If your needs are simple, COTS software will probably do the trick. However, as your business and processes grow in complexity, the limitations of COTS products become painfully obvious. COTS software forces you to adjust your processes to work within its limitations, so instead of software making things easier, simple tasks become frustrating and difficult.

Custom software is built with your business' specific needs in mind. In addition, custom software is deceptively cheap when you compare it to the cost of reorganizing your business.

Your customers are your life blood and like most companies, it is much less expensive to nurture them than it is to acquire new customers. With customized software, you know the status of your customers at any point in time.

From orders to works-in-progress, from finished goods to shipping and delivery, knowing precisely what your customers are working on provides the power to influence future business and predict their needs. This helps solidify existing relationships and increases your value to customers in the long term.

Whenever processes are manual, they take time and resources. If left unaddressed this can become a major stumbling block to growth.

Automation is the key to operational efficiency, and is often the investment that pays the greatest returns on growth. For automation to be truly successful, data needs to be captured from multiple areas and across various platforms and centralized.

This is where custom software really makes an impact, paying big dividends while enabling cost-efficient scalability.

You have a unique piece of equipment designed for your industry. It is technologically advanced, providing data and reports, but that information doesn't feed into anything else. It then becomes a manual process to not only track the progress of that system, but also to deal with any input variables such as raw materials, maintenance scheduling, etc. The efficiency of your equipment is cut short of its productivity promises because it simply isn't integrated.

Custom software works with your existing software ensuring equipment productivity is maximized.

Legacy software, as it is often called, was designed at a time when computing power was limited. With dramatic increases in processing capabilities, software needs to be updated to take advantage of new technologies which allow you to capture and analyze a much broader range of data. Slow and inefficient reporting is a serious inhibitor to company growth.

As your business expands, you need to make informed decisions, and using outdated or incomplete information works against this goal.

When used in the business world, mobile devices can allow you to obtain accurate information in real-time, allowing you to make choices based on the most relevant data. From locations right in your factory, to some of the most remote locations in the world, extensive data can be captured where it wasn't possible before.

Through custom software solutions, it can be easily complied and turned into massively valuable inputs for your organization.

Employee engagement is critical for a growing organization. However, the manual organizing of information can cause mundane, repetitive and even error ridden efforts. This can drive low moral for employees, and even yourself.

Custom software can reverse disengagement, providing automated analysis and reporting while dramatically increasing accuracy. More importantly, it allows people to work on higher value tasks by providing well-presented information for decision making, increasing their job satisfaction and contribution to the company.

Done right, custom software is designed in stages to allow for immediate value in core areas and increased specialization as time passes. This enables you to adapt to changes within your business and industry while receiving immediate benefits.

Having a custom software solution grow with your business over time keeps your risks low while stretching out the investment.