5 Reasons Why Bespoke Web Development Can Be Cost Effective

It can make sense to build a bespoke software solution. If you’re looking for an online solution that goes across different departments, or you’ve got some unique business requirements or you want capture data from large numbers of external users then you might find that a bespoke web application is more cost effective than an off-the-shelf system. Here are 5 things to consider:

1. Some off-the-shelf software can be very expensive to adapt. Enterprise CRM and ERP software appears to give you a head start with functionality that comes out of the box but it can often be much harder than you think to make the changes & configurations you need to get a good fit with your business. It can be technically challenging and the CRM consultants you need to make the changes are usually more expensive than web application developers; CRM consultant day rates might be 50% or more higher.


2. Processes in businesses become embedded over time and before you know it you’ve got critical data stored in a myriad of different Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The bespoke solution gives you the option of tackling a piece of the problem at a time - you prioritise and build in phases and you have more control over which processes get changed as the new software is introduced. Introducing a bespoke solution can be less disruptive and less costly than trying to change well established business processes to ‘fit’ an off-the-shelf system.


3. Modern software development tools are designed for productivity and a good bespoke software development company will be able to leverage open source frameworks and components to quickly build much of the underlying plumbing and boiler plate functionality that every web application needs. Things like roles and permissions, application security and even look and feel (there are plenty of free/low cost admin theme templates around) should be only a small part of the overall software development cost. Most of your spend should be on genuinely useful functionality that adds real value to your business.


4. Open source means you can think about joining up end users - customers, suppliers or partners - with your internal teams without any additional licensing costs; some established CRM solutions have licensing models that make them too expensive to open up to large numbers of external users. A bespoke web application also gives you more control over look and feel - internal users might see a very functional administrative application but external users can be given something that looks simpler or is designed to look like an extension to your website. A single joined up bespoke solution may be more efficient - data isn’t duplicated, real-time management reporting is easier and you can respond more quickly to customers.


5. You can completely own the IP of the software you build. That means that you can - if you build your software in a way that keeps it reasonably generic - even think about selling the software to other businesses. You might not want to sell it to direct competitors but there may be opportunities to recover some of the development cost by licensing it to other companies or using it as the basis of bids for new project work.

Sometimes it’s relatively easy to choose between an off-the-shelf solution or a bespoke development, but it can require more thought, particularly where the off-the-shelf solution needs quite a bit of further development or configuration. We’re always happy to talk through projects - please get in touch if you think we can help.