Although SaaS and off-the-shelf solutions for business are gaining popularity, they fail to offer the required level of flexibility or even cover the whole scope of business needs. Eventually, an enterprise may end up paying for many unnecessary features to just fulfill the basic requirements.
A subscription fee may seem cost-effective, but it can add up over the years. Therefore, business leaders often invest in a custom enterprise application development, which is tailored to their business needs, shows reliable and stable performance, and ensures proper data security, allowing them to meet industry compliance standards.
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If that’s what you are looking for, read on to discover more about custom enterprise software development, its benefits, price, and best practices when collaborating with an enterprise software development company.
What Is Custom Enterprise Software Development?
When you delegate a software development team a task to create a digital solution that will be tailored to your specific business needs, you are building custom software. For example, a custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a common example and one type of custom enterprise software. Others include CRM (Customer Relationship Management), CMS (Content Management System), SCM (Supply Chain Management), HRM (Human Resource Management), BI (Business Intelligence) systems, etc.
The ultimate difference from SaaS or ready-made solutions is that the software is developed with your business processes, goals, and even minor specifics in mind. This allows you to invest in a solution that facilitates operations instead of complicating them, therefore boosting productivity, efficiency, and returns.
What Does Custom Enterprise Software Development Include?
Whether you are dealing with an enterprise software development company or turning to an in-house technical team, you have to proceed with several steps before you receive the final application. Building a custom solution requires the team to go through a whole software development cycle. Here are some key steps:
- Idea formulation to determine the solution you are going to build.
- BA or business analysis to come up with specifications, as well as a prototype of the future enterprise solution that addresses current and potential pain points.
- UX/UI Design and Development to build a performant, user-friendly solution that is tailored to your needs. Often, this is the longest stage.
- QA or testing to ensure the solution delivers and lacks errors/bugs.
- Deployment and integration in the existing IT infrastructure to empower your employees with an efficient tool.
- Support and maintenance to ensure the delivered performance remains the same. When dealing with a software development team, this stage can be delegated to both an in-house team and a vendor.
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The Benefits of Custom Enterprise Software
Here are 4 key benefits that influence business leaders to invest in a custom enterprise application rather than an off-the-shelf solution:
- Improved corporate efficiency. Unlike ready-made solutions, custom applications for business are tailored to your business specifics, processes, goals, etc. Therefore, you get only relevant functionality and an adapted UX (user experience). This, in turn, allows you to facilitate business processes, which fosters enhanced productivity and, as a result, leads to improved profits.
- Enhanced performance and cost-effective maintenance. If enterprise software is built on your organization’s tech stack, you can expect it to be more efficient, performant, and stable. This allows for seamless processes and reduces the overhead of maintaining third-party integration tools. What is more, it makes the overall system more future-proof and allows for enhanced scalability, if it’s required.
- Better scalability and futureproofing. A custom enterprise web application, as well as any other type of software for corporations, is easier to scale and adapt to future changes compared to limited ready-made solutions. You can facilitate this even more if you think through potential needs at the technical specification stage.
- Long-running solution. Although any enterprise solution requires regular maintenance, supporting custom software is easier and faster, especially if it’s provided by the enterprise software development company. If you wish to deliver support through in-house resources, ensure the chosen vendor shares all the documentation and knowledge about the solution.
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Effective Custom Software Development: 3 Keys to Success
Here are 3 tips to consider before building a custom enterprise solution:
1. Plan for Futureproofing
Even though you can’t predict what challenges the future holds, it’s advisable to apply proactive change management and address your future business needs in advance. This will allow you to easily scale and update a corporate solution in the future, without significant expenses and staff retraining. Otherwise, future changes may require a lot of effort and resources.
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2. Audit Your Business Processes and Aim to Optimize Them
The ultimate goal of any custom enterprise software is to streamline and facilitate your business processes. That’s why it’s best to visualize and rethink them in order to find an optimized solution. It’s also useful to poll end users (most often, your employees) to learn meaningful insights about current processes and how they can be improved.
3. Focus on Flexibility
Flexible and easy-to-understand software is considered a high-quality solution, as its maintenance, support, and upgrade are simplified. Moreover, these tasks can often be performed by any team, which is useful if you change team members over time. Another benefit is high adaptability, which facilitates future adjustments as your business develops.
The Cost of Custom Enterprise Software Development
The cost of custom enterprise software development can only be estimated once the scope of work and the requirements are established. However, some general trends can be identified.
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For example, a single web application is likely to be cheaper than a complex ERP. Hiring an in-house software development team is likely to be more expensive than outsourcing because of high recruitment and onboarding costs. What is more, it delays the delivery time as you will have to seek talent during times of software engineer shortages.
If you choose to outsource custom enterprise solution development, you will pay more for a development team from the United States rather than one from Poland, Armenia, Georgia, or other Eastern Europe locations.
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If you wish to minimize the costs, consider reliable vendors with offices not only in the USA but also in Eastern Europe. In addition, make sure to decide on the requirements and scope of work before the development process begins.
Custom Enterprise Software Development: Trends in 2023-2025
To ensure you build an advanced solution, consider the following technology trends in custom enterprise software development:
- AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) allow you to develop intelligent systems that significantly expand the technical possibilities. They enable conversational AI virtual assistants to interact with clients 24/7 or to fulfill repetitive simple tasks like data entry, data analytics for informed decision-making, fraud detection for financial processing, and many more.
Discover more: Ignite Your Business Growth with Conversational AI: Intetics CEO Success Pointers at MEEAI 2023
- Blockchain and Web3 fosters simplified shared workflows, like those in supply chains, through keeping track of resources, transactions, etc. in a shared ledger. This improves transparency and allows you to set up a verifiable system.
- Cloud computing allows you to set up a reliable infrastructure in the cloud, which is cost-effective compared to the on-premises option. It’s efficient for global enterprises that need to set up seamless data sharing between offices in various locations.
Read also: What Is a Cloud-Based Solution?
- IoT enables you to set up a smart office or improved supply chain by equipping your facilities with smart devices. For example, with IoT sensors Intetics managed to improve air quality across 6 offices of an international IT company.
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Invest in Custom Software Development for Your Enterprise Success
If you need software for an automotive or manufacturing enterprise, an ecommerce or media platform, or a healthcare, financial, real estate, or logistics organization, Intetics has proven experience in these and many other fields.
Looking for a reliable partner for custom enterprise software development? Consider Intetics — a global partner to build your solutions based on 28 years of hands-on experience. Global presence, proprietary and widely-adopted development frameworks, industry best practices, adoption of emerging technologies — all these factors will allow you to build a quality digital solution to foster your business growth through advanced technology. What is more, cutting-edge data security is guaranteed: Intetics provides triple legal protection of your IP.
To make an impact in the industry and deploy a performant solution, you need to apply industry best practices and use advanced approaches and tools. Intetics is a Microsoft Gold Partner and AWS Advanced Tier Service Partner, which allows you to benefit from tech giant collaborations. You won’t even need to manage any processes, as Intetics offers full-cycle custom enterprise software development, assisting you through all stages from idea generation and development to support and maintenance. Reach out today to discuss how we can revolutionize your industry together.
