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.

Barcodes are nothing more than a machine readable form of data represented in the form of lines.  Nowadays, barcodes are an essential part of inventory management for a number of reasons. Firstly, saving time both in terms of data entry, and the automatic processing of the entries. Secondly, entry errors are reduced as the barcode scanning process has a very low error rate. Finally, barcodes help companies track the product across the entire production pipeline. Even after the product is shipped out, the company can track the product throughout its entire lifecycle.

Recently, we worked on a project for a client who wished to include barcode scanning capability in a personal health tracking software application. The required functionality was that the end-user could scan various food items and store the data in the applications web portal. This would allow the user to record their daily food intake conveniently, without wasting much time entering the data.

The first step in the implementation was a data import of standard food item barcodes, which we imported from an available data library. This gave us over 200,000 records of day-to-day food items of popular brands.

Since the users don’t typically own barcode readers, we required a solution that allowed the users to scan the barcodes using their personal electronic devices. Since most people carry mobile phones with a camera, we started looking into the option of using phone cameras as barcode readers.

Since we had a web-based application, it was preferable for us to use a client-side code library or plug-in. After evaluating a few possible options, we decided to use ‘QuaggaJS’ which is a JavaScript-based advanced barcode reader. ‘QuaggaJS’ can read various types of barcodes such as EAN, CODE 128, CODE 39, EAN 8, UPC-A, UPC-C, I2of5, 2of5, CODE 93 and CODABAR.

‘QuaggaJS’ implements the following steps:

1. Read the image and convert it into a binary representation
2. Find the location and rotation of barcode
3. Decode the barcode

We wanted to allow the users to scan barcodes using their laptop as well as mobile phones. We kept specific benchmarks about camera resolutions, and if a user’s laptop or mobile camera met those benchmarks, then they could scan the barcode. We also required an alternative solution for users with older mobile phones which did not have cameras that met the benchmark. We decided to let the user choose any of three options to enter a food on the portal:

1. Live scan: using the mobile camera to scan the barcode
2. File upload: upload an image of the barcode on the portal
3. Manual entry: enter the barcode numerically

After entering the barcode, the user can look up various information about the item if it is in the library. The library includes valuable information such as calories, portion sizes, and nutritional content. Our goal was to make food tracking on the application very user friendly, and using barcode scanning we managed to provide the user a very quick and easy way to track packaged foods.

Feel free to contact us if you are interested in a similar implementation for your application.