How to guarantee success when implementing custom solutions

Custom solutions are ever more important to businesses

In today’s ever changing business environment, custom solutions are the backbone of many successful companies. As businesses strive to offer unique value to their clients and operate more efficiently, off-the-shelf software solutions can’t always adapt fast enough. No two businesses are alike, consequently, each business has a unique set of challenges, goals, and processes that require equally unique solutions. Custom software offers the tight-fit solution many businesses need as it accommodates specific requirements and enables you to streamline operations, increase productivity, and provide improved customer service. Custom software can create competitive advantages and drive success in every industry.

Understanding how to implement a custom solutions project successfully and within budget is paramount as they can easily fail if not prepared and managed correctly. Correctly done, the new system will not only give your business a significant competitive edge, but it will also drive client satisfaction and increased profitability.

Compass Data have been developing custom software systems for many clients over 3 decades. Using Claris FileMaker and others systems we have helped clients actualise their plans and enhance their businesses.

This blog offers three essential aspects to completing your custom software project successfully.

1: Set Clear Objectives for the custom solution

The success of any project, and specifically custom software projects, starts with a clearly defined goals and objectives. Knowing what you want to achieve from the start will ensure your team is correctly focused and give a roadmap that describes the end point of your project. Not just about what the final custom software product should look like or do but how the software aligns with broader company objectives. Your software project is a strategic investment in the company’s growth, so it needs to align with your overall business goals. Break down your main goal into smaller, achievable objectives for the project to aim for and report on.

Clear, well-defined goals provide a roadmap for your project and will keep it on track and within scope. They set standards for assessing progress and determine when each milestone is achieved.

In a custom software project, these objectives may include:

• • Specific function development,
  • Systems integration,
  • User-interface design,
  • Business process improvement and more.

Beginning your project with clear objectives not only guides your in-house team and any external partners, but it also ensures every development phase serves a strategic purpose and prevents scope creep which pushes up cost and extends timeframes.

 2: Review, revision and test Frequently

An equally important step to ensure the success of your custom software project is regular review, revision and testing. Anyone familiar with Agile software development will recognise the need for this. Perfect software is not achieved in a single development cycle. Instead, it evolves and improves over numerous cycles of design, development, testing, and user feedback. The major advantage of regular testing and revision is that you catch potential design flaws or operational issues early and can fix them before they become costly or time-consuming to solve. It also ensures that progress aligns with the set goals and expectations.

Committing to frequently review, revise and test your software project can greatly reduce risks and deliver the final solution in the shortest time.

 3: Involve users

It cannot be stressed too much how critical user involvement is when setting up the strategy, plan and team for the project. Not only will their knowledge of working practices be critical for the successful acceptance of the new system, but their feedback can also reveal what truly needs to be improved or added in your proposed software. Not only does their involvement provide greater user satisfaction with the process, it also makes the product more fine-tuned to the specific requirements of the users. Understanding end-user experiences, their preferences and frustrations, can significantly shape and refine the features of your custom software resulting in a higher quality result, one which engages the users and motivates them.

Fundamentally, end-user involvement adds a valuable dimension to your project, helping you develop a custom solution that not only looks good on paper but also performs very well in the real world, where it really counts.

So to ensure a successful custom solution project

Many projects fail when they are not managed correctly due to poorly defined goals and scope creep. Similarly, not having the buy-in of users throughout the process can result in a reluctance to use the new system as the old way was ’easier’.

Adopting the three principles highlighted significantly increases the chances of success for your custom solution project and that it will be on time and in budget. It doesn’t matter if using FileMaker, or any other development language, these principles remain valid and will help you deliver the result you are looking for.