You might be enticed by the lower cost and the faster turnaround time associated with ordering an off-the-shelf software. Although, there are numerous advantages to a bespoke solution that will save you both time and money in the long run.
Here is a list of benefits you may want to consider before deciding if you want a custom-made software:
Purpose-built to Integrate Better
Whether your company is large, your business is unique, or there is a particular niche you want to capitalize on, fitting an off-the-shelf software to your processes will be a nightmare.
They are inherently rigid and made for common everyday business situations, and if your business sufficiently diverges from that norm, there’s not much chance that you’ll find a ready software that answers all of your needs.
Employing a purpose-built software will ensure you’ll get all your needs answered and all of your processes digitally covered. You’ll have a much easier time deploying and using it, and you’ll save yourself, your employees and customers a lot of headaches.
You’ll prevent from a lot of frustration trying to use an inappropriate and inadequate software for your business.
A Competitive Edge
Nothing beats a custom-made software in terms of practicality and quality. If your main criteria are speed and efficiency, you’ll be amazed by what a bespoke software can do.
A professional software development company will send their own consultant to your company and explore your business practices, processes, and models with you.
After acquainting themselves thoroughly with your business strategies, long-term plans, and USP, they’ll propose a detailed plan on how to build a software suite for you that lightens your employees’ loads and will make your business operate faster and even more professionally.
Standing Out
The UK market is competitive and ferocious, businesses need name and brand recognition – they need to stand out and the demand for custom software development in the UK has skyrocketed.
Off-the-shelf software is designed with inherently contradictory goals in mind. A software development invests a substantial amount of time and money into creating an application that is as generic and as multi-purpose as possible so that they can sell extra units.
Aside from a superficial redesign, you won’t be able to do anything to stand out with off-the-shelf software. With custom software, on the other hand, you can do anything you want and employ every trick in the book to attract new customers and retain your existing ones.
Expansion and Modularity
Referring back to our previous point, because off-the-shelf software is made to be general purpose and work in as many settings as possible, it usually comes bloated with a lot of useless functionality that you’ll never need in your business.
Due to its bloated and convoluted nature, when it comes to separate your software into modules or expand it due to growing needs, you’ll find yourself faced with an insurmountable mountain of legacy and useless functions your application came with.
You’ll either have to completely replace the software or spend a lot of extra money and man-hours trying to compensate for its shortcomings.
A bespoke software, on the other hand, is completely malleable, and right from the start, during the design phase, you can tell the company what your long term goals are and how they can make a software accommodating them.
In this fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, this is an undeniable advantage.
