Today’s modern world is full of software.
In fact, many of us have gotten used to interacting with software in our daily lives. Whether it’s connecting your phone to your car via Bluetooth, scanning your Starbucks app in the drive-thru, or using a kiosk to speed up your checkout process, most consumers are pretty familiar with the ways software impacts modern life.
In fact, consumers aren’t just familiar with it – they expect it. Users want the convenience of technology with the accessibility, ease of use, and positive experience that companies strive to deliver.
How can your business give people what they want? Custom software. Custom-built software is brought to life from your imagination, giving you an edge when it comes to providing the best possible customer experience.
So, if more customers sound exciting to you, so should custom software!
What Does Custom Software Mean?
Like anything else ‘custom’, custom software is software that is built especially for you according to your specific requirements. That means that the unique end product – the software your clients or employees use – can turn out to be anything.
Examples of Custom Software Applications
That leaves a pretty broad range of possibilities for your custom software. Here are some examples of what custom software can do:
Redbox Rental Kiosks
Before the popularity of streaming, Redbox DVD rental kiosks set the precedent for movie and game rentals at the time. These innovative red kiosks required custom software to collect inventory data and use it to inform content selections and simplify the restocking process. Their intuitive and speedy customer experience was crucial to their rapid growth.
Pension Liability Transfer Platform
This platform was the first of its kind in the financial industry. Consultants found that their clients struggled to transfer pension liabilities to insurance providers because they weren’t confident that they were executing the deal at the best time or rate. A custom online and mobile platform made deals easy with financial metrics, price monitoring, and rapid execution.
Pet Grooming Reservation System
The pandemic propelled the need for this groomer to develop software to keep employees and clients safe. The existing off-the-shelf software for businesses in similar industries, like hair salons and restaurants, was not nuanced enough to handle specific grooming needs. Their custom application allows for appointment booking, employee scheduling, appointment tracking, and more!
Printing as a Service
Custom software helped this printing company transform into a data solutions company. Proprietary software allowed them to provide customers with worry-free, on location printing services through an easy-to-use mobile app. Repair ticket functionality, supply reordering, and predictive analytics were among some of the features that reduced printer downtime, extended machine life, allowed for fluctuating needs, and made budgeting easier.
Branded Customer Rewards App
A mobile and desktop app entices customers to use this company’s toll road more frequently and earn rewards as a result. Users can also opt in to provide data points that would enable the company to identify opportunities for better customer service. A flexible administrative interface allowed for a variety of rewards and a fun user dashboard led to a boom in users in just 3 short months.
Want more examples? Check out our Case Studies page!
Some Custom Software Development Terms to Know
Agile
A popular methodology that custom software development teams use to develop applications. Agile consists of a set of principles that shape the work, with an emphasis on people over processes, working software versus documentation, collaboration over contracts, and responding to change instead of sticking to a strict plan.
SDLC
Stands for the software development life cycle. This is the process a custom software development team goes through to design, build, test, and launch new applications.
Application
A software application is a program that allows its users to perform specific tasks. Applications can be for the web, desktop, cloud-based, mobile, or more. One example would be an ecommerce application, which would allow users to purchase goods and services online.
Outsourcing
Not to be confused with offshoring, outsourcing custom software development means using outside expertise to complete the actual work of building a product. A lot of companies look to custom software development services firms to provide the help they need, whether it’s an extra hand or a whole team of architects, developers, analysts, and more.
How would you develop custom software?
Ultimately, businesses build custom software because the readily available options on the market just aren’t meeting their needs. This can manifest in a variety of ways.
The business might be in a very specific, niche industry where there is no existing application that makes sense for their service. On the contrary, they might be in a saturated industry and looking to gain a competitive advantage over others in the business.
Often, a business adds software as their needs change over time, resulting in frustration when users need to go between a variety of products day to day instead of using one central application to fulfill all of their business needs.
No matter the business or the reason, the process remains relatively the same when developing a custom product.
To build custom software, you must:
- Get your team together
- Define goals and align visions
- Design what your application will do and look like
- Build the product feature by feature
- Test each completed feature
- Approve completed features
- Launch new product
Why Your Business Should Be a Software Company
The events of 2020 have accelerated digital transformation in every industry, quickly leaving behind those companies that couldn’t keep up. Especially now, a company that stands the test of time is most likely a software company.
A software company is one that offers software solutions to support business services and needs. Many focus in one particular industry and provide technology that solves problems many businesses face regularly.
However, a software company isn’t restricted to selling software. In fact, many also extend goods and services in addition to software solutions. It is usually that path that inspired them to design and build custom software that others want to use.
Picture this: you have an issue that keeps coming up in your business. You recognize that solving it would save you a lot of time, money, etc. So, you look around and see what solutions are out there.
It’s likely that this story is familiar to you – you’ve probably encountered something similar when it came to managing customers, marketing to your target audience, or running employee payroll. There are quick software solutions out there that make these tasks way easier.
You’re able to look elsewhere and get what you need. But what happens when looking elsewhere doesn’t yield a viable solution?
That’s how you become the solution that others need, find, and – ultimately – pay to have. And that’s when you’re a software company.
How Your Business Can Become a Software Company
You don’t actually need to build software in order to be a software company. In fact, if you haven’t before, it’s probably best to leave it up to a more experienced custom software development partner.
Armed with talented software developers, years of varied experience, and software project management expertise, this partner can help create the software you (and others in your industry!) will want. You’ll break down your business, problems, and goals to develop a vision for a technology solution. Even though it might seem like a big task, a software development partner can help guide you.
Choosing a full-service consulting partner will ensure you not only develop great software that everyone wants to use, but that you are set up to continue to earn ROI in the ways you see fit. Many businesses use custom software solutions, but for various reasons might not make them available to others.
Once you and your custom software development team have built and tested your new custom software, you’re ready to roll it out. Your custom software development consultant can help you build a go-to-market strategy and develop a pricing plan based on your business needs.
When you work to build a unique software solution to solve an industry problem, you can offer that new solution to others at a cost.
Why would I want other businesses to have my custom software?
All that sounds great, but you may wonder why you would want to sell your secrets! However, you don’t have to. You can choose which custom features to make available to other businesses, and which you want to keep just for your team as your ‘secret sauce’.
These features will remain unique to your business and help you maintain that competitive advantage while still providing an application that meets other businesses’ needs. Your new custom software product can make users happy while it provides you with revenue in addition to the typical cost savings, increased efficiency, and other benefits from using your own custom software solutions.
Wondering how you can use software to bring you more revenue with less work? Reach out to Geneca now to talk about your best options!