Nowadays there is a plethora of ready-made and ready-to-use software available. Despite offering a wide range of personalizable functionalities and features, many mass solutions fail to deliver the true business value that naturally comes with custom software. Reaching out to professional software developers represents a major step towards optimizing existing processes, alleviating employees of repetitive manual tasks, and boosting your company’s productivity.
Working in a bespoke software development company I can see why more and more companies decide to invest in custom solutions. No, it is not just a trend. As a business owner/ executive, the fact that you have full control over the software product means you don’t have to pay any additional upgrade, license, subscription, or training costs for the employees who will use it. Collaborating with a professional IT firm also means that you can exchange experience, technical know-how, creativity and come to a better mutual understanding of the
Let’s take a closer look at why opting for custom-developed software might be the better choice.
What is Custom Software Development?
As we have already specified, bespoke software development is the design, creation, development and maintenance of software or an application created specifically for your organization. This digital project, whatever its final form, meets a range of specific needs specific to your organization. It is characterized by an advanced degree of customization.
Custom software development is diametrically opposed to commercial software under a paid license or “freemium”. Among these many “tablet” solutions, for example, software like Tableau for visualisation or Trello for project management.
Software Development Lifecycle
Some businesses are looking for fast software solutions that can be implemented immediately without any further engagement from their side. The most widely spread argument in favour of this approach is that the time-to-market of their products and services also accelerates. However, this doesn’t mean that development speed equals quality. Depending on the methodologies, custom software development there are traditional approaches, e.g Waterfall model and newer ones, e.g. Agile development.
Whereas different developmental models come with specific pros and cons, the standard software development lifecycle, or SDLC, consists of a set of procedures towards the release of a new software product. The five major stages during the SDLC are:
1) business analysis + planning
2) definition of product requirements
3) software architecture design
3) actual software development
4) software testing
5) final deployment + maintenance.
1. Being Able to Count on a Strategic Partner
The business world is changing rapidly and your industry is no exception. For this reason, it is essential to have software that can also evolve over time, thus giving it an exceptional lifespan. One gripe with pre-fabricated solutions is their inability to keep pace with your growth or your industry. What do you think: should your business adapt to the purchased software or should the software solution be business-friendly and follow existing workflows?
With bespoke software development, that’s not a concern: a world of possibilities is open to you and above all, you can count on a strategic partner who will help you prioritise the new features of your business application. With mutual efforts, your software vendor and your company form a real team to develop new functionalities that will be value catalysts for your industry.
2. Gaining Business Resilience
This is often the main reason why businesses seek custom software development: You and you alone will own the solution. Not only will you be able to make modifications whenever you need them, but this application will become a real asset for your organisation. Also, in the events of major disruptions within your industry, you will have several options available and you will not be handcuffed by anyone.
This is a powerful motivation for many organizations who choose to develop their own custom applications: they no longer want to be reliant on single or multiple suppliers. They also want to minimise any risk associated with this strategic investment, and one way is to develop an application using open technologies that can be maintained by any vendor or by their own internal IT team.
3. Adapting to Dynamic Business Conditions
Perhaps the most obvious advantage of working with a bespoke software development company is that in the end you receive a fully functional product tailored according to your specific needs and adapted to the current business environment. As the whole world is currently going through a radical digital transformation, forward-looking companies already reach out to explore their possibilities for gaining a competitive advantage and securing business continuity.
Because of their custom design, bespoke software products are flexible, easy to integrate with legacy systems and fully capable of third-party integrations and standard solutions (e.g. clouds, databases, server providers, etc.). From a business perspective, bespoke solutions also have the advantage of being easily scalable as workload and business grows and can easily be re-adapted as primary business needs change over time.
4. Investing in Security
Along with the real pandemic, 2020 was also a flourishing year for cyberattacks. After the unfortunate recent collapse of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, industry experts from Nasdaq even go as far as predicting a cyber pandemic around the corner. As Facebook logins across the globe also failed, many companies experienced disrupted services and customer dissatisfaction.
This goes to show just what a massive impact software security has on business continuity. Typically, hacker attacks or attempts are most likely to occur when the software is in standardised systems. Being easier to decode makes them a far easier target than bespoke business solutions. So, when you invest in custom software development for your business operations, you can rely on more secure processes.
In short, by opting for bespoke development you opt for an alliance with a development firm that can offer you business advice and ideas while equipping you with the latest technologies.
Digital Web Services (DWS) is a leading IT company specializing in Software Development, Web Application Development, Website Designing, and Digital Marketing. Here are providing all kinds of services and solutions for the digital transformation of any business and website.
