What to Look for in a Company Offering Custom Software Development

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With business innovation seemingly at its peak, more and more companies are turning to custom software development services to create business-centric applications that are tailored around their own business processes –not the other way around.

In the past it seems that most software applications selected to underpin complex business processes were large, bulky, one-size-fits-all solutions. These complex business software solutions included everything right up to the kitchen sink in an effort to please large swaths of B2B customers.

However, truth be told, most businesses use roughly 15% of the software features they buy, and ignore –or dance around the rest. After all, it is hard to ignore features when you have to trip over them on an hourly basis just to get a simple repetitive task done.

There are plenty of companies offering custom software development Sydney businesses turn to. The days of office software bloat are over, with more companies choosing to build their own custom software application to facilitate customised business processes.

The Benefits of Custom Software Development

The benefits of building custom software applications around your business processes as opposed to purchasing per-user software licenses are many:

• Only build in the features you need, toss the ones you don’t
• Streamlined workflow for all
• Build in custom user roles and business logic from scratch; no need to configure software with every installation
• Access your company software from anywhere with responsive, multi-platform software solutions
• No longer pay costly software licensing
• Avoid vendor lock-in; you are no longer obligated to stick with specific vendors –true freedom

And although these benefits are only the tip of the iceberg, we would rather focus on how to choose the right software development company with this article. After all, you wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t already sold on the idea.

How to Choose the Best Custom Software Development Company for Your Businesses

1. Choose your software form factor. Is your business committed to one flavour of device hardware or will staff be engaging with your custom software from multiple devices, each with a different operating system? 

Businesses which prefer not to tie themselves to one device form factor will likely require software that is secure, conforms to multiple screen sizes and device hardware specifications, and therefore, would be web-based. If this sounds like you, your primary choice for a custom software developer must specialise in the creation of web-based applications.

2. Are they over-eager? Custom application development companies that put everything into their estimates, work to fixed costs, and don’t have a line item on their estimate for “planning and discovery” clearly have not been around the block.

Planning and discovery is a key first phase of any reliable custom software development engagement and a tell-tale sign you are likely dealing with a professional. It would be irresponsible for any business to attempt to create custom software your business relies on without due process. Without proper planning, scope creep will rear its ugly head and infiltrate your project –increasing project budget requirements in ways that will make any C-level executive squirm; some projects are never completed as a result.

3. Custom integration; just about every custom software application is going to require the ability to communicate with other business systems, such as ERP software, CRM, or front-end ecommerce platforms. This is done through complex API integrations that are not for the faint of heart or the less experienced. Corporate Interactive makes complicated systems seamless!

If your custom software application development project requires API integrations with one or many third-party systems, it is a business imperative that you verify their client portfolio and previous case studies to ensure they already have experience working with complex APIs. Bonus points if they’ve already developed a solution that integrates with the same third-party systems your project will need to communicate with.

In Conclusion

Complex custom software applications can change how your business runs and lower costs by an order of magnitude –but only if they are planned, created, and executed with your core business requirements in mind from the beginning.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.