Custom software is private business software. Custom software is created according to the needs of one particular business, project, daily operation, and device. Custom software is not a commonly available public software like Office 365 or Open-source software such as WordPress.
Custom software can be a script, program, complete desktop software, bots, web application, mobile app, and website. Custom software can be designed and developed to run only on the intranet or it can also be accessible on the internet through a specific IP address or domain. Or you can run custom software only on mobile or desktop or on both. Depends on the software architecture. Read More: Computer Software Basics: What is computer software
Custom software development can be for any particular business or specific work such as accounting, sales reports, CRM and communication etc.
What are the need or importance and benefits of custom software in business?
These days you can find commonly used software or open-source software, and web applications for almost all kinds of business needs.
Whether you need to build a website, manage employees, customers, or sales and marketing operations. There is more than one software for every business’s needs.
Why custom software development is important?
1. Essential for the unique idea/new type of business:
As you know there is various software for almost all kinds of business needs. Still, when you launch a new idea in the market or new business model you need unique software for the operations such as:
- Product development or manufacturing
- Management and monitoring of machines and employees
- Service and product delivery
- Customer relationship management
- Customer, machines, employees, and productivity tracking and data analysis.
And many others.
Examples:
- Service and product delivery through custom web application:
Telecom companies use custom software to deliver services. Such as AT & T, JIO, and Airtel have customized application software or websites to deliver personal and business pre-paid, post-paid, fiber internet connection, recharge services, and many others direct to consumers. Only the customer using these services will get login access.
This custom software is built for a specific purpose. And the purpose is to deliver the service and provide a different user experience than their competitors.
There is no scope for one common software that all telecom companies can use together. It’s because they are in the same business ad competitors of each other.
- Data Scraping Script:
For the marketing and lead generation process and many other hidden reasons companies, and small business use scripts to track or scrape data from eCommerce, portals, and social media websites.
Beautiful Soup, Selenium, Scrapy, and Requests are some popular Python libraries used to scrap the web or DOM elements of websites by writing and deploying custom scripts.
Only a single program or code or scraping software does not fit all the websites or data scraping, data mining works. The script (code) is written as per the target website, Dom elements, and structure. The code is only used inside the company and it’s not for distribution.
Some other examples:
- Governments use custom software to provide and manage citizen services such as Vehicle Challan, GST, Income Tax management applications, and virtual courts and to conduct exams or manage students.
Almost all nations or state, center governments have their own software development departments or IT ministries. All the banking and money management works are delivered and managed through each bank’s own software. All such types of software are examples of custom software.
2. Data Security and Privacy:
Data security and privacy are the biggest or most important reasons behind custom software development or private software.
I personally think or guess that 50% of the crime and social disturbance happening around the world is due to the lack of data privacy and security.
Data privacy and security are not guaranteed with custom software. But it’s just one layer that prevents anonymous public access to the application, servers, and personal network.
When building software, it’s very important to have a separate department that designs, plans, and monitors security systems for an application.
Monitoring and auditing custom software, web application or SaaS software security is very important. Else you never know if you’re hacked or not! Hacking doesn’t mean just copying or data deletion from a database or server. It also can be through data pipes to external sources. Read more: Importance of Data in Business
So, to protect or prevent the business and customers it’s important to use custom software and higher security systems. And most importantly intelligent workforce to design the security system.
Whether you are creating a SaaS application, eCommerce store or portal you must deploy some security practices.
3. Good user experience:
User experience provides a competitive advantage for businesses. For example, instead of using a common lead generation template or application, you can create custom software, template, and dynamic landing page to increase the conversion rate. Please read more here: Want to make a good website? 7 things that matter to users most
4. Competitive Advantages:
By using custom software or developing custom airsoft you will get a competitive advantage in the market. And it’s difficult for other businesses to track your strategies and deployment.
For example, if both you and your competitor use the same SEO software for the purpose to rank higher on search engines then your strategies will be open. And any new business can outrank you.
So custom software is important to block access to competitors through user agents, hostnames, locations, IPs, and many others.
5. Reduce the SaaS liabilities:
If 40% to 50% of business income goes into paying software free then building your own custom software is more beneficial in the long run.
To create a custom software development plan, it’s important to audit the current system and process. What can be improved and how does that make a difference in sales, growth, and user experience is important to find. So, if there is a certain solution available with few modifications then you can reduce the initial development cost.
If you want to learn more about software development then please let us know!