When Your Company Needs Custom Software

Scenario: "Dude, we have so many repetitive things to do. That means we must hire more people to do those repetitive things. Yay!" Thriving businesses focus on repeatability; that's the easiest/fastest/sweetest way to grow their revenues. Yet, with repetitive tasks -- comes tedious time-wasters.

1. Now, what if your company could increase its productivity by 40%?
2. What if you gave your salespeople of 30% more time to sell?
3. What if you freed 50% more time for other creative tasks?

How much would your profits increase? Good sign? Consider automating your business with software built to the soul of your company.

Why Off-The-Shelf Software Sucks

Off-the-shelfers make your business run according to the software -- instead of having the software complementing your already-fab business. That is, instead of accelerating your profits by making your company more agile, you start impeding its momentum by working around software built for different agendas. Like a billion personalities in this world, your company is unique to you -- and you need something that improves how well you already run your business.

Why Custom Software Rocks

Custom software helps you increase productivity by automating those uniquely-repetitive tasks catered to your business's needs. For instance, instead of:

1. Hiring a team to send a hundred invoices a day.
2. Sending informational email to every single lead.
3. Manually organizing your appointment times.
4. Upselling a thousand customers on Product X.

You automate the process where you decrease/eliminate labor. Instead of taking hours, you now take minutes (or nothing) doing the same task. That saves you resources, energy, money, sanity, and your business's creativity juices for other -- more lucrative -- opportunities. Beautiful. Growth. Ahead.

But Do You Really Need the Thang?

Two drawbacks to a custom software:

1. It's costly.

   If you're just starting -- unless you see tremendous/concrete signs of growth -- hold off on it. You could always get by with off-the-shelfers (e.g. Excel, Quickbooks, etc.) Remember: you only want custom software to accelerate your already promising results, not build something that you speculate you might need.

2. It rarely comes to fruition.

   Most software projects never get built because of: (1) incompetent programmers, and (2) enormously-big ambitions. Be cautious if a software team promises a 500-day completion. Those long project cycles rarely get built competently -- and in the unlikely scenario that it does, your needs will have already changed.

The type of software your business gets depends on the adaptability, smarts, and experience of your software team. Get those who have proven track records, and can help you build a releasable Version 0.1 within weeks.

Growth Like a Beast

If you can overcome the barriers, a custom-built application will grow your revenues astronomically. Just don't let it run your business. Instead:

Make your software your company's b!@ch.

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