IT development of custom software

The design and development of computer software is a thriving industry. Tailor-made software assets can be a strategic and decisive investment for many companies, presenting a key competitive edge when it comes to digital presence and opportunities.

With custom development, software is intimately linked to a company’s specific processes. This means that when a company embarks on the design and development of software, it will be tailor-made according to the characteristics and needs of the company. This means that it is more advantageous and much less risky to turn to an IT service provider design and development of custom or “tailor-made” or “bespoke” computer software

What is custom software?

Let’s start by detailing what standard software is. Standard software offers a set of pre-developed and pre-established features to satisfy as many users as possible. These features are common to all those who use this so-called standard software.

Standard software can obviously meet some of most companies’ needs. On the other hand, you and your teams will find limits in its use, because fundamentally, it was not built or modeled on your business, with your own processes and your own unique ways of operation in mind.

With custom software, we are talking about a computer program or an application that was designed specifically for your business, your modes of operation and organization, and no one else. It can compare be compared to a tailored suit. This type of software is developed to integrate perfectly with your IT systems. It will communicate efficiently and smoothly with all your other tools and applications. It allows you to harmonize your systems for optimized business and team performance.

Custom software also has the advantage of being easily maintainable over time. Your IT software development provider will offer you scalable developments. More precisely, if your business needs expand and you have to make evolutions or modifications to your software, it will be technically easy to make the underlying software evolve accordingly. This is much more difficult, if not impossible to realize with standard software.

What are the advantages of custom software?

Some advantages of custom software have already been described in the first part of this article. Let’s discover some of the other benefits that a software project specific to your organization can bring.

Advantage n° 1 – Precise, upgradeable maintenance

As explained previously, software developed for your specific business is much more maintainable over time than a standard IT solution, where you may be blocked by software publishers who do not offer the capacity on a case-by-case basis to meet your specific request.

The strategy of having your own unique software developed is a global approach. This means that you’ll have a long-term partnership with an IT service company who will be your support and accompany you throughout your growth, maintaining and evolving your software.

Advantage n° 2 – Cost reduction

By using standard software, you are required to pay a license for each of your employees using the software and to renew the payment of their licenses year after year.

With custom software, you’ll be able to realize savings in the medium to long term.

Example case with a sales software

When designing your software, you will ask your IT service provider to develop features whose main goal will be to make your employees’ lives easier.

Say the software you want to develop is a sales tracking platform. If you set up such a platform, the ultimate goal will obviously be to accelerate your sales. And to accelerate your sales, the software you develop will be your main asset for easing your sales representatives’ ability to operate, and to give them more time to do what brings the most added value: being in contact with current or future customers.

Your sales software should allow your team of salespeople to be more efficient and, above all, save them time. Your software can contain the following functions to make this happen:

• In-depth contact management.
• Management of customer projects.
• A sales pipeline to show what’s in progress.
• A lead conversion workflow.
• A customer support area (messaging, dashboard, ticketing etc.)
• Order management.
• A dashboard of marketing actions.
• A dashboard of leads sent by the marketing team.
• Etc.

In short, your custom software can very quickly save you money and improve your company’s margins. Ultimately its goal will be to increase your income and allow you to grow. If this is not the case, then it was poorly designed and the features put in place do not adequately allow your teams to save time and be more efficient on a daily basis.

How much does it cost to develop custom software?

You can probably understand why it might not be realistic for us to give you a full price range, even though many people might want one. Imagine buying a car: adding this or that option will naturally change its final price. It’s much the same thing when it comes to estimating the cost of developing custom software.

The first thing to know is that criteria will influence the final price. Here is a short list of what those criteria are:

The end use case expected by your users

In general terms, what kind of software are we talking about? What will it ultimately achieve? There is a notable difference between software that allows, for example, to manage inventory and software that allows you to customize live images.

The size of the project

The larger the project, the higher the price. How many stakeholders are there? How many sectors need to be considered? Are there any constraints directly linked to certain professions, such as certain regulated professions: lawyers, bailiffs, health professionals, accountants, etc.?

The type of support

What media will your software be used on? What should the project take into consideration: operation on mobile, and therefore the development of a mobile application? Operation on a tablet? Or will it just be accessed through a website?

The mode of work (contract) requested

Would you like to have a fixed-price project or on a direct, continuous basis – that is to say, something more agile? A fixed-price project will be less expensive than a project developed on according to evolving client needs, but the fixed-price project will be riskier and less recommended for medium to large-sized projects.

To get a much more precise idea of ​​the development costs of your software project, download our price catalog.

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