According to Harvard Business Review, it’s usually easier for small companies to do manual workarounds to adapt their off-the-shelf software to support their requirements. HBR also says it’s less expensive for smaller companies to take a manual workaround option when their generic software fails to meet their needs.
But for mid-sized companies or larger, custom software development can increase business productivity in a way that generic software supporting basic business processes can’t. Determining whether you should enter a custom software development process depends on the unique characteristics of your business, your customers, and your products or services.
The Importance of Custom Software Development for Business Productivity
How can custom software improve productivity? The situation varies with each business, but here’s an example: a defense and aerospace contracting firm had customers who needed a lot of technical information that wasn’t captured by traditional reports. They wanted to work closely with the firm throughout the manufacturing process. The business wanted to avoid rework and conventional software solutions like screensharing or screenshots of work steps didn’t satisfy customers.
The company began a custom software development process that gave customers a way to see the business work process in real-time. This process reduced rework and increased profit margins. The customized system also helped the business to grow significantly and gain new contracts throughout North America.
Benefits of Tailored Software Solutions for Manager-Level Professionals
Managers know the information they need to make key decisions to improve productivity. Generic software is probably not the best fit for businesses that are growing rapidly, facing external challenges, and need support and flexibility.
Especially when managers need to plan their department or business strategy in the short-term and longer-term, the benefits of tailored software solutions include:
- Real-time modifications and flexibility
- Support built into project budgets
- Complete control over product and performance
They may not know exactly which software features and functionality will provide the greatest gains in productivity, but managers know the information they need, whether it’s hidden in mountains of data or locked in paper processes or even in a staff member’s head. Generic software provides tools for daily work, but custom software can put information and bespoke tools into managers’ hands.
Strategic Planning: A Key Driver of Productivity in Software Development
Software development works best when it incorporates strategic planning. Without a well-defined strategic planning process, chances are that software development projects will take too long and will run over budget. It’s easy for poorly planned projects to experience scope creep and similar problems that can lead to project failure.
The strategic planning process for software development includes:
- Setting clear objectives (this is where management comes in)
- Focusing on architecture and product design (this is where custom development partners come in)
- A well-defined development timeline (where both work together)
Scrum, in particular, is an effective software development project management process and framework that assists in the strategic planning process. The flexibility, collaboration, and iterative processes that are inherent in Scrum provide the tools and work steps necessary to turn strategic planning into a real, usable product at project end.
Transparency and Efficiency: Enhancing Software Delivery
Generic software products work to provide transparency in the form of product documentation, but for the most part, especially when non-technical managers try to figure out how they work and optimize them, they aren’t very transparent. Just picture a manager trying to format a financial report from an Excel spreadsheet into only the items necessary for an inter-departmental meeting. A custom software application could easily produce the result, but the manager might take days to get the same result, and chances are, there’d be plenty of retyping and rework involved.
A custom software development project can provide needed results without a lot of rework or manual processes. And, the development process can be completely transparent, with clear and efficient timelines and clear definitions of roles and responsibilities.
How Customized Coaching and Training Can Improve Productivity
Have you ever heard the phrase, “you can’t know what you don’t know?” This is why people participate in coaching and training.
And, if you’ve gone through a software platform change or adopted new types of generic software at your business, you know how important training and coaching are in implementing these changes and avoiding work slow-downs.
Most people naturally resist change: this is an important feature of human nature that helps to reinforce positive habits and behaviors. But when staff are asked to change to new work processes, especially software, there can be a lot of resistance. Some staff resistance to new software can be attributed to fear of new things or fear of failure. Other times, staff can believe that new technology will replace their jobs.
The reality is that custom software can help to free staff from mundane tasks that waste their time and reduce productivity. Custom software that’s genuinely tailored to business needs can increase business productivity by enabling staff to focus on the important parts of their job that only they can perform.
In this respect, customized coaching and training offers the irreplaceable human element in creating and implementing custom software solutions and projects.
Business productivity is most simply measured in the way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures productivity for all businesses in the U.S. It’s the ratio of all of the business goods and/or services divided by the quantifiable amount of inputs reduced to produce those services.
Custom software development is a potentially game-changing input for a business that wants to improve its productivity ratio. When calculating the ROI for a custom software development project vs. using generic software or manual processes, it’s important to remember that the time that staff save with improved software tools can be devoted to work that will further increase productivity.
Ascendle is experienced in producing custom software solutions that have provided many businesses with double-digit productivity gains and more. Learn more about our solutions here.
