In the recent years, ‘tailor-made’ has become every industry’s favourite concept – all the way from travel and leisure experiences to financial services, it allows businesses to offer their customers a unique experience that facilitates strong relationships.

The software development industry is no stranger to the trend with ‘bespoke software’ increasingly gaining popularity over the past few years. Bringing in a host of benefits for software developers, bespoke software is an approach where software solutions and applications are crafted specifically or in other words, tailor-made for the needs and demands of the customer.

While off-the-shelf applications are an easy immediate fix on many occasions, they turn out to be more trouble than their worth in the long run because of the unnecessary functions and the lack of features specifically required for your project. Bespoke software with its targeted approach plays an essential role in countering this issue and developing services that single out each need and address them effectively and efficiently.

What’s in it for my business?

Simplicity

Bespoke software is a magical switch that will simplify every aspect of your business. The design caters solutions specific to each problem that it is created for thus eliminating any chance of additional effort wasted on functions and features that are unnecessary for your need. Getting rid of unwanted features also washed out unrelated terminology and processes that will otherwise require further learning by your teams. This also means that employees won’t be stressed or intimidated by having to learn new processes and keep them steadily engaged and interested in the project. With bespoke software, you receive tailor-made solutions that don’t require a fresh skillset which saves both time and money for the organization.

Branding

In terms of how your organization is presented to the customer, bespoke software offers a precious opportunity for you to differentiate your identity from your competitor. This approach allows you to place your brand identity where it’s most relevant and most visible therefore engaging with the customer in an effortless conversation where your brand’s mission, services offered and the values and promises mixed into your processes are explicitly communicated throughout, from design and layouts to the simplest of messages. It also helps you to secure a memorable place in your customers’ mind by creating a distinct image for your organization by highlighting your strong points against your competitors.

Efficiency

When using bespoke software to create solutions the custom-built style ensures that each solution is geared towards optimizing the existing business process by refining key components of the organization structure such as client relationships, marketing capabilities, sales management, and compliance issues via a digital workflow. This is achieved through continuous conversations that keep the new process aligned with the existing practices, while delicately shifting menial tasks that slow down the system into automated processes optimizing the collective workflow. A simple example would be how organizations can use existing Excel workbooks to generate new reports based on the latest data, across a range of applications such as Excel, PDF, and Word with the use of bespoke software.

Expansion

Building on the benefit of efficiency, bespoke software also allows you to expand the existing tools in the organization which is essential especially if you operate in a large organization that requires adapting to the constantly evolving business landscape. Off-the-shelf applications and solutions are not well equipped in offering this benefit because they are created within a pre-existing structure that works on a ‘one size fit all’ principle – often failing to recognize certain nuances that vary from one business to another, but crucial to the optimization of processes. Bespoke software allows companies to move routine tasks such as database updating based on active clients into automated processes that save on time and allows employees to explore new projects while also maintaining the validity and transparency of customer data.

Integration

Bespoke software also offers organizations the freedom to innovate by integrating. With applications crafted to work with the existing models and processes of the organization, it offers you a simplified avenue to introduce new software and connect seamlessly with the old to produce enhanced outcomes. Integration leads to innovation as it allows the new models to work on the principles of the originals but adapt the services to fit the evolving technological and commercial landscape. This allows you to maximize results within the organization by lowering business costs, enhancing the quality of data and improving employee engagement by reducing tedious tasks and moving them to apply their knowledge on interesting projects while simultaneously offering innovative solutions to the customer which helps the brand reputation and company value with strong customer loyalty.

Localization

One of the simplest, yet extremely important benefits of bespoke software is its ability to localize applications, thus allowing organizations to tap into specific audiences, that would be difficult to reach through off-the-shelf applications. When developing solutions, factors such as currency rates, languages, time zones, and even cultural practices play a major role and it is important that organizations consider these factors to be a brand that is sensitive to not only the customer’s needs but also respectful to the environment they operate in. Apart from being viewed as a responsible entity, using bespoke software enables you to change your designs and layouts according to locally-specific factors without a hassle through auto-updating processes while also collecting data on parameters such as purchase histories, spending habits, and potential trends.

Apart from the major advantages mentioned above, bespoke software brings many more benefits to the table; from giving businesses increased mobility via applications that connect easily with different devices, and controlled ownership via centralized workflows and data collection systems to improved cost-effectiveness and overall enhanced ROI. The most important factor to note when applying bespoke software to your organization is to carry out a thorough research to find out what is appropriate and what is irrelevant. Bespoke software is a worthy investment of time and effort which in the long run will evolve every benefit given to you, together with your organization’s progress.