At some point in the lifespan of your business you might find yourself in a situation where you need a tool. Now it might be a tool to help in the recruiting process of new applicants for roles with your burgeoning enterprise. It could be a tool for calculating and expensing the bills to clients who have helped your business grow to the size it currently is. The tool is possibly a communication platform for your team to use for internal use. Who knows, but at some point your business will need a tool that is outside of what you could currently do…at least for free.
Did you know that in the category of CRM softwares, there are over 400 different softwares to choose from? Each of these softwares offers similar services, but each has its own wrinkles. The same holds true for other types of third-party softwares. The double with so many options is that sometimes finding the perfect software for your need is difficult. At this point, it might be a good time to consider creating your own custom software solution to answer your company’s needs.
Deciding to go the route of a custom software solution and hiring a development company is an option that many companies don’t even realize is an option until they’ve exhausted all others. If a company has searched for a third-party software to do a specific job and is unhappy with the results, they might elect to contact a software development company to create it for them. If your company has the time, bandwidth, and budget, creating a custom software specifically for your business is a great idea.
There are many great examples of companies doing this, such as Strategic Medical Group creating a Electronic Medical Records system that has changed the way physicians and healthcare professionals do their job by helping to track and monitor patients and improve the quality of care. Naturally, being able to monitor all of your patients and better care for them helped the company reach new heights, as well as the hospitals that used the program. Security Insurance Life of America is another example, as they created EbixEnterprise, a software that streamlines the policy system for insurance companies. The EbixEnterprise platform helped to streamline the workload of the company, and that allowed them to better maximize their time and investments.
Having your own custom software solution created for your business has the potential to lead to great successes in the future, as well as some great perks, like ownership, customization, and resale opportunities. Let’s look at them with more detail:
Advantages of a Custom Software Solution
1. Ownership
Let’s be clear and simple: owning your own business software, a software created specifically for your business and your business’s needs, is just that: you own it.
Owning the custom software for your business means not having to pay someone else a licensing fee each month for its use. You won’t have to worry about expanding your user base and being limited by the number using the software. You’ll also have full working knowledge of the product since it’s your own, created exactly to your specifications to do exactly what you need it to do. Owning the software allows your team and company to work without worrying about the parent company of a rented software not approving of your use of it.
2. Customization
Along with ownership, the ability to customize the software to your liking is a great perk of having your own custom software solution. Now what I mean by customize is that while of course you can have the software built exactly to your specifications, you’ll also have the ability to grow it and evolve it to fit your needs as time passes. Unlike with a third-party software, which does not allow for deviations from its regular intended use, your privately-owned custom software can be built upon when the need arises.
Picture this: your company is using a subscription software for its customer management. The software handles all of your customer’s statuses, order details, billing, and all facets of their accounts. Now your company wants to merge it into a CRM software, but the subscription software your company uses doesn’t integrate with any CRMs and won’t allow any changes to its code or the way it works. This is a problem that you won’t likely get around. Your company is then stuck with the product that doesn’t do what you need of it, and probably won’t be able to leave until the contract is up. And even when the contract is up, you then go back to searching for a solution that fits your needs.
Yes, having the ability to customize your own software without asking for permission from an overlord company should make your life much easier.
3. License It Out
Now here’s a nice extra caveat of owning your own custom software: You can license it to other companies.
Say you’ve developed a custom software solution that lets the your employees talk to each other and assign tasks, but also has a deep level of customization for using it for other purposes. You could take that product and then offer to sell it to other companies. This way, you are able to leverage out your software that you created for your own means, and get some revenue out of it by offering it to other companies.
A great example of this is Collaborate Cloud. Collaborate Cloud was created for its company as a collaboration suite for small businesses. It’s original purpose was for store management, inventory tracking, and performance management, but it was quickly evolved into a number of other tools. A platform for marketing teams to list projects, a communication platform for development companies, and many others. CC is a great example of a private software that was licensed out to many business to great success.
While there are some great perks to owning your own custom software, there are a few details you need to keep in mind when deciding to develop your own solution.
The Details
1. Price
Now while you have the luxury of not paying a monthly license fee for third-party software, you do however have a much larger cost-of-entry price when it comes to customer software solutions. Now this price will vary depending on what your tool requires and the company who creates it, but it should still be known the initial cost can be steep when compared to monthly fees for a third-party software. Still, in the long-run the costs should offset and go in your favor if you choose to develop your own software.
2. Third-Party Extra Services
When you use a third-party software for your business you get the bonus of the company’s service features and extras. This could be educational information, video tutorials, troubleshooting, etc. When you have your own custom software solution created, you don’t have access to these options, outside of whatever the developer offers you.Most developers offer customer service and maintenance as part of their custom software contracts, but not all, so make sure it’s built into the contract.
3. Time
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a custom software platform. If you elect to go this route, you need to be cognizant of the time it takes to build, develop, and test a brand new software. Being aware of this time table allows you to avoid any headaches with deliverability of the custom software.
The Decision
At the end of the day you need to look at your company and assess where it is in its growth process. If your company is large enough, and dynamic enough, then pursuing custom software makes all the sense in the world. A customer software will allow your business to take flight and grow, with the potential to outpace competition and enhance the reaction time and speed of your company. By designing your own technology that is suited for your specific business operations, you will be able to outpace your competitors and do so at a heightened rate internally, which is good for revenue and your customers.
Regardless of the initial cost, custom software solutions should be a priority for any company looking to continue its growth and maximize its internal efforts. With a strong custom software in place, your company can began to utilize that software to expand its enterprises and scale in a meaningful way. Efficient use of software can lead to an increase in revenue, happier customers, and a better performing company overall.
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