When Custom Software is the Better Choice for Your Company

Most of us are familiar with Oracle, SAP or Microsoft Dynamics. These types of COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) software applications are designed to cover the most common needs of a wide group of company requirements. They do not however, build a customized solution specific to your individual business needs on a granular scale. Taken one step further, these solutions tend to not integrate well with other COTS solutions.

Within many organizations, whether built in-house or more popularly by a third party, there are customized (bespoke) software development that is tailor made to the needs of a specific organization.

Bespoke software solutions will always deliver the most efficient system as it provides support for a specific need(s) of your business. This solution is not available in an off-the-shelf solution as it cannot offer the greater efficiency or customer touchpoint service.

 

Let’s look at a few key benefits of choosing a custom software development solution:

 

Tailor made to your needs

A direct relationship is established immediately between you and the development company you have selected. An experienced software development team will collaborate and adapt more easily to meet your specific requirements. The software is yours and as such, you are in the driver seat to see the software team delivers your unique solution quickly and efficiently.

 

Long-term investment = long-term success

There is an obvious cost to committing to a custom software solution as its created from scratch. It is important to note though that this is a very smart investment in the long run. No need to be concerned about license fees and paying for features you don’t need, forced upgrades and constant testing of new security patches released as bugs were discovered.

 

Productivity increases

Without question, by using your custom solution, your team(s) are more confident and able to perform tasks more efficiently as the application is written specifically to address the why and how your business needs the tasks completed.

 

Your software, your way

Your customized application is yours. You own it and as such, is yours to do as you wish with it. Using a COTS application, you are at the mercy of the company you purchased it from to ensure it is updated, secure, improved and quite honestly, available for the life of your business without either the vendor quietly bought up or having gone out of business.

 

Security is key

COTS applications are more vulnerable to hacking attacks since it is available to the masses. Custom solutions on the other hand are more secure and much harder to hack because it is only used within your company. Hackers see little advantage to attacking bespoke software when there are many other companies out there using COTS.

 

Scalability

As your business grows, off-the-shelf software may not be able to handle the data load over time. Your customized solution is designed from the start with your specific business growth in mind. As you grow, the custom solution grows with you.

 

Integration

Custom software is the perfect solution for multiple programs integration. Business that use many software applications would benefit tremendously from a ‘one custom software application’ designed to integrate multiple processes. You will now be able to accomplish more with less overhead.

 

Support

Because your custom solution was designed and built for you specifically, your technical support team is not only versed on your specific business, they are also intimately familiar with the nuances of your custom software and how it interacts with your network. A highly skilled team is available to support your business from both development and productivity use.

 

To sum it up

Every company has different needs. Many will realize in time that off-the-shelf solutions will not be able to solve their granular concerns that are pivotal to running the business. Companies can turn to bespoke software at this point to deliver a solution specifically designed to address pain-points and increase productivity, revenue and positive staff and customer engagement much quicker.

 

Your ideas become reality, leaving your competitors behind as you have solved the issues sooner and business is taking off.