We understand your business is very close to your heart, and facing business-related challenges might be stressful for you at times. The situation becomes even worse when your challenges can’t be addressed with off-the-shelf software.
Looking at your business-specific challenges, if you have decided to create custom software for business, you have taken the right step. In fact, the IT spending on custom enterprise software across the globe is around USD 599 billion in 2021. This statistic is enough to validate your decision.
Look at Amazon, one of the biggest e-commerce businesses that use custom software (with Artificial Intelligence) to collect data on customers’ product preferences. The algorithm of custom software understands what customers actually need and creates a better online buying experience for everyone.
In the same way, if you have a small, medium, or large enterprise business, creating custom software applications will ensure your business thrives. So, let’s get started to know how to create custom software for your business.
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What is Custom Software Development In Kenya?
Custom software development means the designing of software applications to address the challenges faced by users within an enterprise business. Custom software development services address the users’ needs better than off-the-shelf software or ready made software.
For example, Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, which are specifically designed to address the challenges of the diverse needs of software users. Inevitably, you cannot modify or update the functionalities of these software solutions according to your needs.
On the other hand, customized software development needs a detailed plan and is created by a custom software development team or in-house software developers. The custom software development process includes:
- Designing
- Developing
- Deploying
- Maintaining Software
A custom software solution is developed keeping the company’s management, branding, implementation needs, and business processes in mind. Look at McDonald’s, it uses POV technology to serve millions of customers with their customized orders.
Before you finalize the software development plan, let’s discuss the steps to create a custom software project for your business in the next section.
5 Steps to Create Custom Software
If you are developing custom software In Kenya being an entrepreneur or an enterprise owner, then refer to these 5 steps. All these steps are explained in detail. So, let’s dive deeper and understand each step in a very simple manner.
1.Identify Your Business Challenges
We all know that every business has its own unique work process and business needs. One specific software can never fulfill the requirements for each business.
Therefore, you need a custom or tailor-made solution to solve your entire business-related challenges, such as:
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- Managing a large number of employees
- Increasing work efficiency
- Boosting business revenue
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So, when you start to develop your own custom software application, identify your business challenges first that you are concerned about the most. Discuss your challenges and requirements thoroughly with your management team, business leaders, and employees.
After this discovery phase about your challenges, it is time for you to analyze the requirements that can help you minimize the difficulties.
2.Analyze Your Requirements
Once you have a list of all your challenges, focus on the features and functionalities that you want to integrate into the software solution. Make sure you only add those advanced features that would help you to streamline your business process in the long run.
So, analyze what you actually need and what can be helpful for you to streamline the business. Let’s take an example to understand this step in a better way. Suppose you run an on-demand business and are facing challenges to manage customers’ data or probably looking to generate new leads.
In fact, according to a study, it is found that without CRM, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. We are sure that you wouldn’t let this happen to your business. And just like you, no other entrepreneur would be ready to lose their marketing leads.
Therefore, we have also shared some of the advanced and common features that you can consider for your custom software application. Here are the key features:
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- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Accounting and financing
- Task scheduler system
- Security
- Integration with existing systems
- Migration from off-the-shelf software to new software
- Work automation
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Once you decide on all the features and functionalities for your software, create its architecture design.
3.Hire The Custom Software Development Company
There is a pool of custom software development companies in the custom software development market. Therefore, it becomes extremely difficult to choose a development company that understands your requirements and offers you the exact same results you need.
In fact, many enterprise businesses believe in outsourcing to custom software development vendors. Recently, the global outsourcing market size has reached USD 92.5 billion in 2019. Also, here are some of the benefits of outsourcing to a custom software development company.
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- Saves time
- Minimize risks of software development projects
- Makes scaling easier
- The larger labor pool of talented professionals
- Access to multiple services
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Look at the following image to know the 3 steps of outsourcing to a software development company.
When it comes to a reliable technical partner, we can assure you that Space-O Technologies has always been an ideal choice for entrepreneurs. We believe in providing the best software solutions to your complex business needs. We truly understand your requirements and deliver the best custom software services without compromising their quality.
In fact, we are ranked amongst the top software development companies on GoodFirms and Upwork. We have 100% job success on Upwork with more than 950+ jobs done.
We are also sharing a checklist that will help you while choosing an outsourcing company. You can consider any of the preferred factors to select the best software company.
We will now move ahead to the next step, where we will discuss the development of custom software and testing parts of the software.
4.Development and Testing
Now you have decided on the bespoke software development company as per your preference, you can start the software development process by signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). To keep your proprietary information and idea safe, signing an NDA is essential.
Also, know that this step is the longest one where you will need to invest your time to build custom software solution. Being an owner of the enterprise business, you will need to ensure that everything is in line and the development process is going smoothly.
For this, you can regularly contact the project managers or get in touch with the dedicated development team. Also, know that when all the components such as system requirements, the architecture, and the wireframe are in line, the plan execution would be a lot easier and faster.
Once your customized software application is ready, the software development team will carry out the testing phase. This phase will also involve various types of functional and non-functional testing. This is either achieved manually or automatically.
| Functional Testing | Non-functional Testing |
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Apart from this list, it is essential to test the software for:
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- The core application functions
- Text input
- Installation on localized machines
- Security of the software
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In case any bug or error is detected, it will be fixed and re-tested. The whole testing process will continue until the quality of your software matches the original requirements. The software development team will ensure that everything is smooth and the customized application software is offering you the same results that were expected.
After successful testing, your software will be ready to get launched.
5.Deployment and Maintenance
This time, you and your users will start getting familiar with the system. You all will start using the software. Therefore, you need to note that the development company will support the software application post-release as well.
You can choose to install the software in your existing system. Later, under the guidance of the development company, end-users will be trained for using the software. Gradually, your team will learn to operate the software, and the integration of software with existing systems can be implemented.
In case your software needs maintenance or up-gradation, you can contact the development company. However, you need to talk to the software development company beforehand about whether they will offer the maintenance services or not. This will streamline the whole software development process and avoid you paying maintenance costs.