Should You Use an Off The Shelf Software Solution or a Custom One?

You want to be competitive and grow your business. How you manage and process data are essential factors for reaching both objectives. That’s where software comes in.

Choosing the right software to integrate into your business can be a dizzying process. There are thousands of options out there, each one promising to deliver expediency, efficiency and growth.

But there is no need to be daunted by the options. When taking the right approach, the decision will be clear.

Step 1: Define which type of software meets your business needs.

The best first step when determining your requirements is to define what your business needs and how you can give it the upper hand.

Business should always lead technology and not the other way around. Without this up-front preparation, technology will lead the business instead of the other way around.

Here are some areas you can examine to develop a picture:

1. Clearly define what advantages and differentiating qualities set your business apart from others.
2. Determine what processes can further leverage those differences and how software might assist.
3. Interview staff and key stakeholders to get an idea of what they’re thoughts are about the software they use
4. Brainstorm and ask people with knowledge to share their thoughts about software solutions in your business area.

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Learn more about the impact of software on business performanc

• 5 Ways Software Can Slow Down Your Workflow
• How Off-the-Shelf Software Often Struggles to Meet Today’s Business Needs

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Step 2: Define what’s needed to propel forward

Once the needs are defined in step 1, developing the flows, processes and systems needs fall into place. These should be written down and agreed to.

Some questions to guide defining those needs in addition to the above are:

1. Are our processes seamless and do they flow easily from one department to the next?
2. Are you moving fast enough to surpass your competitors?
3. Are you transparent enough for your clients?
4. Can you save money by automating certain processes?
5. Are you struggling with more than one type of software?

Step 3: Research your off-the-shelf software options

Armed with the knowledge of what the business needs and wants one can determine what software or collection of software to power the business on.

There are typically two options to look at:

• Off the shelf pre-built software
• Custom build

Off The Shelf vs Custom Software

Off the shelf software is pre-built systems the typically can’t be altered significantly. These can include software like MS Word, Salesforce or QuickBooks. Those systems tend to do what they do well and are specific purpose drive.

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You might also like…

• How Custom Software Can Eliminate Redundancies in Your Operations
• These Software Inefficiencies Are Hampering Your Competitiveness

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These systems can feature rich, which if needed are great. If not, they can be over complicated for what the true business need is.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Off The Shelf Software

Advantages of Off The Shelf (OTS) Software:

• Lower up-front cost
• Contains many features, often more than you need
• Support is often included or can be added with a maintenance contract
• User communities and forums for support
• Upgrades may be provided for free or at a reduced cost
• Faster to deploy
• If it’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) there is no hardware or software to install

Disadvantages of Off The Shelf (OTS) Software:

• Slow to adapt or change to industry needs
• May have user, transaction or other fees that can make scaling costly
• Your feature request may get ignored if it doesn’t benefit the larger customer base
• May require you to change your process to fit the software
• May use different terminology than your business and required adjustment to a new language
• Higher customization fees (proprietary software vendors often charge very high hourly fees unless they provide an open API)

Custom Software Development

Often the needs of your business are unique and off-the-shelf software doesn’t meet the needs of your business. In this case, custom software development makes a lot of sense.

More often than not, custom software developers are happy to provide you with a rough estimate for a custom build. Read our ‘finding the right fit’ article for tips in determining the right software developer for you.

• You can start with the minimum necessary requirements and add on later. Less can be better.
• Can be tailored to your exact business needs and processes
• Changes can be made quickly
• Matches your business language
• Typically unlimited users and transaction at no extra cost
• A unique solution that can potentially give a business advantage.

Cons of Custom Software Development:

• High initial cost
• All changes and feature requests will be billable
• May incur additional costs ramping up new developers

There is a common conception that custom is always more expensive than off the shelf. While this might be the case for many consumer systems, there are many enterprise systems like SAP that run in the millions to setup and deploy.

Often customers will employ these systems and only use 5% of the functionality, when they can get all of what they need for a fraction of the price through custom development.

Hybrid Software Solutions

The hybrid solution typically involves taking an existing piece of software with access to source code and tailoring it for your unique business needs.

This would be an application with most of the features needed by the business but requires incremental changes to meet specific demands. In this way, a business can pull in the best of both worlds – having a system customized completely for their needs while leveraging functionality that has already been created.

The options in software are unlimited. This can be overwhelming and confusing. But once the needs of the business are clear, making the right chose in software also becomes easier and clear. Business before technology, not the other way around.

 

We all depend on software to get things done. This is especially true for businesses, with some relying on upwards of 91 cloud service applications per department – and with most of those not even certified as being “enterprise ready”. So even though a business may rely on these applications to handle day-to-day business operations, they can easily do more harm than good – and ultimately severely slow down your workflow processes.

And with only 37% of CIOs believing that most of their applications are business critical, it’s not hard to imagine that a large number of businesses are using too many applications that don’t serve their business needs. The bottom line: improperly acquired, deployed, and managed software can lead to significant workflow problems.

So why is this the case? How does software intended to improve workflow automation and bolster digital transformation end up having the reverse effect? Let’s take a look at five ways software can interfere with your business processes.

1. The Software is Outdated

Outdated software is rampant. A survey of over 100 million AVG users found that 52% of the most commonly-used programs aren’t being kept up to date.

This is problematic for several reasons. For one, non-updated software can cause system and network incompatibilities that prevent it from working properly. Older applications can suffer from serious lags, crashes, and overall performance deterioration. In turn, this leads to lost time and productivity caused by system resets/restores and potential data loss.

Most software vendors will typically end their support for outdated software. Your IT personnel won’t have access to updates and critical patches, and may have to resort to spending time manually configuring these applications to work with your existing technology.

But perhaps more importantly, older software can leave you open to serious security threats. Java, for instance, contains hundreds of known security vulnerabilities within its code, and legacy Java-based programs that no longer issue updates can leave the user exposed.

2. The Software Isn’t Aligned With Your Needs

In 1999, candy and chocolate giant Hershey’s implemented a new supply chain and distribution software system with disastrous results. Because they had selected a vendor and software suite without properly determining whether or not it would suit their needs, problems and glitches eventually cost the company approximately $100 million in losses.

With so many software options available, it’s easy to get sidetracked by factors such as price, brand, or features. Did you select the product because it was cheaper? Did it offer added features that, while useful, don’t actually add any value?

To ensure that your software choice doesn’t impact your workflow management, start with a careful analysis of your business goals and select the option that best supports the processes to get you there.

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Make Sure Your Software Solution is the Right One for Your Business

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3. The Software Lacks Training Resources

Even though an application may be the ideal solution for handling specific tasks, it won’t be of much use if it isn’t used. This is particularly the case with software that has a high learning curve. If it doesn’t provide access to sufficient user support and training resources, you may find that your employees will either resort to bypassing it completely or see their efficiency drop thanks to improper usage.

4. The Software Doesn’t Bridge Process Gaps

Applications are typically designed to handle specific tasks. While this isn’t a problem in itself, it can lead to issues where users have to constantly jump between separate applications to do their work. These gaps not only have a negative impact on process management, they can also reduce efficiency and increase the likelihood of human errors.

That’s why it’s important to look at your existing workflows and identify software solutions that support as many of them as possible, from end-to-end.

5. The Software Doesn’t Provide Value

Finally, does your software provide demonstrable value to your organization by improving user efficiency? With new software options coming out all the time, it’s easy to keep using software that no longer serves your need but stays in place because of user and organizational familiarity.

You may have been using Software X for the past five years, but shifting business priorities are starting to render it unnecessary. That’s why it’s critically important that you evaluate your software inventory regularly and determine whether it’s still the best choice for your day-to-day operations, or if it should be replaced.

Ensure Your Software Supports Your Workflows and Processes

Relying on software that’s outdated, inefficient, or no longer supports your business needs can have an adverse affect on your business workflows and processes. Whether you opt for commercial or custom-developed software, make sure that it aligns with your business goals and doesn’t cause bottlenecks in your operational efficiency.

Not sure if your software is right for your business? Or are you looking to learn more about how you can modernize your software to improve your business? Contact us today to learn how JIG Technologies can help with all your software needs.

We live in a world where the ever increasing accumulation of information has both helped businesses to thrive and succeed, but has also presented them with what often seems like insurmountable Information Technology traps.

Q: What should an organization do when information islands isolate each department from another? Or, when huge amounts of data are stored with no index or easy way to access it?

These are problems that thriving businesses often have to face, but rarely have the time to resolve. Information Technology shouldn’t stand in the way of a business’s growth, or muddy the view of its assets, it should be the hand that clears the way to success.

Information ISLANDS

Let’s start with some examples.

The client of a mortgage company is having a hard time convincing client services that they’ve been making extra payments because accounts receivable has no way of sharing that information with them.

Or, Radiology has no efficient way of sharing information with Emergency so a worried parent is left wondering about the peanut stuck in her son’s nose.

Or, in the case of warehouse management, there’s one system to take orders, another to track inventory, another to do billing and yet another to do specialized functions like decision support.

Special systems are designed to provide solutions for every department, but they are all done independently of each other, thus creating information islands. These islands create a communication and data gap that demands time and money to reconcile.

Many companies try and resolve this problem by reinventing their technology systems, but this often results in a loss of their initial IT investments. Furthermore, these solutions have hidden costs, such as the loss of productivity as staff adjust to new workflows, or end-user trial and error that eats into company time.

A better solution, and frequently overlooked one, is to develop an initial business strategy. Working with key business leads and qualified Technical Information Architects. A small investment of time and money can result in future savings that are multiple that of the initial investment. Even in the case where separate systems have been developed in isolation over many years, developing a strategic plan will help lessen the cost of future IT reinvention.

Communication barriers between departments dissolve, data is used more efficiently and no department is left in the dark. It is never too late to take a strategic approach!

Information blobs

With the cost of storing information being so inexpensive these days, it’s easy to accumulate and save unmanageably large quantities of data but it’s another thing altogether to make it useful to your business or organization. An information blob is a large storage of data that has no index to help group and manage that information easily.

Some examples include the fileshare dumping ground.  This can be the online google drive or local network folder that the entire staff have open access to.  Over time each person creates their own folder with their own files.  So, if Bob wants the report that Debbie wrote he has to ask her where it is because there is no way to find it a system with thousands of folders and tens of thousands of files.

Another example is the database with lack of structure. Let’s say you have a list of donor records and you want to find all the Canadian donors.  If the citizenship field is freeform, then the data entry folk will enter in different values for Canada such as CAD, Cdn, Canada, CD etc. Trying to find all the Canadian donors because a difficult task as one needs to guess all the combinations typed in to represent Canada.

Avoiding the information blob problem requires a conscious effort to organize the data in a way that is useful to the organization. What sort of information or insights does the business really need from this data? And to understand that, we need to know what kinds of questions should be asked of the system.

Once these questions are answered, the path has been cleared for a Technical Architect to be brought in and design a system that will meet all needs.

Technology is great, and having the ability to store information is fantastic! But without strategic planning the information becomes inaccessible and ultimately, useless.

It Never Hurts To Ask

If some of these symptoms seem familiar to you, or if you think your business or organization might be headed towards one of these traps, do not hesitate to contact us, your friendly, neighborhood Technical Architects.

Business comes before technology and not the other way around.

It can happen in a moment. Bad storm, high winds, tree branches knock out power lines. What happens to your business when the lights go out?

Sudden power outages often cause power surges, resulting in the improper shutdown of equipment and systems. That can mean one big headache getting things started up again because of the resulting physical damage to equipment. And all of it means downtime.

How are you prepared to handle this kind of situation? Do you have a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan in place?

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A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is essential to every business, regardless of their size or industry, profit or non-profit.

Contact Us to Set One Up

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Case in point: Here’s a recent real-life situation that happened to one of our clients. A power outage occurred, and we were remotely monitoring their systems.

Fortunately, we had arranged for a multifunction UPS (Uninterruptible Power Source) to be connected as protection against power surges and improper shutdowns.

We executed our standard procedures but were not able to bring up one of the servers. The surge of electricity due to the outage had killed the power supply to a major file server that controlled mission-critical services and financial reporting.

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Read more about Disaster Recovery:

• Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Solutions

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Do You Have A Disaster Recovery Plan In Place?

The good news: our client had a DRP in place with us, so that we knew the equipment they used, what their priorities were and so we could be prepared with the right parts when needed. They also happen to be a Non-Profit Organization, where budgets are tight.

People often think DRPs must cost a lot of money. We’re here to tell you that doesn’t need to be the case.

We were able to provide our client with an effective, responsive DRP well within their budget.

We had a spare power supply on hand and successfully swapped it out. This could have played out quite differently if we had needed to find out what the part was and then place an order.

Thanks to advance planning, downtime was kept to a minimum, and what could have been a major setback was quickly resolved. We had them back up and running within 3 hours (on a weekend!).

If you don’t have a DRP, what’s your safety net? Don’t make excuses – make a plan! We can show you how.

Software is integral to driving business operations and engaging customers. However, while we all acknowledge the importance of software, we would generally prefer to manage our software costs (and that of our IT systems as a whole). This is especially the case for small businesses, which have very limited resources on-hand for IT development and support.

To fulfill the need for affordable software, numerous Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings are available on the market. These promise first-in-class solutions to typical software needs, but at relatively low per-month or per-year costs, instead of high upfront acquisition and hiring costs.

Though SaaS is promising, a closer inspection reveals a number of critical problems with the model, especially for companies that require customization and other key inputs to succeed.

Off-the-Shelf Software Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

As noted above, SaaS or off-the-shelf software promise lower upfront costs. In a way, this is a form of outsourcing your IT needs – i.e. you’re relying on an external provider. For a monthly or annual fee, your vendor will provide you with an important feature (such as facilitating payments on your website) along with continual maintenance, support and updates.

In addition, you’re free from the cost of having to install and locally support the software onsite. Instead, SaaS solutions are supported online by the provider, which lets you channel resources towards core business activities instead of ballooning IT needs.

To the credit of these vendors, key capabilities that were previously unavailable to independent content creators and small businesses were brought to the market as affordable solutions. From e-commerce platforms, content creation suites to automated marketing suites, small businesses could finally leverage current software technology to drive their operations.

There’s no doubt that SaaS has changed the business environment of many industries through effective, affordable and broadly accessible solutions for many functions and needs.

However, while off-the-shelf software can provide a good start, it’s difficult to rely on them when customization, rapid feature iteration and efficiency are required.

Disadvantages

It’d be wrong to cast off-the-shelf software as a panacea. In fact, in many cases – be it for small, medium, large or even enterprise-sized businesses – there are inherent flaws to SaaS that make it inefficient or potentially even cost-prohibitive.

Adapt Your Operations to the Software

The strength of SaaS – i.e. a standardized solution offering baseline features at affordable cost – is also a weakness. Cookie-cutter solutions could miss certain (and potentially valuable) areas of your business operations and processes. In such cases adopting off-the-shelf software will mean adapting your workflows around the software.

For example, the SaaS vendor may not adhere to the same lexicon of your business operations. In this case, you might need to change your operations to adapt to the software or require your staff to be aware of the differences, which could add a layer of work and risk internal mistakes.

This could push inefficiencies into your business operations, which can add to your costs in the form of direct monetary costs (e.g. hiring), additional time spent and redundancy. In industries where lowering operating costs are vital to profitability, such as the financial sector, asking for operational inefficiencies just to integrate off-the-shelf software is difficult to justify.

Static Feature Set

Although you could potentially get essential functions from off-the-shelf software, you’re still at the whim of your vendor’s product development cycle. In other words, it’s your vendor that will ultimately decide what functions you get to receive and when. This can result in your business falling behind current and emerging technology trends, leaving you behind your competitors.

Speaking of your competitors, there’s also a high chance that some of them are also using the same software (and from the same SaaS vendor) as you. Besides potentially being left behind some competitors (who can customize their software), you’ll also lack differentiation with other competitors. You’ll basically be squeezed from both ends in terms of features.

If we look at it another way, too much functionality can also be a bad thing. Some SaaS-based solutions are incredibly powerful, but they’re also highly priced. Your business might only need a specific subsection of functions, but SaaS providers are unlikely to provide those separate from the total package (or they might keep certain functions in higher-priced tiers).

In this respect, you could be better-off with a custom application that only provides the functions you need – i.e. without burdening you with other elements. In the long-term, this could help you save on costs, not just in terms of licensing software, but on time spent training your staff.

Too Costly

Certain content creation software could be difficult to scale on a SaaS basis. For example, the monthly cost of $50 per month for five users might be manageable, but not for 500. With many SaaS providers just specializing in providing individual functions, collecting that many licenses – and for many employees no less – could become a cost-prohibitive expense.

Lack of Integration

Because your vendor decides on the functionality of your software, you could also lose on key opportunities for cross-software and services integration. Its availability would let you leverage your software tools to enhance efficiency by sharing information (e.g. keeping a client record at different departments up-to-date), but it’s up to the software vendor to make it possible.

The lack of integration would basically result in workarounds such as manually entering client information or doing other processes that can eat into your staff’s time (and your bottom line). Moreover, your information system will end up in siloed islands, which could make backing-up and security a concern

SaaS Vendor Could Stop Support

Finally, your software vendor could potentially end support for your application in an inopportune time. This is a major risk with relying on an off-the-shelf software solution, one that can seriously affect your critical operations and leave you rushing for an alternative. In addition, the software suite will also be left vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.

Alternative: Find a Custom Software Development Company

To generate maximum efficiency in your operations and fully meet your business’ requirements, it would be a good idea to consider custom software development.

Granted, you might have limited IT resources, especially in terms of budget and skilled human resources, but external software development companies are available to cost-effectively help you in terms of designing, developing and maintaining custom applications.

A strong custom software developer – i.e. one with the skill-sets, tools and capacity you need to run your business – will generally offer a complete package of services for your software. These services include both development and lifecycle maintenance, which ensures that your custom application is always secure and kept up-to-date with the latest features and security standards.

Are you looking for a unique software solution to meet your needs? Then contact us to discuss how our custom software development solutions will equip you to achieve efficiencies, improve your products and services, and differentiate your company from the competition.

IT budgets are on the rise; technology leaders and IT decision makers are looking to find the best solution that can improve efficiency and ultimately grow the business. While it may not be as flashy as hosted or cloud-based services, software makes up on average about a quarter of IT budgets. According to a Spiceworks report, half of IT decision makers plan on increasing the software budget.

When adopting modern software for your organization, it can be tempting to turn to off the shelf, Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions that offer a simple solution tested by a large number of organizations who have adopted the same offering.

But as popular as various SaaS offerings are, that is their inherent weakness as well. The service you provide as a business is unique to the marketplace, and software designed for all does not best suit your business needs.

What is Custom Software?

Custom Software is essentially an application developed specifically to meet an organization’s needs. Also known as ‘bespoke’ software, it is designed to meet the particular productivity needs that are unique to your business. This can include anything from custom software designed to boost inter-department collaboration to mobile apps that can better suit your customers’ needs.

While some organizations with strapped IT budgets may balk at the increased cost in the short-term, custom software proves to be more affordable in the long run. In fact, at times it can even prove to be less expensive than off the shelf. By adopting custom software, you are removing any annual or monthly license fees for SaaS services, as well as improving your own business functions which leads to increased revenues.

And adopting custom software has never been more affordable. The availability of open source platforms allows developers to build custom software based on the best practices and tools available that have been tested by the wider market. This gives you a competitive advantage by utilizing best-in-class tools to create software that emphasizes optimizing your operations.

How Does Custom Software Eliminate Your Business Redundancies?

Look at your current legacy software or SaaS solution and ask yourself these questions:

• Does your software meet your business needs?
• Are there many unused features in the SaaS system making it harder to use and more costly than it should be?
• Are you bleeding time and resources because of software inefficiencies?
• Do you need software that supports greater collaboration between departments?
• Do you struggle securing your current software?

Below, we outline how custom software can answer those vital questions.

Personalized for Your Business

Your business is unique. There is no one better to offer your particular services to clients and customers. However, adopting widespread SaaS services does not best represent that uniqueness. SaaS offerings are designed to apply to as many organizations as possible. Therefore, the chances of finding a SaaS solution that perfectly intersects with your business needs is unlikely.

SaaS leaves the door open for business redundancies. If it doesn’t perfectly fit your operations, your employees will have to find ways to find time consuming ways to get around this unnecessary roadblock.

Custom software is specifically designed so that it can handle your daily processes efficiently. It can be as complex and intuitive as you like, after all, you’re the one designing it with your processes in mind.

This is particularly helpful in the long term. As your business grows, you may be limited to what innovation can be achieved because of the limitations of various SaaS solutions. Meanwhile, custom software can be tailor-made with the ability to grow the software alongside any growth.

Improve Employee Process

Ask your employees what processes can be improved upon. Inefficient software practices can lead to simple tasks taking double to triple the amount of time. This can frustrate employees who have to waste time finding ways around poor software, rather than being empowered to do a better job with it.

Custom software is designed to alleviate those redundancies and pain points. Rather than having multiple applications for one task, those business systems can be integrated into one simple application. You are removing poor practices and replacing them with adaptive and flexible ones.

Practices that may have taken three people across different departments in the past can now be done by a single person. This gives you the flexibility to focus on innovation in the business. If that task can be completed by one person, that frees up two employees to focus on tasks that grow the business.

Alleviate Security Concerns

A top concern among CIOs remains security. All aspects of the business are under attack from cyber threats and using a host of common SaaS services means you are using services that hackers are familiar with. On the flip side, hackers are not familiar with any custom software that is created. This makes your organization less of a target.

With a focus on SaaS solutions, you may find yourself spending additional resources on expensive security protocols that are designed to make up for the vulnerabilities that come with a widespread SaaS service. That means resources that could be spent on innovating are being spent elsewhere.

What Should You Consider When Choose Custom Software

Ultimately, technology leaders want the software that runs their business to cultivate productivity rather than hinder it. For some that means one-size-fits-all SaaS solutions do the trick. But for many, the reality is that one-size-fits-all doesn’t fit their unique needs. Each organization has its own unique pain points that cannot be addressed by software designed to address a wider audience.

Custom software gives your company a competitive edge. The investment into custom software increases the value of your business as a whole. If your competition is using outdated or SaaS software that does not fit the needs of their business, then you immediately have a leg up in any conversation with clients.

In order to develop the best custom software strategy for your business, you need to work with an experienced team of developers who understand the particular needs of your business. Contact us today to speak with the expert team at JIG Technologies about how we can design an IT strategy that best suits you.

IT budgets are on the rise; technology leaders and IT decision makers are looking to find the best solution that can improve efficiency and ultimately grow the business. While it may not be as flashy as hosted or cloud-based services, software makes up on average about a quarter of IT budgets. According to a Spiceworks report, half of IT decision makers plan on increasing the software budget.

When adopting modern software for your organization, it can be tempting to turn to off the shelf, Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions that offer a simple solution tested by a large number of organizations who have adopted the same offering.

But as popular as various SaaS offerings are, that is their inherent weakness as well. The service you provide as a business is unique to the marketplace, and software designed for all does not best suit your business needs.

What is Custom Software?

Custom Software is essentially an application developed specifically to meet an organization’s needs. Also known as ‘bespoke’ software, it is designed to meet the particular productivity needs that are unique to your business. This can include anything from custom software designed to boost inter-department collaboration to mobile apps that can better suit your customers’ needs.

While some organizations with strapped IT budgets may balk at the increased cost in the short-term, custom software proves to be more affordable in the long run. In fact, at times it can even prove to be less expensive than off the shelf. By adopting custom software, you are removing any annual or monthly license fees for SaaS services, as well as improving your own business functions which leads to increased revenues.

And adopting custom software has never been more affordable. The availability of open source platforms allows developers to build custom software based on the best practices and tools available that have been tested by the wider market. This gives you a competitive advantage by utilizing best-in-class tools to create software that emphasizes optimizing your operations.

How Does Custom Software Eliminate Your Business Redundancies?

Look at your current legacy software or SaaS solution and ask yourself these questions:

• Does your software meet your business needs?
• Are there many unused features in the SaaS system making it harder to use and more costly than it should be?
• Are you bleeding time and resources because of software inefficiencies?
• Do you need software that supports greater collaboration between departments?
• Do you struggle securing your current software?

Below, we outline how custom software can answer those vital questions.

Personalized for Your Business

Your business is unique. There is no one better to offer your particular services to clients and customers. However, adopting widespread SaaS services does not best represent that uniqueness. SaaS offerings are designed to apply to as many organizations as possible. Therefore, the chances of finding a SaaS solution that perfectly intersects with your business needs is unlikely.

SaaS leaves the door open for business redundancies. If it doesn’t perfectly fit your operations, your employees will have to find ways to find time consuming ways to get around this unnecessary roadblock.

Custom software is specifically designed so that it can handle your daily processes efficiently. It can be as complex and intuitive as you like, after all, you’re the one designing it with your processes in mind.

This is particularly helpful in the long term. As your business grows, you may be limited to what innovation can be achieved because of the limitations of various SaaS solutions. Meanwhile, custom software can be tailor-made with the ability to grow the software alongside any growth.

Improve Employee Process

Ask your employees what processes can be improved upon. Inefficient software practices can lead to simple tasks taking double to triple the amount of time. This can frustrate employees who have to waste time finding ways around poor software, rather than being empowered to do a better job with it.

Custom software is designed to alleviate those redundancies and pain points. Rather than having multiple applications for one task, those business systems can be integrated into one simple application. You are removing poor practices and replacing them with adaptive and flexible ones.

Practices that may have taken three people across different departments in the past can now be done by a single person. This gives you the flexibility to focus on innovation in the business. If that task can be completed by one person, that frees up two employees to focus on tasks that grow the business.

Alleviate Security Concerns

A top concern among CIOs remains security. All aspects of the business are under attack from cyber threats and using a host of common SaaS services means you are using services that hackers are familiar with. On the flip side, hackers are not familiar with any custom software that is created. This makes your organization less of a target.

With a focus on SaaS solutions, you may find yourself spending additional resources on expensive security protocols that are designed to make up for the vulnerabilities that come with a widespread SaaS service. That means resources that could be spent on innovating are being spent elsewhere.

What Should You Consider When Choose Custom Software

Ultimately, technology leaders want the software that runs their business to cultivate productivity rather than hinder it. For some that means one-size-fits-all SaaS solutions do the trick. But for many, the reality is that one-size-fits-all doesn’t fit their unique needs. Each organization has its own unique pain points that cannot be addressed by software designed to address a wider audience.

Custom software gives your company a competitive edge. The investment into custom software increases the value of your business as a whole. If your competition is using outdated or SaaS software that does not fit the needs of their business, then you immediately have a leg up in any conversation with clients.

In order to develop the best custom software strategy for your business, you need to work with an experienced team of developers who understand the particular needs of your business. Contact us today to speak with the expert team at JIG Technologies about how we can design an IT strategy that best suits you.

If your business is over a decade old, chances are you are holding on to outdated IT systems. These are pieces of hardware or software that are vital to your business that have since become outdated by modern technology. It may still work, but as time goes on, you notice that you’re spending more and more resources to keep it running as it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain or improve.

In an age of disruption, this can be a huge drag on your business. The technologies that have kept your company running for the last 30 years are not capable of integrating with the emerging technologies of the present day. You see these trends of artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things, and cloud, but you are unable to take advantage of them because your legacy IT prevents any innovation.

Industry experts agree that the majority of IT budgets (as high as 80%) are spent on maintaining, operating, and managing existing IT. It can be daunting to look at the systems that have become integral to your business and think about updating them. But to stay competitive in the modern age, making the decision to replace current legacy systems is crucial.

Your Legacy Systems are Holding Back Your Business

The first question technology leaders and IT decision makers must ask is what happens to your business if legacy systems fail. Legacy systems can form the backbone of many enterprises and veteran organizations and losing business because of failed systems is unacceptable.

Cost of Maintaining Legacy Systems

As these legacy systems are the backbone of many companies, they are required to be up and running around the clock. Even the tiniest amount of downtime can cost millions. Just look at what happened to Comair when a glitch caused 1,100 flights to be cancelled, costing the company an estimated $20 million. For small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) who are dealing with limited IT budgets, the strain that can come from legacy systems can be overwhelming.

CIOs and IT managers of all industries have to take stock in what it costs to maintain these legacy systems. How much time are you spending putting out fires that are created from outdated practices? What percentage of your IT budget is spent on simply maintaining it?

There are many costs to maintaining legacy hardware or software, least of which is the cost to hire specialists to run them. If your system was created in the 80’s or 90’s, those skills are no longer taught in schools today, forcing you to spend on hiring an expensive specialist or on training someone with little relevant experience.

Impairing Modern Systems

A good sign that your hardware or software is outdated is how compatible it is with modern systems. Your legacy systems must be capable of integrating with the tools and applications that are necessary for success like new customer relationship management (CRM) software or simple additions like live-chat addons to your website.

It’s not just integrating with modern tools, but also modern capabilities. Legacy systems that have difficulty scaling can prove costly as they cannot support the complexity and flexibility of current services and products. By not updating these systems, businesses of all sizes are leaving growth opportunities on the table. For instance, enterprises are wasting $140 billion due to data trapped in legacy systems.

Employees Demand Modern Technology

There are many signs that your legacy systems need to be replaced, and your employees will be the first to start sending those signals. Are you hearing from your IT team that your software or hardware systems are not doing what your IT is asking it to do? Your team can learn to adapt, but if this technology cannot adapt to changes or improvements, that can lead to frustration.

This frustration can be a direct result of clunky and complex interfaces that affect employees of all kinds. This can increase the time it takes to do simple tasks because of inefficiencies, preventing employees from spending time inventing better practices.

Your competitors are upgrading their legacy technology in order to boost innovation and create growth for the business. As a technology leader, you have to give your employees – and potential talent – a reason to work for you and not for your competition. Systems that only create frustration and stress will turn off today’s tech-savvy workforce that demands better practices.

Security Threats from Legacy Systems

Security has become the top concern of many CIOs and IT managers. Data breaches make for great headlines, and you do not want your business to become the latest to have millions of customers private data hacked because of inefficient systems.

What was secure a decade ago is not even remotely secure today. Old systems are vulnerable to malware and breaches, and by not updating these legacy systems, businesses are exposing themselves to cyber attacks. Consider this: about three-quarters of the top 10 malware detected by companies could have been avoided by updated technology.

Legacy Systems Cost You Clients and Customers

Most importantly, you want to think about what your clients and customers are expecting. They expect mobile experiences that don’t just work, but work well. They expect user friendly websites and customer service options that include live-chat and email. A lack of mobility is not an option.

Uptime and consistency is vital when delivering a service. Outages due to legacy systems can cost you current clients and prevent any prospecting ones. If you provide a service that is vital to a client’s business, you cannot afford any downtime that interferes with their business. Updating legacy systems is necessary in order to be a reliable partner to your clients and customers.

Don’t Cut Corners with Legacy Systems

In a rush to transform, it can be tempting to find the quickest way to reach the end result. However, it is not as easy as flipping a switch. Not only will you have to consider the technical aspects of migrating to modern systems, but you also have to think about how it will affect your employees. Major migration efforts come with a culture shift to more agile processes, which will require training.

Replacing your current legacy systems is no simple task, and will require more than just the efforts of your IT department. From the most senior leadership to the average employee, legacy migration requires a complex strategy that asks every person in the business to get on board.

In order to reach the best result, you need an experienced team that can provide a strategy that will help mitigate any risk that comes with migration. If you are looking to replace your current legacy systems, contact JIG Technologies today to build a strategy that ensures success.