Why Choose Custom Software to Grow Your Business
In Why Custom Software Can Give You an Advantage Over Your Competition, Brian and I shared these insights about the trade-offs with pre-built software vs. custom crafted solutions:
In contrast, choosing off-the-shelf software will restrict your ability to pivot quickly. Additionally, the user experience of a cobbled together solution will never match the streamlined, intuitive approach of a system designed with your unique workflow and needs in mind. While using existing products may result in a quicker initial launch, they often do not stand the test of time and require costly maintenance and changes in the long term.
By taking this long-term approach, you’re investing in your customers’ satisfaction and adapting to your ever-changing business needs. Working with a skilled team that holds your vision at the forefront will allow you to uncover solutions which can only be found through deep engagement and real understanding. Focusing on software architecture approaches that prioritize agility provides the technical foundation to experiment and discover the best ways to bring your customers the most value without losing business viability.
One of the major compelling reasons to opt for custom software is to enable seamless integrations with existing systems. Here are some thoughts about effective integration projects:
…the initial step is to evaluate the options and understand the requirements. While it may be tempting to come up with a plan before getting everyone involved, we advocate for including the whole team in discovery, so that the project doesn’t get started down a road that’s costlier than necessary or provides lower value than it could. Having engineers, designers, and strategists all together with business owners allows the full solution space to be explored, evaluating all of the trade-offs. Is this a long-term or interim solution? How much delay is acceptable? Is this new integration good enough to replace the old system?
The best plan will be one that works for the organization and its members. Start incrementally, defining the minimum requirements and then monitoring the budget and timeline as improvements are considered. Quantify the cost of the current process (e.g. the delays and inaccuracies from manual processes or the expected income once this new process is available) and use that to determine whether to continue improving the integration. Some projects are cut and dried, others are ripe for continuous fine tuning that delivers a compound return.
A custom software approach allows teams the flexibility to create a solution that fits just right to the context in which it was created (what the customers want, what the teams can support, etc.) Prioritizing flexibility, giving teams empowered freedom and provides a path to solutions which deliver more than expected:
Often, the sponsors and stakeholders of the team will kick everything off with a vision of a solution. What can be hard to accept is that most solutions fail. Rather than bringing together a team to implement a solution, provide them with a mandate to solve customer problems. Focus on learning from the customers so that the result is something that truly addresses the team’s mission, not just delivering something which might not be what customers will use in practice.
Follow the customers, not an outdated plan. Build in the flexibility to follow the user research results. It can feel responsible to create an up-front plan, but, remember, if you knew what to do already, you wouldn’t be building custom software. Foster flexibility in the team, leaving space to pivot, reprioritize, and meet the customer where they are. Unbeatable results are found through autonomous teams discovering optimal approaches together.
The power of personalization is the answer to lackluster results. Designing for your users first can create many benefits and opportunities:
By implementing personalization effectively, businesses can enhance user experience by addressing customers’ needs and desires before they even mention them. When you understand your customers, you can create experiences that are more engaging, user-friendly, and streamlined; helping your customers not only notice your brand, but build affinity towards it. When your customers feel valued by the company they’re interacting with, they are more likely to make a purchase, return to the site, or recommend it to a friend helping your business be more memorable.
Once the decision has been made to take a custom software path, consider Full Team Discovery, to avoid starting with plans that won’t meet the needs of all stakeholders:
In the best scenario, a development team is involved in the entire process so that they can provide insights into the technical viability of various approaches (will this approach be a big waste of effort or is there a simpler way to achieve a similar or better result?). Their expertise can be used to collaboratively discover an approach that will solve customers problems in a cost-effective way that works with your business’ needs. When the whole team understands the ultimate goals trying to be reached by the software, they can choose implementation approaches that fully align with those goals, providing an experience that is unmatched by competitors.
Once the initial discovery period is complete and the custom software project is underway, Get the Full Benefit of Your Team by including the designers and engineers in decision making:
In his book Inspired, Marty Cagan emphasizes the insights that engineers can bring to discussions about features and the direction of a technology product. Since engineers are intimately familiar with what is easy or difficult, possible or impossible at a nuts and bolts level, they can bring options to that table that wouldn’t have occurred to others. Similarly, creating plans without designers providing feedback results in significant waste as they attempt to retrofit an idea into existing paradigms, instead of working out an approach that takes their concerns into account from the get-go.>
It’s tempting to reduce the headcount in meetings to only the people who “need” to be there, and there’s certainly validity to that. Engage’s approach is to avoid overstaffing our teams, creating nimble “special ops” units with all of the skills needed for success without the bloat of a giant bench of juniors who only do what they’re told. With this right-sized team, we can include the whole team in decision making without being wasteful. Any other approach results in programmers and designers making implementation decisions based on second- or third-hand information, which inevitably leads to features which check the boxes but don’t truly meet the need until they’ve been reworked over and over.
Custom software can be the difference between a solution that’s adequate and one that’s gamechanging. The upfront investment required for custom software versus off-the-shelf solutions necessitates a clear vision for how to get the best results from the team. Working with a team that is confident in methods to find and amplify value is a shortcut to delivering excellence.