Question: What do £100 and 2 hrs a week have in common? Answer: bespoke software development.
This is how much we charged one of our clients for a small piece of development work and thats how much time it saved them each week. Money well spent, don’t you think? But even if it was to costs £5,000 or £20,000 if it has a potential to save your business more, then it’s worth considering. If you think of bespoke software development is an application built from the ground up using specialised programming languages such as MS.Net, PHP, or Flash your are not wrong. But did you know that the Office suite from Microsoft, that the majority of us use, has the capability to add functionality, aka ‘Bespoke Software development’. MS-Access specifically would not be much use unless the user did some form of Software Development, be it creating a database to store the data or simple forms to display and manage it.
But why should you consider bespoke software development, if you ever say ‘I wish I could....’ then it maybe the answer for you. Here is what some of our clients were wishing for, ‘I wish I could’:
- get data from one program to another without entering it again.
- email everyone in one go.
- easily look to see who has bought what.
- standardise how I deal with my clients.
- sort client issues quicker and more effectively.
Bespoke software development can also extend specific capability to staff with little or no industry knowledge, for example allow staff to give out complex quotes based on a few simple questions, or allow non-technical staff to perform 1st line support based on a knowledge base of known issues. But, as with so many business projects, for bespoke software development to be cost effective and a success it has to be SMART.
Specific: Make sure you know what you want and can explain it simply.
Measurable: Make sure you can measure the benefit of the new system.
Achievable: Make sure what you want can be delivered in the final system.
Relevant: Only spend time and energy implementing functionality that is used.
Timely: Deliver on time and in time. But, and here is probably the biggest hurdle, you need to take action. If you think that bespoke software may be able to help you, go ahead, pick up the phone and talk to someone. Talk is cheap!