As your business grows, you’ll likely start adopting a wide range of tools and services to help you manage your operations. These tools can range from communication applications for your teams, CRM and ERP platforms, or marketing automation suites.
All of these solutions can help your business get more done in less time, helping your teams stay productive. However, over time, managing multiple subscription costs and training guides can seem like a lot. It gets easier to lose track of where you’re making investments, and you may not even be getting full value from each platform.
In these situations, you’ll want to decide whether or not it’s worth designing your own custom software. But before you make a decision, there is some important information to know.
Why Third-Party Tools are so Popular
Most businesses today rely on third-party tools to help manage their tasks, and there are several good reasons for this. Some of these include:
- Improved Scalability: With more and more businesses moving their operations, or at least a part of them, to the cloud, third-party tools and services are the natural fit. They’re easy to set up and integrate across different business environments and offer more flexibility than rigid on-premises infrastructure investments. They also make it easier for businesses to scale up or down their resource needs depending on current demand.
- Streamlined Financial Operations: Depending on the size of a business, many organizations can struggle to establish large internal teams when managing departments like accounting and finance. Because of a lack of staffing, third-party tools can help to pick up the slack, offering various automations and improved efficiencies when managing company budgets and helping smaller teams plan out their short- and long-term financials.
- Better Team Cohesion: Many businesses are now leveraging remote or hybrid teams to help them grow. But having disconnected teams can make it much harder for departments to stay connected. This is where third-party tools have become essential. Applications like Slack or Microsoft Teams provide a centralized location to manage communications regardless of where employees work.
Pros and Cons of Starting Your Own Design Project
There are a lot of reasons why creating your own software design project might be a better solution than shopping for multiple third-party tools. However, there are some different pros and cons worth considering:
Pros: Unlimited Customization
While there is no shortage of third-party software tools available on the market, each of them tends to specialize in various areas. Because of this, they often have limited customization options.
Custom-built software avoids these restrictions by giving businesses unlimited customization options to choose from. Because the platform is built specifically for that organization, you’re able to modify each element exactly the way you want, no different than if you were planning and executing a kitchen renovation project.
Better Long-Term Returns
Another element that makes third-party software solutions so popular is their relatively low cost of entry. Most applications come with fairly reasonable monthly subscription fees depending on the size of the business and its needs. However, these fees can add up considerably over time.
While a custom software project may require high upfront costs, it typically yields longer-term returns for businesses, as they can derive more value from it over time and avoid escalating subscription fees.
No Resource Waste
Even though many out-of-the-box tools often list a wide range of features that businesses can use, most teams only ever leverage a small percentage of them on a daily basis. In fact, having too many features can actually make the software seem “bloated” and bring down performance on tools that may never get used.
When developing a custom software solution, you won’t need to worry about useless features that offer no real value. You’ll have full control over what gets implemented and what doesn’t, making the solution much more useful for employees.
Cons: Higher Spending Up Front
With the amount of customization available when you start your own design project, this might seem like the best path to go down. However, there is an important caveat to remember: your upfront costs will be significantly higher with a custom project.
Depending on the scope of your project, initial spending can be tens of thousands of dollars and a finished product isn’t always guaranteed if you don’t have the right development experience or processes in place.
Longer Production Timelines
Another challenge of starting your own development project is that you’ll need to wait potentially several months before having a working product. Depending on the needs of your business, waiting this long could be detrimental to your business’s growth and cause increased spending without seeing any immediate ROI.
How to Choose the Right Solution for Your Business
When trying to decide whether or not a custom-built software solution is right for your business, here are some things to think about:
- Consider the Costs: The first thing you’ll want to consider is your budget. While you may be focusing specifically on your long-term returns, it’s important to choose a viable solution that’s affordable in the short term as well. Keep in mind that a custom project will require a significant upfront expense.
- Decide How Much Control You Want: You may be able to get by with a third-party tool that provides you with most of the features and customization options you’re looking for. However, if you’re finding these tools overly restrictive, you may want to consider quoting a custom-built solution.
- Research What’s Already Available: While your first thought might be that there are no tools out there that have everything you’re looking for, you might be surprised. Before starting a design project, take the time to adequately research the market to see if there are out-of-the-box solutions that might work.
Decide on a Solution That’s Right For You
Deciding between a third-party tool and a custom-built solution isn’t always straightforward. However, by considering the pros and cons of each and understanding what your business needs in the short term and the long term, you can make the right choice.
Author Bio:
Entrepreneur, technologist, and passionate business leader sum up the core of Dalip Jaggi, co-founder of Revive Real Estate, a PropTech company with a goal to democratize house flipping. Since its 2020 inception, Revive has become the smartest solution for homeowners across the nation to maximize their home’s value.
