What is custom (bespoke) software?

Custom software is software developed for a specific entity's requirement. These packages can be developed to suit the identical requirements for the customer without the customer requiring to modify their own business logic.

With custom software, as your business grows, the software can grow with you. Custom software can give your business the competitive edge over your competitors. Using this form of software, your staff can focus on the core business and let technology do the tracking, planning, scheduling and monitoring for you.

There are different types of custom software:

1. Open source code used as a base and customizations are added.

2. Software that integrates existing "off the shelf" packages

3. Software developed for an industry that is customized to its users' more specific requirements

4. Software developed for company that is not used elsewhere

Why would anyone use custom software?

Many companies are growing in services as they are in volume. Assess your business up against these 2 yardsticks.

Off the shelf packages are designed for a specific purpose usually around volume or standards. For example, if you own a garment retail shop, and you buy and sell 1 000 garments per month with growth in mind. Your business can grow over time to movement of 100 000 garments. Essentially the business is the same and the software simply needs to do the same thing more times more quickly. All you need is software capable of basic accounting features.

If you find your business growing in services and garment creation becomes an in house service, you need the software to be able to go beyond the basic accounting features. Now you spin cotton into yarn, knit it into greige fabric, dye it into fabric, cut and sew the garment. The basic accounting features can still help you. However, you will find a lot of duplicate work and many spreadsheets and files to accommodate the new requirements that come standard with integration. These being, planning, scheduling, identifying, monitoring TCO and ROI and even the unplanned.

With custom software you can accommodate all your IT administrative needs. Data is captured / entered once via inline methods. This means, in order for the product to move from your store to another, a document needs to be made and this is done via the custom software. This now means that you have no pile up of work between the printed paper and the company's data, and allows managers and executives to make more informed decisions with a faster reaction time.

Advantages:

The software is cheap as the development cost is spread over more users.
The software is detailed as it caters for the wider spectrum of that industry.

Disadvantages

The software includes many features you do not need or use.
It tends to ask you to compromise you document and product flow.
There will be operations you require the off the shelf software simply cannot handle
You voice is a lot smaller to the developing entity as they need to support the greater community.
If you have software problems it means an impersonal call to a support team who are tertiary to the developers.
More features make the program slower
Training becomes paramount with new employees.
You cannot gain a competitive edge over your competitors as the same software is available to them.

Custom (Bespoke) Software

Advantages

It is tailored to your specific needs in as much detail as you wish.
It is easily integrated to other software you may use.
Your existing IT infrastructure dictates the performance and custom software can maximize this.
Users find it easier to use as jargon in the industry can be used and there should not be unused superfluous facilities.
It can include the operations you require that other software cannot handle
It is more flexible and grows with your business as you need
You receive specialized support and usually can speak directly with the developers.
With the right developer, they can significantly add value to your business by suggesting alternatives, improvements, TCO advice and ROI advice.
With the right developer, they will give you a significant edge over your competitors.

Disadvantages

If you do not own the source code, you are dangerously exposed and reliant on the developers continuing existence and goodwill.
If the software is not developed to professional best practice, it may be unstable and bug ridden. (Off the shelf software suffers this as well)
The developer needs time to provide what you need
The investment is high and business justification needs to be done. This is the main reason most companies choose against the custom software route.
An unacceptable proportion of developers are either incompetent, unprofessional or rush in without consequence and it becomes difficult to separate the good guys from the bad ones

What does ASTsolutions do for their clients?

We have seen different companies have different requirements, however there is usually two words that creep up more than 95% of situations. Cost and stability. As a result ASTsolutions finances the development of a baseline product.

The baseline product includes general industry requirements

This baseline product serves these purposes.

1. Faster implementation. Users can start with a basic product immediately in case of emergency.

2. Stability on different platforms. More users have used and stress tested the software.

3. A starting point. Many times customers do not specialize in software and are now able to see a product without using imaginary visualization and many hopes.

4. Investment security. A customer does not have to put any money on the table without receiving some form of software benefit.

Unfortunately, we have not created baseline products for all industries. This means you may require software that has no starting point. ASTsolutions prefers to retain full rights to software developed. As a result, you will not need to spend any money on the development and you will receive a working base product before you need to pay.

As a first time industry the downfalls are that ASTsolutions will need to spend some extra time to learn about your business.

ASTsolutions compensates these downfalls by allowing the customer a 3 month trial period to stress test for stability. This does not mean we leave the testing to the customer, it means we would like the customer to have peace of mind over the software's stability

If you wish to retain a competitive edge and dictate that ASTsolutions not reuse code in your project to other projects, you can purchase the code at a negotiated once off rate and development will commence at R450 per hour for further developments. Support and call outs are not included in this fee.