Pros and Cons of Building Your Software

Building custom software to address your unique business problems has the significant advantage of giving you, at least in theory, the exact solution you need—nothing more, nothing less.

The major downside: It requires a significant investment in time, money, and resources to pull it off. And there’s a non-zero risk of failure.

Those are the big-picture pros and cons of building your software. Let’s dive into some of the details.

 

Advantages of Custom Software

A custom software solution, by definition, addresses your unique business process or needs. As such, you’re paying only for the features you need, with no extraneous bells and whistles and no unmet need.

Because it’s your project, you call the shots. You work directly with the development team to identify and prioritize the features based on your specific needs and unique business processes and implement these features on a roadmap and schedule that works for your business.

This scenario confers some business benefits:

• You can include solid integration points with your existing software environment.
• You can design advanced analytical and reporting capabilities that you can rely on for making tactical and strategic business decisions.
• You can design scalability into the system according to your expected business growth.

Furthermore, to the extent that the solution gives you capabilities that your competitors don’t have, it can give you a competitive advantage.

Finally, at the end of the project, you own and control the source code, which gives you greater flexibility and agility than a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution can provide. If you need enhancements later, you launch a follow-up project using the same (or possibly a different) development team. You don’t have to wait for some monolithic software vendor to implement new features, and there’s no risk that a feature you rely on will be deprecated in an update over which you have no control.

 

Disadvantages of Custom Software

Because you’re starting from scratch, the up-front investment associated with custom software is significant, and not just in terms of money. Your business users will need to work closely with the development team to define the business problem, system requirements, and feature set, not to mention testing and feedback. All of this takes them away from their regular jobs.

That time commitment and loss of productivity during the project, coupled with the actual financial expense, means that you need a solid expected return on investment (ROI) based on empirical facts and not wishful thinking.

Because it’s your project, effective project management is your problem. Keeping the project on track (for both budget and timelines), controlling scope creep, and dealing with the unexpected depend on your team’s project management abilities.

Long-term support and maintenance of custom software can be an issue as well. Whether an internal team or external consultants develop it, once the initial version is rolled out, the team will probably move on to some other project, and it might be years before anyone can work on it again. This makes it challenging to keep the underlying technology current. Furthermore, day-to-day support can be iffy–if the developers who know the system best leave the company or retire, it can be hard to restore the system if it breaks.

 

Final Thoughts

Making a build-vs.-buy decision is all about weighing each choice’s risks, benefits, costs, and payoff, and understanding the tradeoffs. Custom software usually entails higher costs and risks, but the benefits can be substantial.

 

How Solution Machine Can Help

For over 10 years, Solution Machine teams have been developing and delivering software solutions for businesses that operate across various industries, including manufacturing, retail, distribution, non-profits, media and entertainment, plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors, and many others.

Contant us to see how Solution Machine allows your business to optimize business operations, increase employee and customer engagement, improve reporting and analytics for better decision-making, and give you a competitive advantage.