In today's business climate, technology continues to be a fundamental need. Business software allows companies to automate their workflows and processes,  run more efficiently, manage resources, and stay on top of ever-changing advances. 

Even though off-the-shelf programs might meet some of your basic needs, you should consider custom software that will fully meet your needs and allow you to scale. 

How can custom software help your business reach its goals? 

Let's take a look. 

Keeping it Personal 

Software designed for your needs helps you shape your unique business identity, fit your project specifications, address challenges, and leverage your advantages. While off-the-shelf software may offer a range of features and tools, it's developed to meet the needs of many businesses, which means you lose the ability to stand out from your competition.

Increasing Productivity

Custom software can help ensure smooth workplace collaboration, no matter the size of your business. Because custom software is developed to meet your specific needs and processes, the tools, applications, systems, automation, and analytics will be integrated so your employees can efficiently utilize them. Having this seamless integration empowers your team to be more efficient. Implementing a custom solution can also save time previously spent adjusting off-the-shelf software to work with your systems. 

Financial Gains

Buying off-the-shelf software might appear to be the more cost-efficient solution. However, when you look closely at the time spent fixing issues and the long-term costs of making your system work, custom software solutions may provide more cost savings.

For example, if your off-the-shelf software solution doesn't interact well with the hardware and other software programs you currently use, it will likely cause errors. Attending to these errors costs you both productivity and effectiveness. These errors can impair business operations, which hurts the company's bottom line. 

The cost of training is also often overlooked. When your software isn't built uniquely for your business processes, the time and resources to train employees to use the new solution can significantly impact revenue. Custom software enables you to save these training costs, as the solution is developed specifically for your company and integrated into your current systems. 

Making it Secure

Off-the-shelf software often lacks specialized security features, threatening your data safety. Having control over your software lets you implement best practice security measures specifically for your business. 

With a custom software solution, the code for the software is written directly for you, which helps protect you from unauthorized users gaining access to your systems. With custom software, you can set different levels of authentication to control the accessibility of employees. This level of security is nearly impossible with generic software.

Building to Scale

To succeed, you need solutions that can grow and change as your business grows. When your off-the-shelf solution doesn't support your changing needs, it can be expensive to purchase additional licensing and add-ons. 

With custom software, developers can incorporate future needs in preparation for future growth into the application. This allows you to automate processes and keep up with changing workflows, tasks, and integrations. In turn, you'll save time and resources.

Better Reporting

For businesses to succeed, they must rely on reporting at all levels to monitor performance. With custom software solutions, you can choose what type of reporting tools you want and how to access them. During development, you will work with the designer to ensure your team can pull reports quickly and effectively.

The Bottom Line

Custom software can help you reach your goals - if designed with your business needs in mind. Custom software allows businesses to grow by providing enhanced security, increased productivity and profits, and high scalability. 

If you think a custom mobile app solution may be what your company needs, contact our team at ETHANY today for a free consultation.