Why software customization is important? Admit it! Your growing business needs software that can help you measure business growth, improve performance, and increase productivity. And, you might be considering buying off-the-shelf software to escape the expense of custom software development. Are not you?
Off-the-shelf software is good, but they won’t support business operations, as long as business needs change with growth and expansion and trends. Here comes the problem.
When we talk about software customization, it’s not just development. It’s about digging into a business requirement, understanding it, and then giving it a final shape. There is a misunderstanding of development cost and time. Custom software development is neither expensive nor time-consuming. These two parameters are completely dependent on business requirements.
The following points hint at why software customization is more important than you might think:
Why software customization is important?
1. The business world is competitive:
Running a business is not easy. You also know how difficult it is to survive in the business world if you don’t have the right resources. For example, the propensity to shop online was the main reason for the closure of several retail and wholesale stores.
Just as e-commerce reduces the value of brick-and-mortar stores, if you’re not comfortable with technology, your competitors may let you down. Building custom software for your business not only streamlines your business processes, it also helps you stand out from your competitors, which is extremely important in this day and age.
2. Expansion ideas:
As we all know, you don’t stay in the same position for long. You start small, but with huge growth you think about scaling. Here, your business needs change.
With off-the-shelf software, you may not be able to run your business smoothly during this expansion phase.
With tailor-made software, you can run your business easily and smoothly because such customized software is developed with current and future business needs in mind.
3. Cybersecurity is the main concern:
After reading about multiple cybercrime incidents, the main concern of businesses, SMEs and businesses is the security of software to protect confidential business data.
No wonder, recent off-the-shelf products have adopted security features, but there is still a fear of data being hacked, because even cloud servers can’t be saved from hackers. In terms of software customization, you can discuss security measures for your business, and the development team can develop security features based on this.
As technology advances year by year, so do security features. Developers now use sophisticated algorithms to protect your business data from hackers.
4. Simple software integration:
When considering software integration, you definitely want to use an existing system. Off-the-shelf software does not provide such functionality. With this kind of software, integration becomes difficult. Hardware and software requirements are often different, so the configuration part is an almost impossible task for network engineers.
Not so in custom software development though. This allows you to seamlessly configure third-party software or APIs using your existing system. For example; your existing inventory management system cannot meet current business needs.
So you want to redesign your existing system with new technology and new modules. Custom software development allows you to update the system as needed, and if third-party software is available for any module, developers can use APIs to integrate it with your existing software. Easy integration is possible if and only if the existing system is custom made.
5. Development time and cost:
There are various organizations, especially small business entrepreneurs, who feel that developing a tailored software solution takes a lot of time and cost. Yes, the development of such software takes time and money, but it varies by needs, functionality and technology.
For example, an organization wants to develop a software for file synchronization. Development cost and time depend on business requirements and software functionality.
There is no doubt that off-the-shelf software is available on the market within your budget, so there is no need to invest a lot of time in development. Whereas in custom software development, your idea of ​​developing software may consume less time and cost.
And, even if your idea is big and could take a whole year to develop, you can pay developers by milestones. Several custom software development companies have adopted a pay-by-milestone business model to make payment procedures easy for vivid organizations.