As a small business owner, you may feel like custom software is out of your budget range. You may have cobbled together a system that works for you, but it takes your employees extra time -- maybe a lot of extra time -- to make manual connections between different software. And you may feel like you're missing out on a way to streamline data so you can better see trends and connections with user data.
Here's how custom designed software can actually save you money.
1. You aren't shoehorned into an off-the-shelf solution, where the functionality might be too much or too little.
You can demo several different software options, but until you actually get into the day-to-day routine of using a software product, you won't know how it actually performs. In order to try and eliminate guesswork, many business owners or managers select an option with a lot of features, figuring that more is better. But this often comes at a cost, and you end up paying for things you don't need.
On the other end of the spectrum, small businesses that don't know about custom options may opt for a low-end solution that requires too much manual effort to make work. Custom software design options won't cost a lot more when you figure in this waste of time to try and fit your business functions an ineffective software tool.
2. You don't have to spend a lot of time and energy customizing one-size-fits-all software.
To be honest, a lot of off-the-shelf solutions are really robust -- if you know what you're doing to set them up and get them working for your team. It can be tempting to buy into a promise that new software will do everything right out of the box, but that's rarely the case. By the time you pay a consultant or database expert to come in and get everything running smoothly and effectively, you could have had a custom solution created that would be more streamlined for your company.
For example, one of the most common needs for a small business is to connect their accounting software to their customer relationship management software. There are few good solutions for this straight out of the box. Several CRM modules attempt to integrate with the most popular business accounting software, but the results often fall short. A custom developer can create software that shares exactly the information you need between the two, often with much more seamless results than trying to interface the two out of the box.
3. You get more flexibility and expandability.
Not sure when you'll be moving into offering a planned new product or service? Custom software developers can create a product that can easily be expanded to fit your future needs. A custom solution can also offer you more flexibility if your company grows and adds more employees and more locations.
Talk to your software developer (like Compusmart Solutions) for more information and a quote for custom software.
