Guest Blog by Amarnath Raja, InApp, Inc.
It’s very common for companies to choose software solutions for a specific purpose, like QuickBooks for accounting, Google for email, or MPulse for maintenance. In the industry, we call these “best-of-breed” applications—which simply means the software is the best solution of its type for the purpose.
Sometimes, however, no best-of-breed application is available or you discover technology gaps that are hindering your organization’s efficiency. Your best-of-breed application has become an island of automation. When your best-of-breed applications don’t interact with each other, what should you do?
You could buy standard off-the-shelf software that is sort of what you want, but would require customization to make it work. Oftentimes, however, customization is expensive and the costs outweigh the benefits.
Another option is to use internal resources to develop custom software. However, this kind of project takes your IT team’s focus away from other important tasks, or it may take longer than expected because of the different skill sets needed to do the project.
So what’s the solution? Consider custom software development. Custom software development is an application design service to address specific needs. Typically this type of software is created for a specific client by a contract developer and is not packaged for resale.
Contract software developers design software to provide features that can enhance off-the-shelf software. While that may sound expensive, a custom software program specifically designed to increase your organization’s efficiency or productivity can pay big dividends in the long run and often has a quick payback.
For example, our long-time client, MPulse Software, Inc, recently launched a new website using the Drupal web platform, a best-of-breed application for this purpose. They also invested in Salesforce, another best-in-breed CRM application used by both their sales and support teams.
MPulse needed to fill in a technology gap to make the process of adding customer leads from the Drupal website to the Salesforce database faster and more efficient. So they turned to their trusted partner, InApp.
InApp created a custom application, using MPulse design specifications, to automate the data transfer between their website and Salesforce. As a result, MPulse personnel now can access the information faster, provide better customer service, reduce data input errors, and focus on more important—and profitable—tasks.
Custom software is a bridge that connects islands of special purpose software. If your organization needs technology to fill in the gaps of your operations, consider custom application development. It’s an investment with the potential to improve your organization’s productivity—and its bottom line.
Since 2000, InApp has been delivering full cycle software development services to customers worldwide. InApp has offices in the United States, India, and Japan as well as a 200+ team of software engineers. Their software engineering services include application services, product engineering, mobility solutions, programming services, testing service, UI design services, and games & multimedia.
Amarnath Raja is the CEO of InApp. Mr. Raja worked for IBM before founding InApp. He lead the IBM technical team at JP Morgan, Tokyo. He is also the recipient of the 2015 IEEE MGA Larry K. Wilson Transnational Award for his contributions to global IEEE humanitarian activities.
