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Why Do Businesses Need Custom App Development?

Let’s say you’re smitten by a car that has everything it takes to give you a smooth, trouble-free, luxurious ride. The touch controls respond readily to every command. You enjoy the test ride, and you get the feeling that this amazingly designed car is custom-designed to fulfill every desire.

Sensing the hesitation that might have crept into your mind, the dealer comes up with an alternative, a car that looks and feels the same but is actually a stripped-down version with reduced functionality. Enticingly, it comes at a lower cost. Would you buy the prince or the pretender? 

The software arena presents a similar choice. Would you opt for the customized app explicitly designed to cater to your unique needs? You’d access features that suit your individual requirements, and functionalities that can be adapted to your peculiar ecosystem.  Or, would you choose readymade, off-the-shelf software that is intended to deliver essential functions that you cannot improve upon?

In your business life cycle, you’d be busy innovating new products and services. Customization helps you streamline business processes to work as you design them to work. You need systems tailored to your individual needs, not the other way round

Custom application development experts at Entrance Consulting underline the compelling reasons why businesses are rooting for custom app development 

4 Fundamental Reasons Why Companies Are Attracted to Custom App Development 

You get better protection against security threats

In an era insisting on GDPR regulatory compliance, your business needs to firewall its systems against theft and misuse of customer data to safeguard privacy concerns. You can’t rely on the lax security protocols of standardized software. Customized apps successfully eliminate threats and minimize risks through measures such as data encryption and tighter integration of Operating systems and APIs. 

Personalization brings you closer to customers

As an avid entrepreneur, you make it your goal to track the personal preferences of your targeted consumer group. This places you in a better position to personalize your offer to suit the needs of individual consumers. The limited configuration of standardized software makes it challenging for you to innovate and adapt to changing customer preferences. You need customization to stay relevant to your customer base

You highlight what makes you unique

In a competitive environment, you can’t survive unless you project the high points that make you unique and different from the competition. Readymade solutions leave you severely handicapped because they operate within rigid preset configurations that deny improved functionality. 

For example, let’s say you’re a retail venture that’s doing reasonably well using standard software. To expand your reach, you’ve decided to add loyalty programs wedded to a home delivery service. You notice that your existing system isn’t configured to operationalize storefront to doorstep services.

Customization builds the capability and keeps adding new functionalities as and when you feel the need to change the business model. The customized solution that unifies your business segments is more desirable than running an empire of bits and pieces of software that can’t be integrated. 

You’re more closely invested in the business

Buying software off the shelf appears easy and ever so convenient, but if you peel off the surface wrapping, you realize that the full spectrum of services is denied to you. For unlocking more functionality, you may be required to upgrade to premium services which won’t guarantee complete satisfaction. 

When you install an app customized to your needs, you’re in full control of its capabilities and functions. Your ownership is complete and unchallenged. What you’re getting is a system that evolves alongside the expanding business, a system which can adapt and scale itself in a competitive arena. 

The customized application inspires the confidence that you’re reinvesting in an expanding business that is better equipped to face external threats and challenges. 

3 Custom App  Development Challenges That Companies Are Overcoming

While the advantages of customizing the software to fulfill unique requirements need no justification, there are a few challenges that businesses will face. How companies respond to each challenge determines whether they’ll face a boom or bust scenario. 

Custom app development: The time constraint

While an off-the-shelf solution attracts you with its ease of implementation, you could become disillusioned with the time it takes to develop bespoke solutions. 

Entrepreneurs with vision are increasingly willing to commit themselves to the long haul. They don’t mind devoting more time focusing on resolving bug issues, imparting strategic depth to the business, and improving business design and delivery. 

Standard solutions are an invitation to frequent bug disorders and business-critical downtime issues. Custom app development is time well invested because you’re primed for aggressive business expansion and scalability.  

Custom app development: The cost conundrum

In cozying up to the convenience of off-the-shelf solutions, we overlook the long-term damage we are likely to suffer and the money wasted in fire-fighting troublesome bugs and overcoming systems conflicts. 

The bespoke solution is undoubtedly expensive in the short-term but offers significant advantages over the long-term. The digital transformation that you are initiating helps you bring greater efficiency to business process management. 

You’ll be automating mundane and repetitive tasks. Each and every segment of your business will be better integrated to facilitate collaboration. Everyone will enjoy access to the right data at the right time. Customization, viewed through a long-term lens, works out to be inexpensive compared to standardized software.

Custom app development: The technology test

Employees, no matter how skilled they may be, prefer to work with technology they are intimately familiar with. When you buy new technology tools, some workers may become reluctant users because of the sharper learning curve compressed into a limited time frame. Gearing up such workers for a long-term project could become challenging.

When you’re on the track of customizing software, you’re building on capabilities that are already existing. You’re extending the functionality of your in-house CRM/ CMS. You’re improving a tool that employees are already familiar with. 

Since the new platform will be intuitive, there will be less pressure on users (existing and new). It’s much easier to motivate your team to kick-start a long-term project. 

Customization maximizes technology investment, bringing innovation to business workspaces, the change that powers business growth.

What Tesla Taught Us About Custom App Development

The entrepreneur today is becoming aware of the long-term disadvantages of forcing businesses inside packaged software. It’s becoming more evident that packaged solutions are incapable of handling systems conflicts and invite growing collateral damage by way of hidden costs. 

American automotive major, Tesla discovered that it would take the better part of a year and millions of dollars to integrate an off-the-shelf CRM solution with Tesla’s in-house systems, and attain benchmarked standards. Tesla decided to adapt its existing operations to customized solutions. The results were amazing. Benchmarked standards were achieved within four months with considerable cost saving.  

Tesla’s experience shatters the myth that app customization is prohibitively expensive. The development costs will increase only in proportion to the scope of your requirements, the number of workers keying into the system, and the sophistication of the software itself. 

Conclusion

Raising the brand value of your business becomes possible when you persuade consumers to make purchasing decisions based on their emotional connection to your brand. To this end, you’ll be strengthening your brand marketing strategies, besides improving the quality and consistency of your products and service delivery. 

By customizing applications, you’ll be offering high-end solutions that meet the specific needs of your customer base. Every effort in this direction elevates you and your brand far above the competition.

Custom app development is a surefire way of boosting your ROI. With a customized CRM solution, for example, you’d be earning  $8.71 for every dollar that you’re investing. Is there a better advertisement for customization?

Tanish Patel

Tanish is the founder and CEO of AppStory, specializes in smart Internet marketing. He is a specialist in online marketing strategy and brand building. When he’s not considering the next best online marketing strategy with his team. we are happy to share your App story on Our AppStoryorg. Submit

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