Deciding if building a custom software solution is the right thing to do for your business leads to the considerations of value offerings. For many businesses relying on off the shelf, the software is quite a natural choice just because they consider custom-built software solutions that come with a higher initial price tag. But they just forget the long-term maintenance cost and loss of efficiency and productivity because of these “one size fits all” kinds of solutions.
This is why it is said that the actual value of custom-built software solutions is only understood in the long term. Most off-the-shelf software solutions used by businesses across the niches fail to reap the competitive advantages for their clients just because they are too general and lack business-specific functionalities and features. On the other hand, when custom software solutions are developed by a trusted and reputed technology partner, they can easily address specific business challenges ensuring long-term growth opportunities.
What are the key value propositions of custom software development for businesses? What are the competitive gains the custom software solutions ensure? Even if you are planning to hire remote software developers teams for custom business software development, you need to be convinced of its advantages in comparison to ready-to-use software products in the market.
Let us explain these advantages.
Optimum efficiency and flexibility
One of The most significant benefits of custom software development comes in the form of ease and flexibility. Thanks to custom software development, a business can easily choose the features they need in the software product. When these needs evolve due to continuous growth, the future updates of the custom software product can address these evolving requirements.
Thanks to this level of customization, the level of flexibility are much higher for custom software products. On the other hand, this flexibility increases the efficiency of the software product to a great extent. The custom software applications can automate and streamline many operational tasks and ensure better collaboration among the employees for optimum output. The enhanced efficiency and output made custom software popular among large and leading companies across the niches.
Business-specific solution
More than any other reason, the most crucial reason for businesses to invest in custom software is that they can use a software solution and tool set addressing their particular business size and needs. This is where the so-called off-the-shelf software solutions prove to be a lot under performing and unsuitable.
Since every company is unique, all businesses cannot get the same output from a one-size-fits-all type of software solution. On the other hand, the size of the company and the growth potential need to be accommodated by the software products, and this is another aspect where ready-to-use software products lag behind. From the experience of most developers, it is now easily understood that tailored software products create more room and scopes of customization for a dynamic and growing organization.
Smooth and seamless scalability
When the business grows, the requirements also evolve very fast. By taking an off-the-shelf business software, you may not find all the support necessary for the business to scale up as per the growing demands. Many such software products for higher user limits also charge bigger license fees or subscription costs. This is why off-the-shelf and ready-to-use software products can only fit better to small organizations with a very static business cycle. On the other hand, it proves to be less effective for companies with dynamic growth potential and changing cycles.
Building a software product that can continue to accommodate evolving requirements and growing customer queries is considered more worthy for businesses looking beyond their present state of operation. So, any business that doesn’t want to remain limited by the limitations of the software can find the custom software products more effective for accompanying their growth-pushing agendas.
Easy integration with legacy systems
The custom business software development provides us with a more flexible and streamlined environment where it becomes much easier to transport data from the legacy systems and utilize some of their features and functionalities. In contrast, off-the-shelf software solutions often have issues corresponding to compatibility and development errors resulting in lower productivity and non-efficient business operations.
Custom software products help do away with all issues corresponding to third-party software integration, ensuring zero learning curve for the employees. They just allow using the software features instantly without any conflict with the existing software systems.
Robust and impenetrable security
Custom business software products are also preferred for robust and uncompressed security, which stays ahead of the security features of mainstream software products. Most of the widely used off-the-shelf software products are exposed to hackers are frequently targeted by malicious server requests to breach data. In contrast, custom business software developed for a single business with security risks in mind is less exposed to hackers and comes with minor vulnerabilities.
It is also lucrative for the hackers to breach the security of traditional off-the-shelf business applications just because such moves, when successfully carried out, can allow them to access a large volume of business data from multiple companies. On the other hand, their gains are likely to be limited by penetrating custom software.
Lastly, custom software development always provides robust and complete control over every aspect of the app security, and the business, for security reasons, does not need to rely upon third-party service providers or tools.
Conclusion
So, from all angles and perspectives, custom software products stay way ahead of the ready-to-use business software solutions in the market. This is why many off-the-shelf ERP systems have now started to allow business-specific customization to remain competitive in the wake of the popularity of custom software development.