You’re building your next steps for success but you come across one large decision yet to make: do we go with straight off the shelf software or go the route of custom software development?

Every business, at one point or another, has to team up with another organization in order to solve problems. For some, this is simply outsourcing their customer service. Others need more in-depth, complicated solutions for their business. As more and more businesses look for outside help, the custom software development industry has grown into a way for many organizations to get the exact solutions they need.

It is important for enterprises to invest in custom software development to empower their business growth with a more personalized digital arsenal. Several executives may argue that custom software development is a costly affair, but buying commercial off the shelf software could do more harm than good in the long run if it is not tailored to your objectives.

In order to help quell the fears that you might have, we have put together a few reasons why custom software development might be right for your company. We hope that with the knowledge laid out in this article, you can take the next step for your business.

Here are 5 reasons why custom software can oftentimes be a more effective avenue:

1. There’s No Such Thing as One Size Fits All

Your business has specific needs and problems to be solved. If you and your company can’t find a solution that fits you, custom might be the way to go. Your custom software development company will work with you to cater to your specific goals and needs. Developing custom software is bespoke, which means the applications and programs will be entirely tailor-made for your company. You tailor its features to your exact requirements and decide exactly what it does and how it works.

While there is some quality pre-made software available, it is highly unlikely that it will fit every need an organization has. Each organization is going to have specialized needs – some more than others – that must be addressed. Without custom software development, those needs are going to go unmet. Modifying built-in features is rarely an option with store-bought software, whereas systems built just for you take all of this into account, play to your strengths and scale with your size and changing needs.

2. The cost might be less than you think

While “custom” usually means “more expensive,” that is not always the case when it comes to custom software development. On the one hand, ready-made software in the short term is usually always cheaper. That’s kind of its selling point. But, in the long run, custom software will almost always be less expensive.

When you opt for a ready-made software, you are investing money into another developer’s company. However, when you work with a team on creating software specifically for your company, all of that money and effort goes right back into increasing the value of your organization and helps you to create better solutions for your own customers.

3. Ongoing support from the software development team

Unlike using a ready-made solution, employing a custom software development team gives you a direct line to the people who created your software. As your company shifts and changes, your software will need to evolve. Instead of having to search for an alternate solution to solve these new problems, you can just work with your existing development team to add new features.

When businesses go for custom software development, they have the liberty to build new capability on top of existing enterprise applications and hence saving considerable effort in development as well as reducing cost escalations. Having a team to customize existing software is a better alternative than engaging one to implement a third-party solution from scratch and then follow it up with expensive customizations to further suit your business requirements and objectives.

4. Increase your company’s value

The way you use the software in your organization and business may change over time. With a customized package, you can adapt it quickly to meet any changes in your business. You can update and manipulate the software as you wish. This scalability is not typically available with off-the-shelf packages, and even if it is, you still have no control over whether developers will make the upgrades you need in time. When you run your own program, you also avoid issues with obsolescence. A developer may decide to withdraw products or stop upgrading, forcing you to find other new solutions.

With your own custom software solution at your disposal, not only do you have a proprietary platform that can meet all of your specific needs, but it can also be built with the goal of outperforming specific weaknesses in what’s available to the rest of your competitors. By investing in software that is built to your specifications, you create a unique opportunity that none of your competition will have access to.

Along with this, it also creates a competitive advantage for your company. Most organizations do not opt for custom software development for one reason or another. If you are operating with a solution specifically designed for your company while your competition is using outdated and ill-fitting software, you will be starting off with a leg up on them.

5. Adaptability and Integration

For integrating systems from multiple vendors, a considerable effort is needed and this could outweigh the advantages offered by individual systems. Such a scenario calls for creating a suite of operational enterprise applications, custom made to fit the objectives of your business.

Custom software development can improve the integration of multiple business systems into one function app. For many companies, this is the best reason for choosing a custom solution. It also can help you cut down on time spent using different software.

Work with your IT development team to figure out which core systems you need to be integrated into your solution. Just think about what this could mean for you and your company. By increasing efficiency, you will be able to reduce the churn rate and improve customer relationships across the board.

Final thoughts

When it comes to finding the right solution, custom software development has plenty of benefits worth considering. We believe your business has a great opportunity to improve and continue moving forward.

Interested in working with us?

If you’d like to discuss how partnering with Make IT can improve your product or business, get in touch now or learn more

The post 5 Reasons Custom Software Development is Right for You appeared first on ieSoft.

We found Microsoft Power BI to be a fantastic tool that can handle most of the analytics pipeline. It goes from ingesting and modeling data to presenting it as dashboards and sharing the dashboards with the people who care about them.

These are our top 5 reasons why you should consider implementing Power BI on your next BI projects.

1. Leading the way in Cloud Business Intelligence & Analytics

Power BI offers the services which can be directly harnessed from the cloud and it is a big plus point when it comes to how BI can be deployed. It also has a desktop version called the Power BI Desktop. The whole range of usual tasks can be performed with Power BI namely data preparation, discovery and designing of interactive dashboards. Microsoft also went one step ahead by offering the embedded version of Power BI on its highly popular Azure cloud platform

2. Access and Store a Vast Amount of Data (with No Issue)

Power BI has very impressive compression abilities for Microsoft Excel and text/.csv files, which allows you to view, analyze and visualize huge quantities of data that cannot be opened in Excel. Most computers would struggle to open up a 300-megabyte .csv, making analysis and reporting in Excel a challenge.  Adding several smaller .csv files to data, like sales data for neighboring regions, will be immensely difficult to combine with your previous dataset and analysis.

Can you imagine having all your files stored, connected, thoroughly analyzed, and using only 50mb? That’s now a reality with Microsoft’s Power BI, which uses powerful compression algorithms to import and cache the data within the PBX file.

Large datasets don’t have to be cut down in size and aggregated to show more encompassing analysis. All the most granular details and summarizations can exist in one file together and be accessed through drill downs.

You also have some ability to modify and prepare your data as well:

• Transformations and edits including changing formats, deleting rows, adding columns, and transposing data.
• Adding relationships within different tables, which is useful if you have a star or snowflake schema.
• Adding new datasets easily as additional useful data is discovered. New data can be integrated on Power BI without needing to recombine everything else again. This gives you huge flexibility in linking datasets together.

With Power BI, painful repetition of data preparation steps is reduced or outright eliminated since the software will remember the data preparation steps and automatically repeat them during data refreshes.

3. Power BI gives Customers power!

Power BI firmly puts the power in the hands of the users with powerful features and applications like changing data dimensions and measures in the fly and coming up with calculated columns. It is much better than working on a data warehouse tool which exclusively requires the whole gamut of processes involved in Extract-Transform-Load for uploading data, then coming up with data cubes and finally making sense of it. Thus Power BI makes it simpler, more agile, faster time to delivery and removes the various bottlenecks involved by removing unnecessary dependencies on IT staff.

Customers demand business insights and they want it now. Power BI helps you by setting priorities that can be easily deployed and you are able to concentrate only on the metrics that matter to your business. Create personalized dashboards, charts, reports and graphs that specifically match your needs and by using data that really matters. Centralizing all dashboard views from one place is a distinct possibility.

4. Predictive forecasting

Power BI raises the analytics feature several notches up by providing predictive forecasting. It is vital in today’s business scenarios where businesses need to be informed at all times about the multiple opportunities and risks that are lurking. You can easily visualize what the future holds for your company in terms of business sales and performance too. All this is seamlessly delivered thanks to Power View which offers charts and reports for predictive analysis. You can access your business intelligence features easily on any device of your choice be it on the desktop, mobile or tablet devices.

5. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

A powerful feature of Power BI is its addition of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) layer. This makes it absolutely simple to query for any information required by using natural human language. Power BI is more about the art of what is possible. You take your data, deploy machine learning on it, build it into an app and convert it into hardcore business intelligence.

Conclusion

Power BI is an easy tool to use that helps propel organizations into a data-driven culture. With powerful self-service abilities, no longer are business users dependent on IT for gathering, transforming and analyzing data. Automation of dataset integration, ease of expansion into new data sources, rapid visualizations, and easily deployable Row Level Security are amongst the many reasons Power BI is a necessity.

Additionally, a cloud-based collaboration environment with features like Natural Language Query eases the process of data governance. In the age of analytics, it’s import for organizations to intelligently utilize the data they collect to rapidly evolve with changing business and consumer habits.

The future is bright and shiny for analytics – companies are swarming to incorporate data visualization, and to do away with tabular reports with huge reams of numbers. With some quick retooling, you too can be a Power BI superstar for your organization!

The post 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Power BI appeared first on ieSoft.

Many years ago, people called it “intranet”: a place where company information could be shared with employees and clients. But the intranet was a place where messages were being sent in one direction. It was a one-sided conversation without means for interaction.

The intranet as we know it has disappeared. Today, many companies are using tools where we can actually collaborate, and improve our internal communication flows.

Slack is a platform for team communication: everything in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. Slack has been indispensable in the running of our company.

These are 3 reasons how Slack has improved our teams.

Smart notifications where and when you need them

The push notifications from Slack are really good!!

Each dev is assigned to one or many channels depending on the project they are working on. They will receive instant notifications both on desktop and mobile of any message they need to know about their project whether it’s a private message or an important attachment of the project.

There is no need to send emails to keep up with current projects since all the important things are in the same place.

Fewer emails, better collaboration and faster response times

With Slack, you’ll notice that you’ll be sending fewer emails to your colleagues and that colleagues will respond faster on your messages than in the e-mail.

At ieSoft, we have several channels (these are like chat rooms) where all team members and clients can work together, share docs, discuss projects and progress, etc.

These channels work much better than group e-mails because all information is easier to digest and in one place.

Besides the channels, you can chat one-on-one with colleagues or make calls, which also improves productivity and response time.

With devs outside of the office, this really improves our workflow!

Integrations with other productivity apps

Instead of re-inventing the wheel and adding a bunch of features that already exist in other apps, Slack makes it easy to connect the apps our company is already using.

We can connect cloud storage services such as Dropbox or Google Drive and make it easier to share files. Integrate with Jira to keep everybody up to date on projects status, or plug-in Bitbucket to see new builds been uploaded and created with all users.

We also connect Zendesk to Jira and Slack to keep track of all tickets our support team keeps receiving from clients in order to keep track of bugs and client issues.

Before you go!

If you’re looking for a tool that will improve collaboration and communication, you must try Slack!

Is fun and easy to use. In just a couple of minutes, you can get your entire team up and running, and with the intuitive user interface, employees will find their way in Slack immediately.

Your employees will be connected with each other at all times, making it easier than ever to work together, even if they’re on the other side of the world.

The post 3 Reasons Slack Improves Our Teams Productivity appeared first on ieSoft.

¿Pero en realidad qué es la innovación disruptiva?. La referencia más común es la que nos enseña Clayton Christensen quien la define como:

“Un proceso por el cual un producto o servicio echa raíces inicialmente en aplicaciones simples en la parte inferior de un mercado y luego avanza incansablemente hacia el mercado, desplazando a los competidores establecidos”

Casos prácticos de innovación disruptiva muy comunes son Uber, Airbnb, transportes autónomos, entre muchos otros. Estos nuevos modelos de negocios han roto todos los paradigmas en el sector en el que se han desenvuelto, provocando que muchas empresas (empresarios) tengan que tomar en consideración estos 5 puntos:

1. ¿Mi industria será afectada por este modelo disruptivo? La respuesta es fácil, tarde o temprano atacará a cualquier industria incluso las que crean que son inalcanzables. De acuerdo con los expertos, las empresas deben emprender de forma inmediata el análisis profundo de su modelo de negocio, emprender una doble transformación digital y emprender una transformación dual (fortaleciendo y extendiendo el negocio actual mientras se crea el negocio del mañana).
2. ¿Me tengo que preocupar? Los nuevos emprendedores tienen la gran ventaja de que pueden escalar su negocio de forma más acelerada que cualquier empresa que ya esté consolidada. Estos emprendedores (startups) por ser empresas más pequeñas se apalancan de forma más rápida y ágil con todas las tecnologías emergentes para poder resolver necesidades insatisfechas por su empresa y que van dirigidas a sus clientes, entregando productos y servicios de mejor valor que el suyo.
3. Antes de empezar, deseo analizar todos los datos. Los datos solo existen sobre el pasado, por lo que cuando hay suficiente información para tomar una decisión ya es muy tarde. Si se actúa a destiempo, su empresa no contará con los recursos necesarios para responder a la competencia.
4. ¿Y si mejor no hago nada? Si usted cree que su industria es intocable, le recomiendo que lo piense mejor. Los seres humanos tendemos a subestimar la velocidad de las revoluciones y hacemos estimaciones en el contexto de un mundo que cambia linealmente, en lugar de exponencialmente. Sino que se lo digan los taxistas y los hoteles de cadenas. Lo que a usted le pudo tomar muchos años en crear, hoy en día cualquier startup con la tecnología y el networking le puede tomar pocos años o incluso meses en lograrlo. Los ciclos de vida de crecimiento de las empresas ya hoy en día son a menor escala.
5. Ok, creo que mejor empiezo, ¿cómo hago? Cuando una empresa se siente consolidada es cuando más debería iniciar el proceso de transformación, porque es también cuando tiene los recursos para lograrlo. Algunas sugerencias que los expertos aconsejan a este tipo de empresarios ya establecidos en el mercado son:

• Apalancarse en expertos externos que le ayuden a cuantificar el impacto que tendrá la disrupción en su industria, y a descubrir indicadores de cambio.
• Crear equipos especiales, apartarlos del resto de la empresa y darles carta blanca para desafiar los paradigmas e identificar pequeños cambios en el mercado que podrían amenazar a la compañía en el futuro.
• En cada giro estratégico o decisión importante que se haga en su negocio, es importante identificar las incertidumbres o sesgos que podrían estar en juego. Hágase y deje que le hagan preguntas incómodas. Busque información que contradiga lo que crean. Y luego, involucre a terceros que critiquen constructivamente y desafíen sus puntos de vista y estrategias.
• Contemple distintos escenarios para su empresa y asuma una actitud de apertura a fracasar, de manera que pueda pensar a través de una gama más amplia de posibilidades las mejores soluciones para contrarrestar el fracaso.

En conclusión, el primer paso para enfrentar la disrupción y no morir en el intento es retar nuestros supuestos sobre temas tan fundamentales como en qué negocios estamos, quiénes son nuestros clientes y quiénes son nuestros competidores.

The post ¿Cómo debe afrontar su empresa la innovación disruptiva? appeared first on ieSoft.