It is not a secret that the main reason for adapting software solutions and maintaining custom software development is to increase your competitive advantage over your business rivals.
Each technological solution offers unique and innovative features, such as business process automation, advanced data-based insights about your target audience or market situation, better data mining and gathering options, convenient and user-oriented services, etc.
Long story short, custom software development seems to be one of the best solutions for your business growth:
You can increase your audience reach and offer them more options at the bare minimum. Alternatively, you can transform your physical business and make it completely virtual, like Netflix once did.
Frankly, there are many cases where businesses gain a competitive edge thanks to using software solutions and maintaining their development. The preceding is an oversimplified example of how to benefit from custom software solutions. To illustrate how custom applications can bring value to your business competition and success, let’s discuss other examples and benefits of custom software development.
How Custom Software Drives Competitive Advantage?
First, we must explain how developing custom software can bring a competitive advantage to your business.
Long story short, all software solutions were designed and created to simplify some processes and make somebody’s life a little bit easier. Among the core advantages of custom software, we can name:
- Improved Efficiency and Productivity
- Better Data Management and Decision Making
- Faster Adaptation to Market Trends
- Better Risk Management and Predictive Capabilities
- Seamless integration with Existing Systems
Nevertheless, one of the core reasons to choose custom software development over any other alternative, like integrating SaaS or conventional apps, is the possibility of adjusting such projects to your needs.
Custom software is tailored to your business needs and demands, making it more flexible and adjustable. You will have complete control over such applications and can integrate new features or upgrades. At the same time, SaaS and ready-made solutions bring minimal competitive advantage because they are available to anyone ready to pay for them.
One of the most crucial factors of competition is to stand out by offering unique and innovative features or proposing better services than your rivals. Clearly, sharing your software solutions with your competitors provides none of these aspects, while custom software development suggests both.
Improved Efficiency and Productivity
Software systems offer multiple options for increasing business efficiency and productivity. It can be applied to almost any business process, starting with gathering information about your clients and processing it and ending with streamlining numerous processes within the company.
Once again, when you develop custom software, you can adjust IT systems to particular business needs, boosting efficiency and productivity even further than conventional software.
Better Data Management and Decision Making
To repeat ourselves, flexibility is among the core advantages of custom software.
Customization and the possibility of adjusting IT systems are essential in many processes, and data management with decision-making is also on this list.
For instance, when it comes to data mining and management, each business has its specifics:
Some companies use certain data types, while others prioritize data mining operations over data processing. Data is the most crucial aspect of the IT world. At the same time, almost everything related to data management varies wildly, depending on the business context.
So, a software product development company for startups offers a unique opportunity to adjust and manage all data-related operations, ensuring better data management and business-oriented decision-making.
Faster Adaptation to Market Trends
Custom software development suggests complete control over the software development process and post-launch access to any code-based components.
Such advanced features help ensure a competitive edge for your business when market trends rapidly change or require other adaptations:
SaaS and other shared ready-made solutions offer their clients relatively the same features and services. In such cases, competitive advantage is defined by how much you can pay for an advanced package of features and services.
At the same time, custom software development offers complete freedom in access to functionality: you can hire developers to design or integrate required services whenever you want or need them.
Let’s suppose that new AI-driven solutions will emerge tomorrow. If you are a customer of the SaaS management system, you will get access to this feature if:
- The provider will integrate such solutions into their system
- Such integrations are included in your subscription
However, if you maintain your custom software development project, you can integrate such features as soon as possible and start freely using or improving them.
Better Risk Management and Predictive Capabilities
Other advantages of custom software development are better risk management and predictive analytics.
Developing custom software usually starts from scratch and always offers complete control over such processes. Therefore, your company can ensure higher security standards by regularly upgrading and improving them. For instance, the OWASP list changes every 3-4 years, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities also tend to change periodically.
Apart from that, owning code-based software unties your hands in many aspects. However, the most crucial factor is that you can react immediately when you notice any risk or opportunity.
All the preceding results in much better risk management by providing you and your team with all the tools and instruments for a fast reaction. Besides, custom software is operated on your side, offering more options for market predictions or other data-driven decisions and forecasts.
Seamless Integration with Existing Systems
Eventually, custom-developed software becomes very agile, especially when scaling functionality or integrating already existing software systems.
To illustrate, each SaaS management solution for businesses suggests integration options to utilize other popular solutions. However, if you use an outdated or custom system for your business purposes, SaaS platforms might not support it. So, the only possible way to keep using them is to transfer essential data from one system to another manually.
There is no need to explain why such approaches negatively impact your performance and business efficiency. However, custom software solutions are compatible with any software you require; all you have to do – is to ensure it on the code level.
Examples of Industries Benefiting from Custom Software
To better understand, let’s briefly discuss some examples of how industries benefit from IT system custom software development. We won’t discuss the development of unique software applications because these are the most apparent examples.
Yet, it is worth discussing why businesses choose IT system custom software development over integrating SaaS or other ready-made solutions. For example, let’s examine industry-specific management systems for:
- Real estate: CRMs and property management tools
- Healthcare: Patient management and telemedicine solutions
- E-commerce: personalized shopping experiences and inventory systems
- Finance: Secure transaction systems and fraud detection
Real estate: CRMs and Property Management Tools
Custom CRMs and property management tools are gaining popularity among real estate companies. The reason is simple: such solutions offer more features and services to improve customer experience and satisfaction. Besides, they allow companies to integrate personal property lists and set up more personalized data gathering.
Healthcare: Patient Management and Telemedicine Solutions
The healthcare industry chooses custom software development over ready-made platforms because it requires advanced cybersecurity. Such companies have access to patients’ private and personal information and are legally required to ensure the best possible security measures for its protection.
Thus, data protection, patient management, and telemedicine are core reasons for choosing custom development over SaaS solutions that do not provide information about their security measures and protocols.
E-commerce: Personalized Shopping Experiences and Inventory Systems
E-commerce businesses also have their reasons to develop custom software. Primarily, it involves advanced customer experience personalization.
To stay competitive, e-commerce platforms should offer the best customer service. One of the most popular modern choices is increasing personalization and using advanced algorithms to suggest inventory and goods based on user behavior, browsing history, etc.
Finance: Secure Transaction Systems and Fraud Detection
The finance industry prefers IT system custom software development due to advanced security algorithms and protocols. Custom software development also helps react to market changes and integrate innovative solutions like AI for fraud detection, blockchain and cryptocurrency operation, etc.
How to Get Started with Custom Software Development?
How do you start a custom development project? Frankly, all you have to do is:
- Define your business goals and challenges
- Choose the right development partner
- Collaborate on the discovery and design phases
- Prioritize an agile development approach
Long story short, each custom project requires research, planning, estimation, and reliable cooperation. However, planning is the most critical and demanding stage in custom projects, that defines your initial success:
You must define your core goals and consider why you need a custom approach. Before initiating your development project, you must be sure that custom development is the only way to satisfy your demands.
Consider abandoning this idea if integrating SaaS or other ready-made solutions can cover your business requests. Still, don’t forget about thinking in the long term: custom software solutions have a massive advantage in the long run while losing to conventional apps in the short perspective.