Custom Software To Reduce Your Business’ Labor Costs

Give your business an edge while reducing labor costs.

A unique economic landscape means unique challenges for businesses. In addition to a challenging labor market, industries are facing a competitive market. To outshine competitors, some business owners have turned to custom software development solutions. Unlike existing out-of-the-box vendors, custom software can supplement workflow automation. While it might sound daunting, utilizing applications to facilitate business automation can help support the business’ bottom line.

Custom software development and business automation frees up people to perform better. When your employees perform better, your business performs better.

Types of custom software development.

Labor Saving Utilities.

Custom software can be a simple utility that saves labor by making a time-consuming task take seconds. Some examples of this are:

• An automated routine that imports orders into your system from your website.
• An automated process that transfers hours from your time entry system to your payroll system.
• A desktop program that pulls up information when someone calls into your phone system.

Customer Facing Applications.

Customer-facing custom applications could be a website or custom application for iPhone and Android for customers to place orders, get support and pull up product information.

Custom ERP and CRM Platforms.

Many companies can not find the right application to ensure their requirements are all met. This may mean that you have an application that does 70% of what you require and you need to augment that to cover the remaining requirements or you need to have an application written from the ground up.

Here are a few examples of augmentation:

• Customer service may have to go through a series of screens designed to ensure the customer is delivered the correct product.
• You may want a client portal for customers to manage their orders, pay bills, and request assistance.
• The application may lack the ability to be used on iPads and mobile phones.

Cost savings and optimizing your workforce.

Business Automation.

According to a recent survey of business executives, business automation if improving their company’s performance by saving time (71%), improving productivity (63%), and saving money (59%). Economists often use the example of Henry Ford II and Walter Reuther to illustrate that advancing technology, in the form of automation and innovation, increases productivity.

When assessing the workload of individual employees determinations can be made to improve processes through time-saving automations. Custom software can reduce the hours of manual work thereby improving overall productivity and job satisfaction.

Other advantages of custom software development.

Greater Scalability.

Enterprise-level custom software solutions support scalability by minimizing or eliminating licensing conditions. Long-term costs associated with off-the-shelf software solutions often result in a number of limitations that range from increased financial investment to misaligned program delivery.

Targeted Solutions.

Custom-tailored software solutions and application development enable streamlined business processes that support specific organizational goals. Rarely, if ever, do off-the-shelf software products fill business needs based on industry, compliance, or location. By employing the expertise of a development team businesses can maximize their investment and productivity.

Software Integration.

As the digital landscape changes, hardware and software within a business’ technology environment often become incompatible forcing upgrades or changes in business processes. Through the utilization of custom applications, developers work to ensure workstations, file exchange processes, and other systems integrate with tailored software solutions. Furthermore, increased hardware costs associated with upgrades related to commercial software are mitigated.

Ground-up applications are the most flexible, reliable solution for businesses. It allows your operations to do everything from reporting and cataloging to order fulfillment in the exact way you need it to. Investing in software development offers some incredible advantages with an ROI that outranks off-the-shelf software.

Ultimately, automation is not about replacing jobs, but instead remaining competitive and complementing creating good jobs.

Questions about how custom software can help your business reduce labor costs? Schedule time to review your business’ needs with one of our technology consultation professionals.