To win the marketplace competition, businesses should be unique in their offerings. Their products/services should boast complete functionality and features that aim to solve their customer’s specific challenges. Consequently, they require personalized software solutions to achieve their organizational objectives.
A custom software development process involves developing tailored software that boosts productivity, marketing, and sales efforts, streamlines business processes, and improves the company’s bottom line.
However, the scope and functionality of building a custom solution are complex, time-consuming, and costly as compared to off-the-shelf software solutions, yet it offers several advantages for users. Let us find out why you should consider custom software development.
Custom Software Development Process
1. Understanding Scope and Requirements
Building custom software requires in-depth knowledge about the company, such as objectives to be achieved with the software, the number of stakeholders using the software, if the software will be installed at a remote location or on the servers of the company’s office, and the duration of use.
To analyze the scope of the requirements and discuss the custom software development process, several meetings are held between the software development company and the customer. Subsequently, the software developer selects an efficient methodology to ensure the project is executed with minimal risks.
2. Choose Suitable People for the Work
For the custom software development process, the following teams are required.
- Chief technology officer (CTO) and the IT team of your company
- Software developers, you contract for the project
- Software development companies and vendors
Often, businesses prefer to handle custom software development processes in-house to save costs. However, engaging an in-house IT team for custom development has its disadvantages.
For starters, they have existing obligations to fulfil and diverting their focus, efforts, and time towards this purpose would only negatively impact their performance on the job for which they were hired, eventually leading to reduced productivity and losses for the company.
Moreover, your IT team has specific expertise and would need extensive training on building custom software, which would lead to more overhead costs for the company. Consequently, outsourcing the custom software development process is a sensible decision, as you gain specialized teams with a successful track record of designing and implementing custom software for your industry.
Hence, you achieve your software development goals in a reduced timeframe and at a lucrative cost, offering you a competitive advantage.
3. Technical Design, Architecture, and Coding
A tailored approach to the unique customer requirements is needed to develop custom software. Hence, in the development phase, the software architecture is designed according to the technical modules mentioned in the project’s scope.
Technical design modules are decided according to budget, resource availability, design modularity, risk assessment, and time constraints. The customer can request a mock-up design interface and screens to understand how the solution works.
4. Development and Implementation
Usually, this stage consumes maximum time because it includes developing the solution per the established project scope. Once the architecture, system requirements, and wireframe are ready, plan execution becomes faster.
In this phase, team members can quickly report and work on bugs and problems in developing the software using the agile development methodology. This technique involves shorter iterative cycles for testing the custom software development process at each stage of its build, which improves workflow functioning and boosts the team’s productivity.
5. Conduct Testing
Now that the software solution is successfully built, it’s time to test it for smooth functioning before it’s launched for use. Testing occurs at two levels – technical and user testing.
Technical Testing: IT professionals and software developers ensure the primary fundamentals and features of the software are working accurately.
User testing: Business users test the software to ensure the software’s features work as desired and expected. Additionally, it tests the interface and user experience to ensure stakeholders/employees can easily use it at optimal efficiency.
6. Training, Deployment, Maintenance
Often post-launch, a software product has teething issues that need to be addressed quickly or resolved within a time frame due to the complexity of the problem. Hence, custom development companies offer continued training and support for post-release applications.
The software consultant trains the users on the application once installed. Further, the consultant is responsible for identifying the legacy systems (old) features to integrate with the custom software development process for enhanced productivity.
7. Higher efficiency
Customized software programs are built to streamline the existing business processes for greater efficiency, and hence businesses achieve enhanced productivity and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
8. Faster Adoption
Since custom application includes tailored business features and solutions, organizations can quickly adapt their use across the departments. Further, all the employees can be trained on it quickly at a lucrative cost.
Interestingly, the custom-developed software adopts the traditional workforce practices, while the teams adapt to its agility and efficiency for delivering accurate and profitable results that boost the sales and revenue for the company.
9. Better Integration
Organizations can develop any product/service by using custom software development processes. Thus, custom applications offer infinite tailored features and services that can be easily integrated with the company’s old software applications.
Compared to pre-developed applications, custom software is easy to integrate with legacy systems.
10. Data Access
Integration of the custom software development process with existing IT infrastructure allows the seamless transfer and access of data across programs and applications. Hence, users can easily extract data from the applications at any time.
11. Cost-free Licensing
Organizations own the custom software applications and incur no licensing fee. Users or new features can be added easily without additional costs.
12. Vendor Independence
The organization owns the rights for custom software applications as they have paid for them. Hence, they can change their software development agency anytime because vendors have no lock-in period.
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Essential Elements For Good Fintech Web DesignConclusion:
Custom software development processes are suitable for organizations that seek to solve unique and specific problems for themselves. Consequently, they must evaluate their requirements to find the right vendor to deliver software that offers higher utility and benefits across the organization to improve ROI, employee engagement, and productivity and streamline the business processes for operational efficiency.
Valon Consulting team provides a top-notch custom software development service. We offer a matrix structure that ensures redundancy, continuity, and maintenance of the required quality standards in the delivery processes.