Why choose custom software when there are off the shelf products available?

Can off the shelf products help you do some of what you want? Yes. Can they do ALL of what your business needs?

And more importantly, by choosing custom software designed to meet your particular business needs, would you gain a competitive advantage? There’s a reason that the most successful companies have created custom systems that support their business processes and give them a competitive edge.

Actually, there’s a whole list of reasons:

• Custom software creates a platform to build your business upon. A custom system can bring your ideas to reality.
• Custom software can provide your company a means of extending services that other companies are not providing or cannot provide.
• Several of our financial clients are demonstrating their custom software to potential investors and customers as proof of a better investment, of a better service. I have never heard of a company that demos its off the shelf product in a bid for funding or business.
• Off the shelf software usually includes lots of things you don’t need, and yet is missing things you do need. They say the average user of MSWord only takes advantage of about 10% of the available features — and still can’t create a custom document.
• Using ready-made software is always a compromise. Off the shelf is built for different types of users with different requirements. Some will match yours and some won’t.
• You have to change the way you work to fit how mass produced software was designed. At Clevertech, we believe that your software should be a tool, not a restriction.
• There is often a significant amount of learning time involved in adopting new software. Since off the shelf software hasn’t been designed for you, you’ll spend hours learning to use it  including all those features you don’t need –  and more hours adapting yourself to it.
• Your custom software solution has been specifically designed to your requirement and tailored to the way that you want to operate.
• Custom software can interface with other software (off the shelf or custom) and provide you with an integrated IT infrastructure across your whole organization.
• Custom software is more flexible, and additional functionality can be added as needed or desired. How often, when using ready-made software solutions, have you thought, “If only it would do —” some particular thing you want it to do. With custom software, it will.
• Clevertech custom software applications are designed to work the way you work. They’re more intuitive and easier to work with because they’re designed just for you.

Next time we’ll talk about how custom web based software also creates valuable IP that increases the value of your company when it is sold or valued.

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