“Do I need custom software?” or “Can I just use a ready-made one?” — these are the two questions C-level executives find hard to answer when launching their enterprise. The decisive factor in decision-making is price. If you run a small business or startup, out-of-the-box software can do a good job for you. However, as your business scales, there may be a need for complex enterprise-level IT systems to cater to your specific company’s needs. Keep reading this post to know the features of custom software development and when businesses need it.
The Essence of Bespoke Software Development
Custom or bespoke app development implies designing and coding a product from scratch for a particular company’s needs. In turn, ready-made solutions are designed for a mass audience and can cover only short-term needs. There’s a myth that ready-to-use solutions are cost-effective. On the one hand, they require less initial investment than bespoke app deployment. On the other hand, such solutions include extra charges for additional features. Choosing out-of-the-box solutions, there may be a shortage of needed functionality, but you’ll still need to pay for a set of functions.
Why so? Template software doesn’t consider a particular enterprise’s needs. They’re designed to engage as many users as possible to compensate for expenditure. Bespoke apps individually approach business problems and can be easily adapted to fast-changing organization requirements. There is no unreasonable or mistaking functionality; implemented features mirror corporate goals.
As for the area of use, custom solutions benefit businesses across various domains. Let’s consider some of them.
- HealthTech. Custom functionality is vital when creating medical software since it directly affects people’s health. Telehealth digital solutions allow for delivering high-quality medical care to patients online. For example, people can schedule appointments at their convenience, get medicine prescription refills, trace their mental and physical conditions, and much more.
- Logistics. Logistics software solutions relate to complex and interconnected systems that should also be customized. For instance, by featuring load planning software, transportation organizations can optimize the trucks’ load to make the use of their capacity and utilization.
- FinTech. People prefer payment applications over cash due to their accessibility and convenience. Modern financial platforms allow users to automate invoicing, handle cash flow, process online payments, and more.
- Retail. Online shopping gains momentum. With so many e-commerce solutions on the market, building your own platform is essential to satisfy growing demand and engage more buyers.
Before embarking on bespoke project development, you should scrutinize your business needs, IT infrastructure, talk to the team, and review inner documentation to detect white points. The gathered information will help you determine the best-suited functionality for your future software.
Your idea should pass through the following stages to get an embodiment as a custom software:
- Research. Find out the business needs and conduct user investigation, studying the existing solutions and their feature set.
- A plan. List the functionality of your future product and project requirements.
- Wireframe building process. The designers start working on wireframes that will be the basis of the future app interface
- A design. Follow a wireframe-based UI development.
- A development process. Track the coding, testing, and bug-fixing workflow.
- A launch & support. Place your solution in the stores to download. Keep working on updating and debugging with devs.
Custom Solutions or Out-of-the-Box Software?
You should choose a type of your product in dependence with your company requirements and scaling. If you run a startup or off-the-shelf software is enough for your business, you can easily build a solution via one of the popular online store plugin.
Even such multifunctional platforms like Hubspot or Salesforce need to be changed and configured to particular requirements. So, as far as you scale, your company needs other solutions, and you have to look for other products. It should be done with minimal resource losses and without falling behind the competitors.
The question is: what to choose for building?
Ready-made software may be the right choice if you’ve got a lack of resources (e.g., time).
If the ready-made solution is not enough for your business requirements and you desire a personalized feature set with the UX suitable for specific user categories, it’s time to build custom software. It can easily interact with extended APIs and other services.
Advantages and Challenges of Building a Custom Solution
What are the benefits and the issues of custom software development? Let’s take a closer look at them, starting with the pros.
- Simplicity in updating and scaling. Comparing an off-the-shelf solution with a custom one, it should be mentioned that the first variant isn’t easy to change. Debugging or upgrading can take time, annoying clients, and causing financial expenses. But if you develop custom software, you can choose the main functionality and then add everything you need.
- Optimal timing for the personnel training. Out-of-the-box solutions have their ready-made feature set, and the staff should be taught how to run it. It’s a common issue for most businesses (interacting with the SAP platform, for instance) because they need a lot of money to find consultants and organize training. Custom solutions, in their turn, do not have anything odd, only the feature set meeting your business requirements.
- Cost-effectiveness in the long-term horizon. Custom software mainly costs more than off-the-shelf solutions, but the expenses would be recovered, and the prices would be reduced. It’s because you pay only for the features you need, obtaining a custom solution, but not for the excessive functionality, as in the case with ready-made products.
- Considered security demands. It is crucial, especially for businesses that store finances/private info or need to obey statutory requirements (such as HIPAA or GDPR). With custom software development, you can choose the security features you need to protect the data.
Despite the listed advantages, there are some challenges you need to know.
- Time expenditures. Unlike custom solutions, off-the-shelf products are quickly set up. But custom platforms are faster and easier to upgrade from a primary version.
- Expenses. For example, the Canadian or US development process may cost a lot. The devs from North America require $100-$150/h for their services, and the work of specialists from Western Europe charges from $50/h. But you may outsource the development workflow to regions like Eastern Europe to save money and obtain top-quality software.
If weighing all the pros and contras, you’ve chosen a customized solution development (or upgrading a ready-made software for the needs of your business), and apply to a custom software development company.
A Starting Strategy for Custom Software Development
Such a complicated process as building a custom product requires time and money. A well-formulated strategy and consistent observance of the steps below will help you gain the solution cost-effectiveness.
- Define your goals before searching for an IT vendor. Think out whether the app would be a web or mobile one, the feature set of your upcoming product, the number of users, etc. Such a list would help developers concentrate on essential things. Moreover, you’ll always succeed even with unexpected financial expenses, bugs found, or other cases.
- Search for competent specialists. If your in-house team is unavailable (or even absent), you can outsource the development process, employing an offshore team. You can choose a proper outsourcing location from the most popular ones (Eastern Europe, Central, Western Europe, Latin America, or Asia). Such platforms as Clutch or GoodFirms may be your reliable assistants in choosing the appropriate IT vendor.
- Go through the development process. You should be involved in all the stages of the software development workflow to obtain an excellent product. Prepare plans and documents, discuss the questions you need with a skillful IT provider, or request time and budget estimates from them.
How Much Does It Cost to Build IT Solution From Scratch?
Custom software development cost differs according to various factors, such as product’s specialization, implemented features, design complexity, number of integrations, operating systems you want to embrace, team composition, and IT provider’s hourly rates. But, if you account for all these variables, the average estimate for the custom product varies from $40,000 to $300,000+. However, each project idea is unique and should be estimated individually, even if the solution has similar features to existing products.
Wrapping up
We’ve briefly set the scene concerning the custom software development and off-the-shelf one, so the choice is yours. If you need to develop a custom platform for your business, an experienced software development team can help you. The specialists will represent their estimates per your request, share their expert opinion on the issues you’re worried about, and assist you in developing a commercially successful and seamless software product.