers efficiently. When it comes to digitalizing business operations, companies have the choice to adopt a Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software or go for a custom software tailor-made to suit their specific needs.
Custom software or bespoke software, as its very name indicates, is designed, created, deployed and maintained to meet the unique challenges and requirements specific to a business organization. While commercial software tools cater to a wide range of generic requirements to enable them to be packaged, marketed and merchandized to a wide range of businesses at large (eg:- Microsoft Office suite), custom software solutions target a narrowly defined set of requirements unique to the business it caters to. Custom software development thrives on the reality that end customers have diverse requirements that cannot be fully met with a one-size-fits-all software solution. And it delivers these services at a competitive cost, considering the investment you need to make when you buy, modify and maintain a COTS solution.
However, it is not easy for a business to decide whether to purchase a commercial software or go for a uniquely designed custom software solution.
As the market is flooded with easily deployable off the shelf digital solutions, businesses often hesitate to adopt custom software solutions. A misplaced concern regarding the custom software development cost is yet another deterrent that makes businesses hesitant in embracing custom software solutions.
Custom software development is cost effective for your business! Here are five reasons to substantiate this fact:
1) Custom software development saves time and money in the long term
Developing a software solution from scratch definitely involves more time and money from a short- term perspective. But custom software development rewards you with a unique, progressive, tailor made product with high security standards that will stand your business in good stead in the long term. You acquire certain functionalities, which have specific functions relevant to your line of business, built into the software. This eliminates the costs of unwanted features that come by default with a commercial software. Besides, you do not have to pay the monthly or annual licensing and user fees to the service provider of the readymade, generic digital solution you have purchased, a cost that will progressively increase as time passes.
Off the shelf software solutions often go for software upgrades you may not want but will be forced to pay for. Besides you may have to integrate additional digital tools with the generic software to meet all your business needs which would again be an extra cost. Thus even if the initial costs of a custom software solution is more, your business will get the definite advantage of saving subsequent costs that come with an off the shelf digital software solution or suite in the form of licensing fees, user fees and unwanted updates. Not to mention the added advantage of avoiding future price hikes of licensing and support. Custom software solutions, thus, help reduce costs in the long term.
2) Bespoke software is highly scalable.
A growing business needs a scalable technology to support its ever-changing list of business requirements. Custom software development offers you highly scalable and sustainable digital solutions to meet your growing business demands. You can expand or downsize the scope and functionalities of a custom built software tool to meet your changing business needs which is impossible with an off the shelf software tool. As your business develops and increases in volume, off the shelf software tools may lack in functionalities required to meet your future business needs. Custom software development, on the other hand, has the flexibility and efficiency to add extra features to tools to meet your business’s future requirements while not limiting your business operations to the features that come with an out of the box digital solution.
When the limited scope of a generic software, by virtue of its design, is incapable of delivering the scalability and flexibility required to meet your growing business needs, you have an expensive software on your hands that cannot scale up. Adding more tools to an off the shelf software solution to meet your new business demands would incur more costs. This is not the case in custom software development as it builds components specific to your business needs into its design while off-the-shelf software solutions have functionalities and tools that meet standard industry requirements. Also, custom software tools can be designed to optimize and leverage the potential of your current tech infrastructure while generic software solutions may need specific technology infrastructure and system requirements for their smooth functioning. Thus embracing custom software development solutions enables a business to avoid scalability restrictions that come with out-of-the-box software solutions. Custom software development creates future proof solutions and are hence cost effective.
3) Enables streamlined systems integration and lower integration costs.
As technology services increasingly evolve into a data ecosystem, multiple applications and tools need to seamlessly work to optimize consumer experience. The different areas of your business would require tools from multiple vendors. And these tools would have their own technology infrastructure needs and architectural differences which may need diverse levels of implementation support. Besides, the methodologies adopted for their development would also be different. The multiple processes in your technology ecosystem need to be streamlined to function as a cohesive unit to help deliver value across all areas of your business. The amount of effort and time required to integrate various software tools from multiple vendors would outweigh the advantages they offer when functioning independently.
This is where custom software development comes to your aid by designing a suite of operational enterprise applications tailor made to meet your business objectives. The common methodologies and standards followed for the development and execution of such custom developed software solutions would help create a technology infrastructure which would be highly scalable, flexible and interoperable.
While traditional software solutions often have restrictions on integrating third party software applications, custom software development enables seamless integration of a variety of third party tools like payment gateways, analytics plugins, etc. with application suites.
4) Facilitates faster adoption
Custom software development creates applications and tools having features and solutions designed in consultation with your team and tailor made to suit your business requirements. This makes custom software solutions an integral part of your business. Back and forth consultations with team members and their valuable feedback help develop solutions and tools that suit your business best. The familiarity of the team members with the product facilitates effortless and cost effective training process.
Your team members having had no role in the development of a readymade software solution will have to go through a steep learning curve associated with its adoption. This learning process involves lots of time and money, and whenever the service provider adds a new feature, the team members will have to devote valuable time to get trained in it.
5) Customized software boosts employee efficiency and productivity
A custom developed software solution leverages automation to streamline your business processes which in turn, reduces labour costs, in addition to boosting employee productivity and efficiency. It also serves to effectively reduce human errors, thus eliminating the costs involved in addressing those drawbacks. Thus customized software is a tool that helps boost efficiencies, both human and organizational.
A custom built software tool also enables flexible maintenance and support, yet another feature that adds to its cost effectiveness. With commercial software solutions, you are bound to follow the maintenance updates scheduled by the service provider that would disrupt workflows, thus adversely affecting your business processes. Whereas, with custom software solutions, you get to fully own and control the schedule and nature of maintenance and support, which in turn ensures that valuable time and human efforts are devoted to tasks prioritized. This aspect enables you to run your business uninterruptedly without compromising man-hours.
Personalization is a key feature of Custom software development and a hoard of advantages come with it. You get to exercise the unique choice of personalizing software tools to suit your customer needs, which helps build customer loyalty. The multiple advantages of custom built software solutions help save money, time and man-hours in the long term, thus outweighing its initial costs. Custom software adoption is thus a sure-shot, cost effective option that ensures more ROI than an off-the-shelf software solution. Custom software development arms you with a highly personalized digital arsenal with capabilities and efficiencies that cater to boosting your employee productivity and overall business growth. Most importantly, you fully own the IP rights of the software tool designed exclusively to meet your business needs.
To conclude, custom software solutions help you procure the right tools that suit your business objectives and help your business stay competitive in today’s volatile business ecosystem. It is important to partner with an efficient custom software development company to meet the technological needs of your organization. Our efficient software development team at Suyati would be happy to help you acquire the right software solutions to fortify your business capabilities to grow your business. Contact us @: services@suyati.com
