Every month you hear about a business becoming a unicorn, and a new business or a startup pops into the market each day. With such a rise in the number of businesses in the market, being the best isn’t an easy job. It requires a great deal of effort, planning, and relentlessness to carve a niche. One thing that helps is having software made through custom software development that fits all your business requirements.
How does custom software help a business, you ask? Well, let us break that down for you.
What is Custom Software Development?
There are many software and applications in the market that cater to a wide range of businesses by offering commercial features that you will find everywhere. When it comes to custom software, it’s a unique product that is designed and developed keeping specific business requirements in mind. This process is known as Custom Software Development.
You’ll find a lot of off-the-shelf (OTS) applications like Windows Operating System, antiviruses, media players, and even Office 365. All these applications contain features that many businesses need, and there is nothing unique about these applications that only a specific business can use. What we mean here is that in no way these applications will cater to the unique requirements of a business.
Let’s say you need software for your restaurant or bakery business. These are two very different domains and require certain features that other common applications may not have. In such situations, custom software development is the only option for you.
For custom software (CS), you can either get your own in-house team to develop one or outsource the whole development process. Many businesses are outsourcing their software development requirements to an offshore team. This shouldn’t be surprising as the global outsourcing market value in 2021 was 245.9 billion USD according to grandviewreasearch. We at BPK Tech have a huge team of offshore developers, programmers, designers, and engineers who can develop any software for any business.
You can learn about the entire software development life cycle from this BPK Tech article on the same.
Why Should You Go for Custom Made Software?
Let us offer a few more insights on why custom development is the best option for your business if all the above explanations weren’t enough for you. For starters, custom-built software is developed based on the features and requirements of a business. These features will automate most of your work and reduce the time consumption for menial tasks. This will in turn improve your business’s productivity and efficiency.
There are many reasons why you should go for custom-built software, one of which is integration. That’s right! Many applications have APIs that allow for the integration of other tools for added functionality. This option may or may not be available in the regular off-the-shelf bought software. When you go for a custom product, you can make sure that the product allows for the integration of other tools in the future, in case you need one.
To make sure all such features are available in your custom product, you need to discuss this with the development team in the initial stages of the development of the product. Discuss everything, from the time frame of delivery of the product to features, budget, and other expectations with the software development company. Remember, developers, make the product that suits all your requirements. So, it is up to you to let them know your expectations and requirements regarding the final product.
Many software development companies and teams use agile methodology to develop any custom product. In that case, it would be wise for you to be involved in every stage of development or maybe assign separate teams from each department that can convey the requirements to the development team in each stage of the process. Since these teams are going to use this product, it is wise to have their insights as well.
Custom Made Software Vs Off-the-shelf Software
We have already discussed quite a few things about custom software and how it is different from packaged off-the-shelf software. To get an even better understanding of the difference between the two, let us talk about specifics.
- OTS software is often priced less compared to CS. Though there are times when custom software is the cheaper option, which is very rare.
- Custom software is more user-friendly since they are customized based on user requirements.
- While off-the-shelf software is targeted toward a wider audience, custom software is only for the specific needs of a user.
- OTS may have a lot of features but not all of them will cater to your business requirements. While CS may have fewer features but all of them are crucial to your business.
- If you’re using OTS then you have to wait for official updates from the company but this is not the case for CS. Updates for CS depend entirely on you since you have ownership of the product.
These are the few key differences between the two products. While some of these differences aren’t big, they can have a major impact on your business. If you want to learn a little more about the off-the-shelf software then check out this itenterprise article
Advantages of Custom Made Software
By now, you have a pretty clear idea of how different custom software is from those packaged off-the-shelf products. Now, to help you understand why many companies prefer a custom product for their business, we have also mentioned a few advantages that custom-built software holds in the market. Check them out.
Custom Made Software is also Cost Effective
Remember that we mentioned how off-the-shelf products are cheaper compared to custom software, that’s not entirely true. While off-the-shelf products may cost cheaper when bought, any integrations, upgrades, or customizations will cost you a lot of money.
On the other hand, since custom-built software is already customized to reflect user needs, you have to pay less to no money to customize or upgrade the product.
Unique and Personalized Solutions
This cannot be stressed enough, so we are including this here again as an advantage. Imagine you had lasagna at a restaurant but thought maybe it could be better if it had certain other ingredients instead. You can go home and make your version of lasagna and add the desired ingredients. That’s what custom software is for your business.
The only difference is that you can constantly update and customize the product to your requirements.
Options, Options, Options
You want easy reports, you got it. If you want to download those reports, it’s possible. Developing custom software provides you the chance to add all the necessary options/features you need for your business. Even if you miss a feature or two, or want to add more features in the future, it is all doable.
Wrapping Up
There isn’t anything super important left to discuss custom software development that hasn’t already been discussed in this article. All you need to do is understand your business requirements and get your developers team or outsource the project to others. Discuss all your requirements with the team and get yourself custom software.
Now, BPK Tech is a custom software development company that has a team of industry-best developers who have been developing custom software since 2007. We also have an offshore development team that can whip up any product you want that will reflect all your business requirements.
Contact us now and get the product you always wanted: https://bpktech.com/custom-software-development/
