Custom application design services can offer significant advantages over standard solutions, especially when it comes to business process management and digital transformation.
There is no perfect software.
Regardless of what configuration you are promised, buying standard software will always involve manual manipulation of data to bundle your software stack or some clumsy inefficiencies to tolerate, ultimately leading to spoilage. ROI.
But it does not have to be like that.
Custom applications are not as expensive as you might think and offer significant advantages over standard solutions, especially in terms of business process management and digital transformation.
Here are 5 benefits of custom app development that our customers have recognized.
1. Automate repetitive tasks
Custom apps make everyone's life easier by automating boring and repetitive tasks.
It does this in two main ways.
Move data automatically
Custom apps are not just about a custom user experience or interface, they are essentially a showcase.
And you can build a great user interface with your existing out-of-the-box solutions. In fact, front-end design is often what out-of-the-box solutions do well, as a good user interface is largely a measure of how strictly you can stick to the established UX path. .
For example, a shopping cart on an e-commerce website always means the same thing.
But where custom applications shine is in their ability to convert your idiosyncratic data into the formats you need.
In order to run efficient business processes, data must be able to flow seamlessly between different systems. This order must be made in both cases. However, a custom app can make it much easier by automating the process instead of manually exporting, converting, and reloading it.
Manage workflows automatically
Every day, teams spend a lot of time moving projects through workflows or waiting for a project to move to the next phase.
Suppose you need to email a manager to get approval for something.
This additional manual step that is repeated over and over again can seriously affect business efficiency:
You must remember to send the email
Your manager should receive the email
Your manager should respond to the email
It may seem like a small thing, but over time, these micro-hurdles add up to long delays.
2. Facilitate collaboration
Organizations have increasingly complex systems to serve customers.
The days of the various departments are definitely over, if not over.
Organizations must be adaptable and leverage the expertise of their roles to better serve customers.
The content is a perfect example.
Even a simple blog post can include marketing, freelancers, executives, products, and sales.
This means that collaboration takes on a new meaning.
However, out-of-the-box solutions tend to be poorly integrated with each other. To work together, employees have to switch from one program to another, generally relying on instant messaging or email to help them.
Not working together within the programs has non-trivial consequences:
The processes take longer (because the "official" workflow does not reflect reality) or the processes are extremely ad-hoc and can fail.
Systems are difficult to automate, if they can be automated at all.
Systems are difficult or impossible to scale.
Institutional memory drives processes, not operations, that exist independently of the people who built them.
Besides avoiding these results, facilitating collaboration is just a good idea as it has many side effects.
For example, with custom apps that connect existing technology stacks, employees can spend more time doing what they really love (and what helps the business) and less time moving data from A to B.
Second, the ease of collaboration makes working with other teams and departments enjoyable and ultimately improves results.
After all, simple collaboration makes companies more dynamic and agile. Knowledge travels further and faster, and companies can respond more effectively to new ideas and temporary opportunities.
3. Everyone can access the data they need
The back office functionality spends a lot of time and effort merging data from different sources.
Financial data is an example of this. Suppose a CFO needs to consolidate data for an annual report. They may have to work 10 different positions in the company. It takes time to request data, receive spreadsheets, and look up specific numbers.
If it's a once-a-year process, the list of problems an organization needs to fix is likely to be low.
But what if you go through this process for weekly reports? Or monthly license plate updates?
There are dozens of regular processes that require data import and transformation, processes that can be time consuming and frustrating to complete.
A custom application, or extended functionality from an existing CMS, can help disable this layer.
First, customization automates workflows so less data has to be compiled manually.
For example, a custom CMS can automatically generate a report that includes all the information you are looking for in your monthly dashboard update. This level of detail just doesn't exist in out-of-the-box solutions.
This enables you to automate the workflows that make up your business processes.
Second, over time, you can begin to optimize business processes yourself by giving users access to data and information in a format where they can actually use it.
To understand this point, let's take a step back.
Organizations track and store a large amount of data and produce a continuous stream of new content every day. As Nate Silver said, it is no longer about collecting data, now it is about identifying the signal through noise.
Therefore, companies have developed many tools to achieve this. For example, Google Analytics to track website data and CMS to publish content.
Each of these tools provides centralized and optimized access to data, as well as the ability to quickly create and publish content.
Most organizations, however, have not yet realized the real value of these types of tools: they allow anyone to quickly and easily access information with custom permissions.
This means that you can generate a report safely and automatically to speed up your reporting workflow.
However, by developing custom applications, you can directly improve the business process that workflow is part of.
In other words, you can give board members direct access to data and content so no process takes place.
By enabling access to data, organizations can redefine the processes they need to run to run their business and ultimately reduce process overhead to maximize efficiency, visibility, and growth.
4. Security
If you have a custom application or advanced CMS, your data will be more secure (on average) than if you use a ready-to-go solution.
Why?
Because you are a much smaller target.
Assuming your security equates to out of the box solution. Different, but just as safe.
If a bunch of hackers break your software, they get your stuff.
Which of course is a problem.
However, if a group of hackers discovers a ready-to-use solution, they get all their customer data.
For you, as a customer, the result is the same: your data is in your hands and it shouldn't be.
But how many hacker groups do you think are interested in specifically breaking into your company? Probably not that many.
Especially when they can be divided into 10 or 10,000 companies with the same amount of work, depending on the success of a ready-to-use solution.
This means that even if your custom app security is 1 hack per 1,000,000 attempts, it may only be attempted twice a year.
Large out-of-the-box solution providers defend dozens or hundreds of attacks every day.
They are just basic stats.
5. Maximize investment in technology
Finally, the development of custom applications and, in particular, the expansion of the functionality of a CMS, can help an organization to maximize the investment in technology through the use of tools that are already known.
The problem with buying new tools, rather than expanding existing ones, is that users don't use them (or don't want to use them). Technological acceptance is always a challenge.
Even if the platform is intuitive, there is always a learning curve for some users. Upgrading your team is a long-term project that must be managed as such.
Suffice it to say that shopping is difficult.
If you create a custom software application based on an existing tool, adoption is much easier:
Interfaces and systems work as people think (since they are already familiar).
Working methods remain relatively static
The tools look like existing tools (since you can customize the layout) so the user interface is as expected.
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