Going beyond supplementing the supply chain management, Amazon has built a global transportation network that enables delivering everything everywhere. On the other hand, other Ecommerce giants such as eBay, Flipkart, and Walmart still partner with third-party logistics service providers to buy their shipping services for order fulfillment. This move of Amazon or Alibaba is in a bid to transform the global shipping logistics system.
In the digital universe, businesses are accelerating technology investment to move the processes and operations into the success orbits. The software increases business mileage and profits. However, the development of software is not a run-of-the-mill job. It requires substantial planning and strategizing to make the most out of it.
There are two ways to roll out the digital transformation ball- build the software from scratch or buy the readymade software. Businesses struggle to make the right decision because both approaches to digitization have pros and cons. Let’s understand the two approaches and the one-to-one comparison between the two for making the right decision and not missing out on an opportunity.
What is tailored software building or custom software development?
Software building is about developing custom software for specific business requirements that resolves niche challenges. The businesses need to hire software developers in-house or outsource the project to Custom Software Development Service Providers to get the purpose-built software solution engineered.
What is software buying?
Software buying also referred to as off-the-shelf software development involves searching and partnering with the right software vendor that provides the packaged software that eliminates the need to develop software, repetitive testing, maintenance, continuous upgrade, and migration. The readymade software is more adaptable in terms of easily accommodating a wide range of business project needs.
The one-to-one comparison of build vs. buy to make the right decision
Making the right decision between off-the-shelf software vs custom software development is possible only when you consider all the factors related to software development that ultimately impacts business growth, performance, and success. The head-to-head comparison between both approaches would help.
Software Development Cost and Time
The business always looks for reasonable software solutions, but in reality, things are completely different. When businesses opt for custom software development, they need to keep their pocket full for development, testing, launch, upgrade, and marketing. All of these demands businesses to do planning for resources, expertise, and effort requirements assessment. When any changes are made in the middle of custom software development, the cost and time get surged proportionately.
Buying software from a software vendor means deploying software at speed because readymade software gets implemented in less than a month. The upfront software costing is quite lower as the businesses need to pay a subscription fee monthly or yearly based on the software features selected.
Software Design
The feature-rich software would be of no use to the users if it lacks usability and user-friendliness. Having software that stands up to the users’ expectations and meets business needs is essential. Building custom software enables crafting an intuitive design that’s aligned for both internal and external users. Custom software development allows businesses to make software designers engineer the interface that users can easily navigate without requiring any training.
When businesses buy white-label software, the breadth of customization options is enabled, but some technology limitations won’t allow businesses to completely customize the software design as needed.
Software Configurations
With off-the-shelf software development, the readymade configurable templates come in a package that’s easy to customize according to business software requirements. The templates are added to the product after rigorous testing that ensures flawless deployment of fields, layout, and workflow.
The story of building tailor-made software is completely different. The templates are created from scratch which takes more time and cost to build, configure, and maintain as well. There is a huge room for high-level customization, but longer deployment makes it not a worthy option.
Software Security
Irrespective of the business software type and size, it deals with data (User’s data and business-critical data) that’s important to safeguard from outsiders or unauthorized users. When you are buying commercial or off-the-shelf software, it’s opened in the market and accessed by multiple businesses which put data security at stake. Also, if you are unsure about code quality, that’s if it is flawed, the software is vulnerable.
The customized software development involves building a firewall and taking all other security measures to ensure data remains protected. The top custom software development company ensures software idea confidentiality and security.
Software Maintenance
The generic software needs to evolve to step in with the market trends, which further requires maintenance. The business-specific software is no exception. When you build software, you need a team that maintains the software with continuous bug fixing and roll-out upgrades.
Buying software relieves businesses from maintenance as their team handle upgrades and bug-fixing tasks and provides needed support. It enables businesses to focus on core activities that add value to the business.
Build vs. Buy- which is the right decision for your software requirement?
Declaring the winner in the tug of war between Custom Software vs Off-the-shelf Software is implausible. Making the right choice is vital as the consequences of wrong decisions make the business fall behind the competition, expose it to security threats, raise integration issues, and a lot more. It’s a confusing stage.
The best way is to come up with your business software requirements and then make the decisions accordingly. For instance, if you want to get software developed quickly and inexpensively, which doesn’t impact the core business processes and operations, then buying software is the best alternative.
On the other hand, when the businesses want custom software developed from the right mix of professionals that meets the business needs with specific feature requirements, then it’s good to build software. Also, It meets scalability requirements as the business grows.
Quantify the stipulations to identify the pathway to building software that ultimately helps your business raise a toast to success.
Author’s Bio:
Avantika Shergil is an enthusiastic Operations Manager at TopDevelopers.co – A dedicated directory of top software companies and IT service providers, coordinating and managing the technical and functional areas.
