When and Why Custom Software Makes Sense for Small Businesses?

The main objective of every small business is to grow big. To achieve that, a business needs to have a persistent, competent, and futuristic approach. While the persistence and competence part involves mainly the effort of the company’s human resource, the future aspect requires a sound software infrastructure. The perfect permutation of both human and software resources is what helps a company to take its business to the next level. The better a company understands its resource requirements, the sooner it can meet its objectives. This is where a small business needs to be watchful, especially with software implementation.

As for managing human resources, it’s a bit easier for a start-up to decide as to whom to hire and where to employ depending on their proficiency and experience. When it comes to leveraging the advantages of technology, a business may find it difficult to choose between out-of-the-box and custom software solutions. Although most small businesses find readymade software a safe bet to bid on, should you choose to build custom software, you will get an edge over conventional software that is usually incapable of accommodating all aspects of a small business, a decisive factor in ensuring growth.

When You Should Consider Involving a Customer Software for Your Small Business?

Selecting the customer software solution generally flares a question that when a small business will need tailor-made software. The answer in simple words can be – “When you find an off-the-rack software not fulfilling all the business requirements”; for elaborated answers, the following signs could be decisive.

1. Adoption Rate Is Poor: When the adoption rate of your existing software is poor, it is a clear indicator that software customization is necessary. If you find that your employees are making more effort than required but not using the software, it shows that they don’t like it. Although you may force them to adopt the available software, it is more likely to affect the performance and output of the staff.

2. Training Hurdles: When software is introduced in a business, the training of the employees is required to make them familiar with its functioning. In case the staff training turns out to be difficult due to reasons like unavailability of subject matter expert, software complexity, or software is outdated, the company may need to go for a customized software solution.

3. Incompatibility of Sales Process: Sometimes, software like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not able to comply with a business’s sales process. This incompatibility might get resolved by amending changes in the sales process though, for a business that prefers to keep the flow intact might prefer to switch to a custom software solution.

4. Using Multiple Software for Single Operation: Another sign that may indicate the requirement of tailor-fit software is when for a single operation different software is being engaged. While the use of multiple software is not an inapt approach to carry out a task, however, if a customized software can help complete the job, it is unnecessary to involve different pieces of software (consuming extra time and resources).

5. Lack of Flexibility: One of the major differences between an out of the box and custom-built software is flexibility. If you have installed a readymade application in your business process and it turns out to be lacking scalability or flexibility, sooner or later, it may become a hurdle in your business growth. In such a case, you can either wait until that situation arises or handle it beforehand by switching to a tailored solution.

Why Custom Built Software Makes Sense for Small Business?

In addition to the aforementioned question, another concern that an entrepreneur feels indecisive to is why it is ideal to choose a customized solution for business. Well, there are no hard-rules to trust custom software over readymade ones, however, understanding the needs of your business (from a future perspective) and the potential of customized solution, it makes more sense to employ personalized software, especially when the business solutions are being lightened with the help of ever-changing technology. Below are some of the reasons to support the claim.

Also Read: Software Development Outsourcing is a Smart Move

1. Long Term Solution: As the graphs of the Internet Of Things and its related devices are gaining more momentum with time, the time is not far when the devices will be able to carry out different jobs for us autonomously. Considering the things from that perspective, it won’t be wrong to say that off-the-shelf software applications will become obsolete completely. Considering the scenario, a custom-built software can turn out to be a savior as it will be able to adapt to modern trends, thanks to its scalable and flexible characteristics.

2. Affordable Solution: With licensed software, you are most likely to pay for certain features that you might not even use ever (due to their irrelevancy with your business). This could turn out to be quite costly in the longer run. On the other hand, if you choose custom-built software, you only need to pay for the things that you would be requiring. And, yes developing software to suit your specific needs may cost you more compared to the readymade solution, in the longer run, the customized solutions will be reasonable.

3. Better Integration: A business comprises an ecosystem of programs and applications to carry out different jobs to produce a product or service. This is the reason that modern applications are loaded with numerous third-party software such as mapping tools, payment gateways, advertisement plugins, analytics APIs, etc. While adding such applications is a breeze in custom-built software, the off-the-shelf programs are generally restricted to such integrations.

4. Better Support and Assistance: For a small business owner, using software from a reputed brand makes them just one of the users of their product. This means, if you ever need support, you are most likely to be asked to raise and ticket and wait for a couple of hours or days to get assistance. Conversely, getting software developed from an application development company makes you their esteemed client, meaning you get the privilege of getting instant assistance for any issue you experience with their product or service.