Ensuring the viability and continued growth of a startup or small business is one of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face. Competition grows fiercer each day and unique business ideas often do not remain unique for long.
We’ve all seen promising startups gain attention and support from their peers and target audiences. However, not all of them survive the business. Unless they can retain their edge and public support, startup businesses may soon fade away or get eaten up by their competitors.
One way small businesses can retain an edge over their competition and ensure long-term growth is by investing in custom business application software.
No One-Size-Fits-All Solution
Customized business software can help entrepreneurs to build, run, and grow their company as they envisioned. Instead of altering their business to fit the available off-the-shelf software solutions, they commission custom business applications software to fit their needs.
Although off-the-shelf business software may have a reputation as a tried and true business solution, it does not fit the needs of all businesses or users. As good as it may be, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
Having proprietary business applications software may also help boost a startup’s reputation and trustworthiness. It shows that the company holds itself to a higher standard and cares enough about its work, its partners, and its customers to provide custom solutions.
6 Benefits of Custom Software
Custom software development is ideal for startup businesses that already have a lot of specific goals they want to meet. A commercial off-the-shelf software application can make it much harder to accomplish these goals. It also makes it near impossible to make ongoing modifications to help support the company’s growth.
Moreover, an off-the-shelf software solution may come with features that aren’t compatible with the type of work the business does or the services it provides. Removing these features, streamlining the existing software, and ensuring all employees are familiarized with it takes time and effort that may be better directed elsewhere.
Here are other reasons why businesses may survive longer with a custom application.
1. Fast and Tailored Adoption
Custom business application software is highly recommended to small businesses that are in volatile or fast-changing industries. These include healthcare and medicine, finance, and software or digital solutions.
Rapid industry changes, such as in-laws and regulations, can be addressed right away through custom software development. Customized applications can be molded according to the current and future needs of the business and its processes or flow.
2. Improves Efficiency
Software that is optimized according to the business processes and flow will allow the business operations to run more smoothly. In turn, this helps employees to be more productive and more efficient.
Customized software can provide better automation, as well. Custom business applications software can help address and streamline the flow of repetitive tasks. This helps reduce manual tasks and gives employees more time for more productive assignments.
3. Streamlined Integration and Scalability
Commissioning specialized business applications software allows startups to ensure easy and streamlined integration with other software or systems. Customized software can also be made to work with existing platforms or modules.
Businesses that already have an existing platform for one division, such as an HR or attendance system, can have their custom software work alongside it with no issues. This can help reduce or eliminate redundancies that arise from using two different systems.
Moreover, custom software solutions have better scalability. They can grow as the business grows, ensuring all necessary gaps are filled and needed features are addressed.
4. Promotes Brand Uniqueness
Personalized business application software helps show the company’s uniqueness. It also helps strengthen the brand. Regardless of whether the custom solutions are consumer-facing, purely internal, or for partners’ use, it shows the company’s commitment to improving its brand and services.
In short, it helps give the company a competitive edge. Providing unique, customized solutions that its competitors can’t give the company greater functionality.
This also reinforces customer, partner, and employee satisfaction. Internal software that helps with day-to-day tasks can help improve the company’s working environment. Meanwhile,
sophisticated software solutions can encourage customers, clients, or partners to continue their partnership with the company.
5. Greater Security
As we all firmly live in the digital age, we face digital issues — including security. Today businesses may have more to fear from hacking, phishing, malware, and other cyber attacks than physical dangers.
Unfortunately, off-the-shelf business applications software makes for an easy cyberattack target. As these applications are commercially available and widely used, other people can hack into it or reverse engineer its process to find vulnerabilities and loopholes.
These vulnerabilities can be exploited to steal sensitive information and severely harm business operations of many companies. Through custom software development, businesses can minimize the number of people that know the inner workings of their system.
6. Potential Cost Savings
When taken all together, all of the benefits we mentioned earlier can help companies save money. Despite the greater time and initial financial investment for custom business software, the returns can be easily recouped.
Another way a personalized business applications software helps reduce costs is that it will be wholly owned by the company that commissioned it. Complete ownership and rights to the software mean no licensing or update costs. If the company grows enough to start a second branch, it will already have the updated necessary software at no extra cost.
Last Words of Advice
As long as the software developer is reliable and responsible, the custom software will pay dividends.
If you do decide to take the leap and order a custom software solution, consider hiring a professional software development service. All of the benefits we stated in this article are only a generalized view of what customized business applications software can do for your business.
Consulting a professional will give you the full scope of how such software can help your business specifically. At Near Contact, we are experts in software and applications development. For any questions or clarifications about custom software development, you can email us at info@nearcontact.com or send us a Whatsapp message via our website.
For more information on how Near Contact can help you access the pool of IT skills you need, email us at info@nearcontact.com
About Near Contact
Specializing in digital transformation, software development, and mobile apps, Near Contact attracts and retains the top talent from across Mexico to support US enterprises and service providers. With over 20 years’ experience matching the right talent for each client and project, Near Contact’s flexible, hybrid outsourcing model offers fast access to a highly-skilled, scalable resource pool—delivering your project, your way. www.nearcontact.com
