The digital age is here to stay, and custom software development is here to help businesses and companies meet the desired success they want in the digital world. In 2022 the expected amount of money enterprises is going to spend on applications is $675 billion. Numbers like this are making more businesses realize the importance of having customized applications versus off-the-shelf preset applications that are common on the market.

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The market to design and build your own applications and software is vast and some just offer pre-built software, hence these are referred to as off-the-shelf. Our Las Vegas website design agency is always available to help guide people who are interested in making their own website or interested in learning more about how LSM's website design and development services can save them time and money.

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The benefit of using customized software is that it will be more specific to your company’s needs and what you want the application to do. If you are still unsure of what types of custom software will work right for your company, then this guide will help showcase what options there are and expand your range of what is available on the market.

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eCommerce Apps

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The most popular type of custom software stems from eCommerce needing a customized and unique way to run their online stores. Between the need of managing inventory, managing products, prices, and other order fulfillment needs, eCommerce needs software that can help them stay on top of all the different needs of their business.

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There are hundreds of templates you can buy for your eCommerce store that allow you to just drag and drop what you want into your application, but those have a lot of limitations. Certain places such as Shopify and Woocomerce allow you to create a fully custom website as well as applications based on your website. However, there are others such as Wix that limit your customization abilities both on website and application development. 

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Having a custom application can have features that this off-the-shelf software can’t offer. If your business has special needs then getting a custom application would be the best viable option for your online storefront. One of the biggest advantages if you do choose to get custom applications for your business is that you will have stronger cybersecurity, with off-the-shelf software developers you are putting yourself at risk of security issues as well as other technical issues.

Since custom software is more expensive, many businesses hesitate to invest in it. The benefit of having customized software for your online business is that someone else takes care of the things you may not have time for, such as worrying about whether your website can handle a high volume of traffic or whether it is completely safe for customers and for you. 

Additionally, with off-the-shelf software you have to choose from set templates, whereas customizing your application allows your themes and applications designs to be unique from competitors who use these common application developers.

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Content Management Systems (CMS)

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This is software that helps create, manage, and modify content on your website without having to change any complicated coding. Having this kind of software is convenient if you are in need of basic infrastructure assistance for your website. The CMS software can handle your webpages, storing images, and any other basic infrastructure needs similar.

A more in-depth look at what makes up a CMS system can be done by breaking it down into two key parts. Firstly, a content management application, which lets you add and manage the content on your website. Secondly, a content delivery application, which takes the content from your content management application like videos or pictures, and stores it properly to make sure visitors can see it. 

Together these two main applications can allow you to properly manage and showcase different pages on your website whether it’s a blog page, image gallery, or so on. An example of an off-the-shelf CMS is WordPress, while WordPress is a valuable tool, having a customized CMS allows you to add specific data entry procedures that might be more beneficial to your company’s needs for your website.

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Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management Systems

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These are two different software approaches that vary based on the needs of your business. Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM) are more for customer relationship management, while Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems handle internal resource planning. A CRM System will benefit the customer experience while an ERP System is for the business process like production, distribution, budgeting, HR, etc.

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If you are in the market to increase profits by having better customer service on your website, then looking into CRM systems is the preferred choice. For eCommerce especially, having face response times and easy and accessible interfaces make the customer experience a lot more enjoyable. A better volume of happy customers will make your company or business reputable and allow new clients to spread good word-of-mouth reviews. 

CRM Systems include contact management which helps you keep track of customer interactions and purchases. Additionally, it can help sales representatives share customer information within the company so that if any issues occur they can easily be addressed internally. Other things like helpdesk support, marketing campaigns, and analytics and reports can be handled with CMR systems as well.

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If you find your business needs more organization, then ERM systems might be a suitable investment. It can be very difficult to manage and stay organized with all the internal work of running a business. However, with ERM systems you can keep track of supply chain management and material procurement. 

As well as have order tracking to ensure that all orders that clients purchase are available and in stock. Naturally, other internal things such as bookkeeping, HR, and Business intelligence can be managed through having ERM systems.

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The point of customizing this software is to address the needs of your company or business to ensure your website, whether used internally or externally, saves you time and money by meeting the specific needs you have. Of course, both ERP and CRM are able to be integrated to work together to fully optimize your systems and allow you to integrate more data into each specific component of your website.

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Operation Management Systems

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An Operation Management System collects data on different processes and procedures that help businesses manage in the best possible way to have successful day-to-day operations. This is a system that is more team-focused and helps assures managers and owners that team performances are all similar and efficient.

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The Operations Management System helps managers see how to fully optimize their services to ensure a better customer experience and a smoother working environment for their employees by combining business operations and customer expectations.

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By having a system where you can manage how things within your business are operating, there is room to review if there are areas that can be improved, and perhaps cost cuts can be made. Having customized software to manage and keep track of these specific processes can help keep things consolidated and allows operations managers to be able to rely on user data to reduce errors and save time.

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You can also improve communication between departments, many times employees have to switch departments or genuinely don't know the process of certain areas within the company. The Operation Management System can improve this communication and allow everyone in the company to be on the same page regarding what the processes and common procedures are.

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This is a very useful tool for industries such as retail, construction, hospitality, healthcare, or even transportation. An Operation Management system is not commonly available with using off-the-shelf software, which is why custom software developers are commonly needed to develop these systems specifically for the client's needs. 

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How Custom Software Can Assist Your Business

There are a million moving parts to running a business and no two businesses are alike. Having custom software helps your business by saving you time by taking away the issues of properly developing and building a website or application that fits the needs of your company or business.

A custom application or software may need to be updated over time, but having it handled by an expert reduces the stress of updating it since custom software is designed to be updated periodically. If you do not have a programming background or anyone on your team who is capable of handling expert coding then hiring a professional will help with any troubleshooting problems occurring from when your website launches and so on. 

Having something customized for your business allows more control over a variety of aspects of running your business. From HR to inventory, you can have a better organization of different aspects of your business and be able to properly monitor them. You are the ultimate decision-maker when it comes to what services you need to showcase to clients or what tools you need for your internal teams. 

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Every business is trying to solve a handful of problems at once, so why not take some of the issues off your plate with easy-to-use platforms that your customers and team can enjoy? Custom software developers are here to help the needs of your company no matter how big or small you are. Having something uniquely yours can help eliminate the stress of using multiple software at once and can improve productivity.

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If you already have existing software for your business, using custom software makes it easier to integrate any previous software already in use. Integrating all the software you use together, makes organization and operation go a little smoother with everything all in one system rather than scrambling to use each individual software separately.

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As well as being beneficial to your business, you are implementing better customer experiences with having custom software. A user-friendly interface and ease of use can make customers happier with your business, whether they visit your website, make a purchase, schedule an appointment, etc. You will have something that no other competitor could duplicate and can offer the best services to your customers, which makes custom software a valuable investment for your business.

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The LSM team knows what it takes to run a business, and we offer custom software solutions that make it easier to do it. We have built a variety of custom software solutions, from websites, mobile applications, and online portals, we can tackle a client's needs. As a newly established company, Stratas Auctions approached us to create an online car auction site and customer relationship management system (CRM). In order to facilitate consignment and bidding on vehicles, we came up with an easy-to-use website solution. LSM created a smoother CRM process from the moment they receive a consignment to the finale where a vehicle is sold and archived. Beyond improving upon their platform and internal tools, we created a platform for them to allow for future growth. 

Not only do we develop custom software solutions and website development, but we also provide content creation and digital marketing for clients who want to further expand their branding and improve their marketing game. Having an amazing website and mobile application is one point to gaining more business, but digital marketing helps spread the word about your services and company to new potential clients and customers.

If you’re still not sure you can tackle digital software development or want to learn more about digital marketing, LSM is here to help. If you're interested in learning more about how we can optimize your business, book a free consultation with LSM today!

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