Using Custom-Made Software to Enhance Your Business

If hardware is the structural shell of your business, software is the inner workings. The quality and usability of your software determines how smoothly your business operates overall. High-quality software often goes unnoticed; it is easily learned and used by employees, manages data efficiently, is useful when servicing clients, and can generally perform your business’s tasks effectively. Low-quality software, however, is the scourge of business operations. It makes everything much more difficult, slowing down training due to complexity or unintuitiveness, bogging down data processing, and frustrating client handling. In short, to overlook the importance of software is to make your life harder.

So, with the importance of software underlined, how exactly should you go about sourcing it? Well, the obvious method would be to simply purchase it. There is an enormous quantity of off-the-shelf software, pre-built software that can be installed into your systems and be ready for use within the same day.

While this sounds great on paper, most off-the-shelf software takes a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This means finding software that will fit your business needs like a glove is near impossible. If you manage to find something close, you’re likely to pay an inordinate sum for it.

There is an alternative, however – custom-made software. Rather than making do with off-the-shelf software, more and more businesses are choosing to create software tailor-made for their operations, resulting in software that allows the entire business to work as it should – smoothly.

What is custom-made software?

Custom-made software is exactly that, software created with your business and its operations in mind. Quite like how a custom suit is tailored to your person, custom software aims to account for all of your business’ unique features.

This method does away with the sacrifices inherent in off-the-shelf software. Instead of paying for redundant features or making do with ones that meet your needs halfway, custom software provides exactly what your business needs for exactly the price required to create it.

Software performance isn’t the only core aspect, it’s just as important to have people that can use it. To this end, custom-made software can be tailored not only to your business needs, but to your employee training programmes too. Rather than drafting a training plan or work methods to fit the quirks of off-the-shelf software, custom-made software can work around your existing practices. This will streamline employee training, as well as equip your employees with transferable knowledge that can fit a variety of positions in your business.

The benefits of using custom-made software

Custom-made software can bring a range of benefits that can be tough to find elsewhere. Properly tailored software can not only raise the efficiency of your work practices and training methods, but also cut down on unnecessary costs. Let’s take a look at some of the most important benefits.

Increased workplace efficiency

We’ve mentioned the effect that custom-made software can have on efficiency, but let’s get into some more detail. Tailor-made software will optimise every aspect of your business. To begin with, software made with your work process in mind makes your job easier. You won’t have to deal with software that lacks the full complement of features you need, forcing you to invest time and effort in creating workarounds. For more intricate processes, off-the-shelf software often provides clunky solutions. In contrast, tailor-made software can be created to perform these tasks effortlessly. Data handling can be streamlined, storage made both more efficient and accessible, and the software can be integrated seamlessly with all your systems.

As tailor-made software can be built around your employee training, enabling you to get employees up to speed quicker. This will bolster your business’ productivity. Alternatively, if you would rather rely less on human inputs, you could prioritise automation for your tailor-made software. This can increase productivity in a different manner, alongside conferring other benefits.

Happier customers

Custom-made software can be greatly beneficial to your customer relations. Security is a surefire way of cultivating good customer relations, as reliability on your part will mean loyalty on theirs. Off-the-shelf software is known for its security flaws, be that day one vulnerabilities, openings exposed over time, or simply a security system that doesn’t account for your business needs.

While security is a critical component to fostering good customer relations, it isn’t enough to make a happy client alone. A prompt, high-quality service is just as important a factor, one that custom-made software can help with. By using custom-made software, you can build in how you interact with your clients, rather than how a programmer thinks you should. You can include your preferred client-handling features, communication and marketing campaigns, and specific analytic tools. All of these features can help your client interactions, while the latter specifically can help you discern what works for your customers and what doesn’t. This can help other areas of your business, as you can hone in on what your customers like about your business, or have hard data on experiments.

Reduced costs

One of the key downsides to off-the-shelf software is the cost. Most of the higher-end ones aren’t cheap, while lower-quality software can seriously impact the performance of your business, costing you money in the end. Additionally, off-the-shelf software often needs a recurring payment to access the full roster of features, or even use the software at all. For a service that doesn’t supply all the features you need, this can be both expensive and frustrating.

By using custom-made software, however, you can pay a one-off price to build in every feature your business needs exactly how you want it. Over time, this will save you money that would otherwise be spent on subscriptions, while increasing the productivity of your business, resulting in heftier profits.

Custom-made or off-the-shelf software?

Ultimately, this is the key decision. While there are advantages to using off-the-shelf software, particularly as a short-term solution, the benefits provided by custom-made software make it difficult to pass up. It can be built with your business, employees, and clients in mind, including every feature you’d like while cutting out the fat. This streamlining of your business’ operations can and will have a positive effect on productivity and efficiency, while simultaneously cutting costs on pointless or redundant services. As a long-term solution, custom-made software is the clear winner.