How Custom Software Development Can Benefit Your Business

1 Uniqueness

The uniqueness of the software is essential for technology-based companies and startups. They should be fast, smart, and flexible to survive and thrive in the long run. To do so, such companies should have unique software that becomes an expression of their business model and helps to stand out among competitors. Market conditions and fluctuations often make them pivot their products, which leads to even more custom solutions.

In the case of industrial companies, custom software uniqueness lies in seamless performance and a list of features that design exclusively according to your individual business processes.

2Scalability during business growth

Custom software allows you to plan for the future in the earliest stages of your business. Your software development team will ensure that the solution you build today will easily scale tomorrow and make scalability a cornerstone of your product.

Common enterprise software packages enable scaling due to higher charges for a bigger number of employees, but it won’t help if your business operations also change. Choosing commercial software, you may need to buy several tools that will be hard to manage as each of them has its own admin panels and data storage. Let alone subscription costs that may triple in this case.

In comparison with custom software, you will have one hybrid centralized solution that performs all required operations and is free from charge for use.

3Integration

With custom software, you’ll not be restricted by integration options as it goes with subscription-based packages. You may create integrations with any other systems or platforms to extend your payment, communication, or delivery options with no need to wait for someone’s permission. Also, custom feature implementation costs on the software vendor’s side are usually higher than its integration into your custom solution.

4Compatibility

While considering custom software advantages, one cannot miss the compatibility of such solutions. The common architecture model implies that output generated due to one process completion will serve as input for another process. It’s hard to achieve a seamless data streamline if organizations use different packaged software for each operation type. Building custom software allows you to consider your whole software ecosystem upfront and make it compatible with your other products.

5Status

Building your own software shows your business community that you’re in charge of every business process in your company, and you take its optimization seriously. This decision positively influences your reputation, adding your trustworthiness and authority.
Those who chose commercial software products are, first of all, looking for safe ground, but to build your custom solution that works as a better option, you should perform solid in-depth business analysis. Your ability to do so will be considered extra expertise.

6Cost-effectiveness

When you consider custom software development for the first time, it seems extremely expensive compared to commercial solutions. This is true when your initial requirements match the available commercial packages. However, if your needs exceed the given functionality, you should anticipate a significant change in numbers.

Custom software costs include payments for:

• The discovery phase and planning,
• Development of different features,
• Testing,
• Maintenance.

At the same time, the subscription-based software vendors charge monthly usage only. They may also charge extra-fees in case you require some non-standard integrations while custom development of the same features could significantly reduce your project expenses. Moreover, since these companies receive hundreds of similar requests from other clients, the implementation time will take a lot longer. So, if your company requires prompt changes due to the financial losses in case of delay, custom software development should be given a closer look at.

The cost-effectiveness of custom software becomes apparent in the long run. If we consider the cost of usage, as soon as the platform gets created, the cost of ownership equals the costs of underlying infrastructure and requires 0 expenses for the service itself since the code of the platform belongs to you. Packaged software companies form their subscription plans based on the number of users. However, the cost you pay per user decreases with the increase of the number of users but still could constitute a considerable sum in some cases. With the company’s growth, each new user will require more fees. and if your company grows, you’ll pay more and more for extra team members. It’s easier and cheaper to pay for custom software maintenance once you need it than to pay for software usage to a commercial vendor every month.

In the case of using a subscription-based platform, you are not required to pay for custom software maintenance. The provider of the platform provider deals with infrastructure updates, security patches, and other scheduled and unpredictable work. If the platform is in your ownership, you and your team should take care of keeping it running. You can leverage different managed cloud services in order to automate certain maintenance tasks. However, in most cases, your development team will have to manage them.

So, it could seem obvious that subscription-based software is less expensive than the custom-developed one, but in fact, you need to take into account things in the long run to select the most relevant solution for you. The points to take into account are:

• The time your staff use the platform;
• Potential future integrations and extended functionality;
• Extra costs for additional functionality;
• Time needed to implement the changes;
• Infrastructure costs;
• Developers costs.

The last point is very crucial. Despite the complexity of the custom software ecosystem, a big pool of talented developers can build the platform you need from scratch, so you do not need to distract (or hire) your in-house team to perform this task. Don’t get discouraged by the high rates of your local developers. You can always find an offshore or nearshore software development agency with relevant cases in the portfolio. This will help you halve the development costs for the product of the same quality.

7Invention

One of the custom software solution benefits is a lack of limits. You may choose any stack and combination of technologies to build your software. In the case of great success, you may become an industry leader who sets the direction for further tech trends and development thanks to the popularity of the solution you once invented.

8Support and maintenance

Yes, off-the-shelf software providers support and maintain their solutions regularly and don’t charge additional fees for it. That’s a good advantage for them, but we mostly speak about scheduled updates and technical support of an existing product that is not so fast and flexible when dealing with your custom requests. If you value independence in terms of customization and integrations, your own development team will do it faster and for a lesser price than subscription-based providers.