The global crisis hit businesses of all industries all across the globe. Companies realized that investing in custom software development can be beneficial as one-size-fits-all software was no longer efficient and adequate to meet the growing and challenging needs of the business.

Let us dive deeper into the topic of custom software development and understand how it helps businesses to achieve team collaboration, performance, safety, and scalability.

What Is Custom Software Development?

Custom software development is the process of designing and developing a software product to meet the specific requirements of a business. These software solutions include features, function, performance parameters, and security features to meet the organization-specific requirements and precisely address the firms’ customer needs.

Traditionally, banking transaction applications were typically off the shelf products or platforms. However, client interaction pre-Covid was based on face to face contact and physically signed documents. Banks that are digitizing these processes are doing it with custom solutions from the ground up so that it meets their internal processes, manages their risks and fulfils customers needs. Banks that have quickly innovated in this space are well placed to be leaders in the post-Covid world.

How is Custom Software effective amid this Global crisis?

Entrepreneurs find custom software effective in addressing new challenges in business. Below we outline the ways bespoke software could be an essential tool and an effective strategy for a business.

Cost-Effective

Custom software is your very own asset. You don’t need to pay for licensing, upgrades, user fees, etc. Companies get the flexibility to build a personalized app within their budget when they go for custom software. As revenues grow they can extend the functionality of the app. Cost-effectiveness has become a critical aspect now as Covid has hit revenues and profits. This makes custom software development an effective strategy today.

Automate Business Processes

When Covid hit the world, businesses’ had to enable work from home almost overnight. Work from home, however, brought challenges to meet productivity requirements. A custom-made software in this situation helps automate several day-to-day operations and business needs and keeps everyone involved, connected. Not to mention, tailor-made software is built with unique features which are necessary for your specific business. A product on the other hand will offer you several features, not all of which may be relevant to your business.

App Integration

Integration with other third-party applications is key to business success in today’s time. Mobile apps as an extension to your website or enabling digital payment processing on your company systems are just a few examples of app integration. Custom software allows you to develop and integrate new software or apps easily into your existing business processes. Companies that are looking to tweak their business processes during this covid crisis can find it helpful. One can handle complex business requirements through app integration in custom software.

Scalable

The current crisis has affected the demand and supply equations of different products and services. So scalability of business has become essential, and it can be achieved seamlessly with a bespoke software development company. Custom software can be used to improve scalability in business operations to move faster and eliminate inefficient processes and practices. With growth comes complexity in executing business operations, and custom software are designed to handle this.

Flexibility

The product owner has complete control over the interface design, the user experience, the custom features and functionalities. This can help companies differentiate themselves from their competitors and sustain growth.

Software Maintenance

Some custom software development companies offer a dedicated support team for the maintenance of the application. The experienced and skilled professionals render regular maintenance and in-depth support to your apps. Personalized support like this means that security vulnerabilities and technical challenges will be taken care of promptly. Custom App development companies offer flexible packages on a pay as you go basis.

Streamline Methodologies and Processes

When the global crisis hit businesses, one of the biggest challenges was to streamline methodologies and processes. Companies that operated from multiple locations and branches faced many problems. Custom apps help in streamlining processes within an organization and improving team collaboration. Bespoke software can be designed to have all business data in one centralized location and distribute it from there. Cross-functional teams sitting across multiple locations can easily access this data through custom software and make informed business decisions.

Finally…

Most companies find off-the-shelf solutions appropriate for some specific conditions. If you are looking to improve operations within your company during this pandemic or thereafter, then custom software solutions might be your best choice.

Well, we all know how bothersome that could be! Here we are with an easy solution, read along…

Undoubtedly, navigation is an integral part of every application. It plays a pivotal role when a user requires navigating to different modules and sections.

Static navigation is rigid, which demands rework of all modules even when a single module is to be updated/added. Planning an end-to-end navigation prior to application development is the perfect solution. However, practically it is impossible to predict all modules and create a navigation way ahead of time. The second-best solution is to setup a smart extensive set of menu items for the future.

Let’s take a look at two elaborate approaches to implement a sidebar navigation!

Approach 1: Using Fixed Left Navigation

 In this approach, a button bar is added on the left-hand side of the layout in advance. Each button has calculations referring to dynamic variables as button labels, with a common script to define every button action. By default, this navigation bar is visible on all layouts.

The downside to this approach, it can work for Form views, but not for List views. Additionally, the demand for more real estate in the layout of the application is another drawback that leads us to Approach 2.

Approach 2: Hamburger Menu Using Popover

In this approach, a Hamburger menu icon is placed in the header of the layout. Clicking this will expand/collapse the popover. The popover has a button bar and it’s implementation is similar to Approach 1, with the only difference of buttons placed on the Popover. This approach works well for Form view, List view, and Table view.

Let us take a look at the Application Implementation Steps in detail.

 Step 1 – Opening Script

Create an Opening script or a Startup script to set global variable values that are used as calculation to define labels for each button segment in a Button bar.

For any new module navigation, set the global variable to the same.

Step 2 – Specify Active button

The Sidebar_Values variable defined in the Opening script will store the list of table names, i.e. main navigation module table names. It is then used to define the active button bar segment of selected module as below.

Step 3 – Main Navigation Script:

Create another script which is the main script used for navigation between modules. This script is attached to every segment of button bar, with a script parameter defined for the module to navigate.

If the user is currently on the Details view, then the application redirects to Details view of the destination module. Similarly, If the user is in List view, the application redirects to the List view of destination module.

Each layout has set icons to help navigate to Details view or List view specifically. For instance, if the user is in Details view, clicking relevant icon will help navigate to List view and vice versa.

This script checks if the user is on Details or List view and sets it to a variable. Append this variable to script parameter to get the layout where the user wants to navigate .

Step 4 – Naming convention:

Each layout requires a specific naming convention . In this case, it is <<tablename>> _<<Viewtype>>.

Here the ViewType can be DetailsView, ListView or TableView. Let’s take a look at some of these examples.

1. Contact details layout will be ‘Contacts_DetailsView’
2. Contact list layout will be ‘Contacts_ListView’
3. Contact table view layout will be ‘Contacts_TableView’

By following the Approach 2, adding a new module is matter of few simple steps and the application is as good as new.

Hope you find this article insightful. Feel free to leave a comment or post any challenges that you may have.

Our FileMaker development experience includes handling complex project management systems, e-commerce shopping sites, cruise booking systems and more.