What are the benefits of outsourcing custom software development? In a nutshell, custom software development helps companies personalize their services, automate processes, save money, provide better security, boost flexibility, enable scalability, and grant ownership.
Put simply, custom software development is on the rise. First, global IT spending on software development reached $675 billion, an 11% growth compared to 2021. Second, the global developer population is anticipated to reach 28.7 million professionals by 2024, an increase of 3.2 million compared to 2020.
Essentially, it means every company tapping into the phenomenon can potentially experience the benefits of custom software development. Keeping that in mind, let’s explore the ins and outs of the idea of custom software development, determine when companies need it, and find out both pros and cons of the phenomenon.
What is Custom Software Development?
As the name suggests, custom software development is about creating a software product to meet client-specific needs and requirements. Usually, it means understanding the client’s business needs and designing the software or upgrading the existing one to address them. Therefore, one of the critical aspects of custom software development is finding the seamless integration of the client-specific product into the client’s business processes.
In most cases, the benefits of custom software development are directed at a client. The given product can help the company scale or grow with new software designed specifically for this business. Custom software is delivered to cover a business’s essential functions. Besides, it can be designed to narrow down the gaps in the IT infrastructure.
Keeping the insights above, one should distinguish custom software from off-the-shelf software. Custom solutions meet specific client needs, while off-shelf products are designed for mass target audiences. Besides, custom software products are flexible and most often include only customer-specific functions. In turn, off-shelf products are not flexible and have usable and unusable features. As a result, custom software development is about designing client-specific software products that meet client-specific business needs and includes functions to fulfill these processes.
When Do You Need Custom Software Development?
With custom software development, flexibility and customer-specific business needs come at a price. It means that this type of software is more expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions. At this point, you need to know when to tap into custom software development benefits. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a position where you spend money on what you don’t necessarily need.
Generally, consider custom software development when you need:
- Better security and agility. Many businesses consider custom software development when they work with sensitive data, which means data security is the top priority. Tailored to your needs, software products add additional security measures to safeguard any data types.
- Greater adaptability and interoperability. Companies use custom software development to adapt better to changing market conditions. Business climates are continually evolving, and firms can become obsolete without interoperability boosted with innovation. The benefits of custom software development help you adapt to existing trends and gain a competitive advantage.
- Business flow optimization. Every business looks to improve its workflow. It means making daily operations more efficient. If workflow optimization is your priority, custom software products are a must. It helps avoid replacing different parts of your business processes, and instead, it merely optimizes them.
- Higher scalability. Scalability is a concern for all companies alike, startups, and enterprises. Every business looks for growth, which translates into higher revenues. Custom software development helps design software that has a scaling plan.
- Many businesses suffer due to repetitive tasks involved in their business processes. Automating these tasks can result in greater efficiency and cost savings. Custom software development is needed if you are looking for greater automation.
Benefits of outsourcing custom software development directly depend on the prerequisites in place. It means you can tap into the phenomenon only when a business necessarily needs it. In any other case, custom software development will be just a waste of time and money. Yet, if something is on your list from what we mentioned earlier, there is a high chance you can get the benefits of custom software development.
Benefits of Custom Software Development
Now, we know what custom software development is and when companies need it. So, let’s find out what the phenomenon can offer companies with trusted software development partners.
More Personalized Services to Meet Business Needs
This study indicates that 72% of customers perceive the factor of personalization as highly important. The same rule applies to companies looking for custom software development. With unique needs and requirements, software development companies can offer products tailored specifically to each client. The factors of personalization are the most apparent benefits of custom software development.
In a competitive business environment, having a software product designed for your business needs can be a game changer. It can help shape your business operations and establish a leading position in a specific market niche. In general, custom software development grants more personalized services fitting project requirements to meet the challenges ahead and open the road for future growth. As a result, custom software development meets the customized needs of clients and helps them grow.
Automating Business Processes
The Economist suggests that about 91% of companies managed to benefit from automation maturity. What does it do? The thing is that businesses relying on manual operations are labor intensive and time-consuming. These two factors indicate a company is ineffective. In turn, one of the custom software development benefits leads to a higher degree of automation. It means various business processes can be streamlined, which allows spending less time on their completion. As a result, this makes business more effective and less time-consuming.
With many automated processes, teams can focus on high-priority tasks instead of spending time and money on repetitive objectives. In addition, custom software development often comes with tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). These highly sophisticated tools help automate various business processes and streamline workflow.
Saving Costs and Finances
Some companies understand how custom software development can help save time and money. For instance, businesses like Retool raise investments to make custom software development accessible to everyone. Why? Because in the long run, the phenomenon proved to improve business processes, streamline workflows, and make companies more efficient — all the factors that help save costs.
Traditional businesses rely on off-the-shelf software solutions thinking that these can be quickly and painfully integrated into their business processes. While it can be beneficial in the short term, in the long term, such companies face issues with scaling. As a result, they will need more resources to sustain growth. At this point, one of the benefits of custom software development correlates to the costs it saves related to making businesses more efficient and future scaling more sustainable.
Enhanced Security
As we mentioned, companies working with sensitive data and requiring enhanced security need custom software development. Now, it is time to explain this in greater detail. The growing digitization and technological advancements have also led to the development of cybercrime. Therefore, the business world constantly looks for solutions to boost security standards. Unfortunately, off-the-shelf software products are less protected against hacking than custom-developed ones.
Such software is specifically designed to meet the highest security standards. Industries like healthcare, fintech, and insurance rely on custom software development benefits. That is why building such software is costly. It requires development teams to consider all the new encryption protocols and data protection rules like HIPAA and GDPR.
Easier Updating Process
Forbes presents at least ten challenges a company can face when upgrading legacy systems. Companies delivering custom software products seek better efficiency and grant software engineers and DevOps professionals to upgrade and recode existing legacy systems integrated within modern technologies. It all leads to the widening functionality of such systems.
One of the key benefits of outsourcing custom software development is the opportunities it grants for easier legacy system updating. Whether you develop a blockchain automation tool or a mobile app, you should not worry about legacy systems as much as with off-the-shelf solutions when the product is done for you.
Support and Maintenance
Another significant benefit of custom software development is managing continuous support and maintenance. In most cases, your trusted software development partner offers a team responsible for all the technical support aspects. It entails fixing all the technical issues you might encounter when using a tailored-to-your-needs product. These professionals are the ones who took a close part in developing the product. They know all the ins and outs. As a result, they can offer all the needed updates, upgrades, and tweaks to improve the product’s performance.
To compare with off-the-shelf solutions, you entirely depend on a vendor. You cannot simply deal with the solutions when they happen. Besides, you have no control over when the required updates will be implemented. With custom software solutions, you have a team who will deal with all the ongoing issues as soon as they happen. Besides, with off-the-shelf software, vendors can charge additionally for any upgrades.
Greater Flexibility and Turn to Scalability
After COVID-19 happened, many businesses have redefined the meaning of flexibility. Simply put, companies have understood that this factor must be at the top of the list of priorities. Such a realization came after perceiving how important it is for companies to adapt to ever-changing conditions and shifts, for instance, COVID-19. When some significant downturn takes place, staying competitive becomes increasingly complex.
In the context of the above, off-the-shelf solutions might be a good option for meeting a company’s needs at a particular moment in time. However, in the long run, such solutions do not grant the necessary degree of flexibility. It means with off-the-shelf software, and you can prosper only until a market takes a turn, which happens often. On the other hand, custom software development benefits allow a company to stay flexible and anticipate changing business needs. Furthermore, with custom software, you can tweak and upgrade it to meet market changes.
More Seamless Integration
Several decades ago, innovation was solely linked to technological advancements. Nowadays, it has changed. The Wall Street Journal suggests that digital transformation has become more than just introducing technologies. Now, it is all about collaborations, integrations, and relationships. This is precisely what custom software development benefits offer.
For the most part, business operations’ effectiveness depends on various software tools. However, what is more important, is for these instruments to communicate with one another to orchestrate all the processes they impact. Tailored software products are built to work with existing systems seamlessly and all other already implemented products. As a result, seamless integration of custom software improves the visibility of different processes and boosts data accuracy. It all leads to better workflow automation and more accurate decision-making.
Grants Specific Ownership Rights
Finally, when it comes to the benefits of custom software development, one cannot omit the factor of exclusive ownership. Off-the-shelf solutions are owned by vendors producing them. It means as a client, you don’t have complete control over the product you use.
With custom software products, you are the one getting complete control and ownership. What does that mean? It means you can change the software any time you want. Besides, you can leverage the product’s potential per your changing needs and desires. Finally, having exclusive ownership drastically reduces the chance of some litigation happening, the one linked to intellectual property concerns.
Drawbacks of Custom Software Development
Above, we covered some of the key benefits of custom software development. However, this phenomenon is not a silver bullet. It means there are still some notable drawbacks to consider.
Costs
High cost is the largest disadvantage of custom-built software. For many companies, this solution pays off in the long run. However, for small businesses and startups, purchasing software products built for their needs can be daunting. In short, to afford this option, you need to have a solid Return on Investment (ROI). On average, custom software costs between $50,000 and $250,000, depending on the project’s complexity.
Delivery
You can get off-the-shelf solutions almost instantly. However, delivering a custom-developed product takes time. For example, getting a custom software product can take four to twelve months. This involves having a team examine your IT infrastructure, determining your business needs, and developing a product that will meet the requirements.
Time
In addition, for time for custom software development, you need to consider the time spent on support and maintenance. As we mentioned, this option pays off in the long run and comes with continuous support and maintenance. However, this benefit of custom software development requires additional time to be handled. As a result, keep in mind you need to spend more time on custom software even after it is developed.
Technical Proficiency
The final drawback stems from the factor of technical proficiency. When dealing with custom software development benefits, you need to have technical experts on your side. If you cannot ensure this, you had better stick to off-the-shelf solutions that do not require challenging handling and management. At this point, it appears that custom software development’s benefits come at a toll. You need to pay a hefty price, spend a lot of time, and ensure you have technical experts on your team. Yet, when done correctly, in the end, it all pays off ultimately.
Benefits of Custom Software Development with Intetics
At Intetics, we have everything it takes to deliver all the benefits a custom-developed software product can offer. While helping companies since 1995, we managed to work out a unique approach to software development. With cost being the phenomenon’s key drawback, we worked out a way to reduce the costs. As a result, our approach brings a 2x better time to market and can save up to 60% of custom software development costs. In a nutshell, we managed to develop such a unique custom software development method through several factors:
- We worked out a progressive delivery model. It entails completing the project from scratch and managing the process through implementation and even after that.
- We select engaging and relevant software engineers and experts who can achieve your project goals as quickly as possible.
- Finally, our team is responsible for delivering results throughout the product journey and the custom software development process.
Keeping all this in mind, Intetics delivers custom software development products specifically designed to your company’s needs. The company offers 27+ years of experience translated into unique approaches that help clients get all the benefits of the software development products we deliver. We promise unparalleled quality, ongoing support, a reliable development process, and vast business domain knowledge.
Conclusion
The benefits of custom software development are delivered through products designed and implemented to specific business needs. It grants a long-term advantage and helps to adapt to ever-changing markets. Besides, custom software development brings better process automation, cost-saving opportunities, enhanced security, continuous support, greater flexibility, and exclusive ownership. In turn, getting your hands on custom software requires high costs, ample time for development, and technical proficiency. Yet, you have nothing to worry about with a trusted software development partner, a company with a broad portfolio and extensive experience in custom software development.
