Business requires a software to measure the growth and increase productivity. Businesses have a perspective to buy off the shelf software as they would cost less compared to custom software but they do not evolve with the change in trends or business requirements.
Software customization is about gaining knowledge of business requirements, understanding it and then giving it a shape. The cost and time it will take to customize depends totally on the business requirements.
Here are the reasons, why software customization is important –
· Competition
Without resources, surviving in the business world is next to impossible. Like, when online shopping came, the wholesale and retail markets majorly lost their customers resulting in less profit. Competition in business world is very real. To avoid these kinds of circumstances, building a custom software will not only simplify your business but also make you stand as an edge to edge competitor.
· Expansion
Business is always started on a small scale but when they grow, it’s normal to think about expanding the business. Here, off the shelf software doesn’t come handy as it may not run smoothly at the expansion stage. The customized software won’t do such problem as it would be built keeping in mind the present and future needs.
· Cyber Security
Cyber crime has become one of the main concerns as there are number of incidents that have happened and to secure the businesses from this, the software should be secure enough to guard the confidential data. Off the shelf software also have security feature but now days, hackers even hack the cloud servers. In customized software, you can ask your development team to build a security system according to your security requirements. Developers use complex algorithms to protect the data from hackers.
· Software Integration
Integration in off the shelf software become hard because the hardware and software requirements differ from each other so it becomes next to impossible for network engineer to configure it. The customized software allows the existing software to easily configure with third party software or API. You can also re- engineer your existing system with new technology. Customized software helps in updating the system as per your need and also allows third party software if available integrate with existing software using API.
· Time & Cost
The time & cost of a custom software totally depends on the features, technology and business requirements. Off the shelf software are already prepared and available in the market within your budget but the custom software can be prepared within time and budget even if your idea is huge and may take a year for development, you can pay developers per milestones. The pay per milestone model make it a easy process to pay.
· Less Risk
Buying off the shelf software can be a huge risk to the business. There can be different problems that can be raised like buying a software from illegal vendor so that you can save money or the vendor from whom you buy the software, no longer sells your company’s software so now either you have to find a new vendor or change your software all together. Customized software does not give you such problems and have less risk on your business. The software development team understands your requirement, builds a strategy and then go for developing it. The companies follow agile software development methodology that helps you track the progress and test the software.
· Support & Maintenance Services
When you buy off the shelf software, you abandon yourself from support and maintenance services as you have no knowledge about the software development team and you are directly dealing with the vendor but when you have customized software, it comes with support and maintenance services. The team will help you understand each and every feature and will guide you throughout the process. The team helps you with bug fixes and quality of software.
Now, you know why customized software are more important than you think.