A WORLD-CLASS CUSTOM SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

Industry giants like McDonald’s, Unilever, and Netflix leverage custom software to increase profits and streamline workflows. The global market for custom software development is nearly $45 billion and is expected to top $105 billion by 2028. However, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software is still the default solution for many businesses due to its predictable costs and often straightforward implementation. That said, as a company grows, ready-made software requires increasingly complicated workarounds and customizations, which can push the total cost and effort higher. So, while creating a custom software solution may seem daunting, the business advantages can make it well worth the investment for many organizations.

This guide lays out the business applications and pros and cons of custom software, as well as an overview of the custom software development process that includes best practices, common technology stacks, and the roles that make up a typical development team.

The following topics will be covered:

• Planning Your Custom Software Development Project
• Selecting the Right Technology Stack
• Custom Software Development Best Practices
• Custom Software Development Processes, Technologies, and Methodologies
• Benefits and Challenges of Custom Software Development
• Why Choose Custom Software Development?

Planning Your Custom Software Development Project

Custom software application development involves hiring software developers to create a software product tailored to your business and responsive to its needs, as opposed to purchasing or licensing a commercial application that’s also available to your competitors. During the planning stages of your project, it pays to be familiar with the development team structure, to understand the criteria for selecting a development partner, and to perform a final cost-benefit analysis.

Roles in a Custom Software Product Development Team

Regardless of team size, there are numerous roles and responsibilities to cover. With a few rare exceptions (namely, not needing database administration for apps with no centralized data storage, and not needing UI/UX design for pure automation apps that users never interact with directly), the following are generally required for any software project:

• Software developers are often front- or back-end specialists (or full-stack generalists covering both roles). They are the programmers who write the main code used in your project. Whatever value software customization will bring, they are indispensable in providing it.
• DevOps engineers are software developers who specialize in carrying out infrastructure-related tasks like tooling and monitoring. They focus particularly on creating and managing the CI/CD pipelines and servers used to build, test, and deploy custom software development solutions. They significantly increase the efficiency of the software development life cycle.
• Technical leads are senior software engineers who help architect the software and its infrastructure and oversee its implementation. Their industry expertise is invaluable in avoiding costly rework.
• Database administrators (DBAs) are usually SQL experts who create and manage database resources. They guarantee data integrity, solve performance bottlenecks as they arise, and ensure internal data security. Just like software developers, DBAs are integral to delivering a quality end product.
• QA engineers plan tests, write code for automated testing, track bug reports, and validate fixes made by software developers. Their efforts can reduce project development time—for example, by helping custom software engineers avoid looping between bugs and fixes that are mutually dependent.
• Security specialists actively audit all software layers (e.g., front end, back end, database, infrastructure) for compliance with security best practices to mitigate threats, and, if applicable, meet prescribed security standards. With their diligent audits, companies can avoid having systems compromised by unscrupulous actors.

Some roles on a development team require a less technical background:

• Project managers (PMs) are adept at both plain-language communication with stakeholders and technical communication with software developers. They keep development on schedule by monitoring and managing developers’ priorities. They also provide project visibility within a company and are instrumental in avoiding expensive miscommunication.
• Business analysts (BAs) also bridge the gap between stakeholders and more technical roles, though meticulous business analysis is more pertinent in the planning stage than during development. These professionals spot business needs and turn them into detailed custom software requirements PMs and developers can work with, advocating for the enterprise’s best interests from the outset.
• UI/UX designers ensure that the software is visually pleasing and easy to use, providing developers with specifications for what end users will see and what workflows will be available to them. Perceptive and empathetic UI/UX designers create engaging digital experiences and ensure that users—and, therefore, the company—get the maximum value from the end product.
• Support team members field inquiries and create bug reports on behalf of users, especially during the testing stage and after app deployment, in a way that provides enough technical information for developers to act upon. Their contributions streamline maintenance efforts, reducing customer dissatisfaction and preserving the momentum of business operations.

An SMB may risk the “bus factor” and hire a single person to cover all of these roles, but enterprise software development teams often have multiple professionals (or entire subteams) in each role, depending on the project.

Choosing a Software Development Partner

With so many facets to manage, factors to consider, and tech choices to make when building software from the ground up, it’s crucial to partner with a reliable custom software company. To do that, you’ll need to define a budget and map out your business goals and project priorities. You’ll then need to inventory any preexisting resources, specific technical needs, and team dynamics that may impact hiring. Given the scope of your project, which responsibilities require dedicated talent, and which would be better covered by a hybrid role?

Once you have a clear idea of what an appropriate software development team will look like for your project, it’s time to evaluate potential development partners within your network. Clear communication and a proven, lengthy track record are the top priorities. Check for client testimonials, project approaches, and industry experience that align with your business needs. Verify their technical expertise in established and emerging technologies relevant to your project so you can be confident in the competitive edge they’ll help you achieve.

Suppose your company lacks familiarity or confidence in carrying out any of the above steps. In such a case, the next step is to find a trustworthy software development consultant—the closer to your industry, the better—to help you navigate the market in greater depth. Their knowledge of typical project roles and dynamics can help you plan who to hire from the outset and which roles are best deferred to hourly specialists.

Decision Framework and Cost Considerations

Established wisdom says to lean toward custom software design when your business starts to encounter inefficient processes or suboptimal performance resulting from the limitations of COTS or FOSS solutions. These could be in the form of manual processes that take significant resources to accomplish, data silos that are a burden to decision-makers, or sluggish software that’s operating beyond its architectural limits.

If your business has distinctive needs that off-the-shelf software doesn’t fulfill particularly well, it’s time to seriously consider custom software product development. A custom software project often carries up-front costs beyond development itself, including on-premises hardware or cloud usage fees, software component and platform licenses, training costs, and potential downtime during the initial rollout. However, these initial investments in innovative solutions can bring a wide range of long-term financial benefits, both cumulative and noncumulative, by increasing the efficiency of business processes, creating unique competitive advantages, and leaving your business more agile.

Custom software applications have long helped businesses reach their full potential. But in today’s economy, custom software is increasingly important for companies looking to create and maintain a competitive edge.

Selecting the Right Technology Stack

Programming languages, libraries, frameworks, databases, operating systems, servers, APIs, cloud services, etc.—with dozens of relevant technologies in each category and endless ways of combining them for a given project, how do companies make sensible tech stack choices for their custom software projects?

For starters, companies don’t always make what are sensible decisions in hindsight, and not for lack of effort or due diligence. It’s hard to predict the evolution of advanced technology and whether it will align well with the goals of a given project—not to mention the evolution of the project itself. And, of course, because it’s custom software, no two projects will be exactly alike.

The good news is that many popular technologies are quite general purpose and can be made to scale for most projects in most industries. Though trends toward a particular programming language (or other tech stack choice) may exist in a given industry, it’s usually circumstantial. The context of the project and the essence of its goals are usually much more relevant in determining its tech stack than the industry a company is part of. Some of the relevant programming languages, frameworks, and technologies include:

• A mere 1% of websites function without JavaScript. It’s therefore used in every industry, bar none. So, if you’re building a custom website, you can almost certainly plan to use JavaScript.
• A similar argument can be made about PHP since it powers WordPress, which itself powers nearly half the internet.
• Another popular language, Python, is known for its data analysis and machine learning capabilities. Python’s robust capacity for data analysis alone may make it particularly relevant to the finance industry—but this same strength makes it equally suitable for modeling data in any industry. And that’s aside from its even more general-purpose uses—for example, as a back-end language that can power everything from file-hosting services like Dropbox to community forums like Reddit.
• Go, C/C++, C#, and Java are widely used in desktop and server software development, which are entirely industry-agnostic.
• Any other technology ranging from Node.js for back-end development to React or Angular for front-end work, as well as Flutter, React Native, and .NET MAUI for cross-platform development,
• SQL is appropriate for most mainstream database operations in any industry.

For many other technological decisions beyond which programming language to use, it is still the case that an individual project and its goals are more relevant than the industry to which it belongs. Perhaps equally important is that a tech stack’s proponent can stand behind it throughout project development. Nevertheless, there are paradigm shifts in software development which, if embraced in a given project, can completely change its direction and relevant tech stack options:

• Artificial intelligence (AI) and its subfields of machine learning (ML) and deep learning comprise perhaps the most widespread technological shift in recent years. AI has project-internal uses (e.g., via ChatGPT) for aspects like code generation, code review, and image asset generation. However, custom application development agencies can also use it as a core technology for everything from chatbots to quality assurance, personalized recommendation engines, predictive analytics, financial modeling, marketing optimization, computer vision, and robotic process automation. TensorFlow, scikit-learn, and other AI tools and libraries (for languages like Python and R) are mature, robust, and industry-ubiquitous.
• Blockchain technologies are widely recognized thanks to the popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but their applications certainly aren’t limited to fintech. For example, supply chain management is poised to be changed dramatically by blockchain technology. Further, several US states have reportedly turned to blockchain platform Cardano to create secure, decentralized voting systems ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Projects that rely on a blockchain might also rely on smart contracts, or they may only rely on blockchain technology via a cryptocurrency wallet like MetaMask. It depends, again, on project objectives.
• IoT, referring to Internet-connected devices other than phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, is well-known in the home appliance market, but it is equally applicable to just about any industry. Anywhere sensors are appropriate—from thermometers in the oven of a bakery to cameras monitoring fish caught at sea—IoT devices can collect and transmit data for use in sophisticated analytics to extract valuable insights in real time for peak actionability. IoT integration will certainly affect project timelines and budgets but won’t necessarily affect their tech stacks since most general-purpose languages are suitable for IoT development.
• Emerging technologies, such as quantum computing and virtual reality/augmented reality, rely heavily on software development. While a field like quantum computing still has years of development ahead of it, many technologies are functional and well tested, even if usage is not yet widespread. So far, the gaming industry has seen the most benefit from virtual and augmented reality; however, these technologies can potentially transform a wide range of industries, including health care, education, automotive, and construction.

When creating tailored solutions for companies of any size, relying on a broad spectrum of technologies is fundamental to success. For example, a regional chain of yoga studios’ custom software might feature a booking and scheduling system that uses Angular and the Google Calendar API and/or an attendance tracking system built on MySQL. Walmart uses a range of programming languages, including JavaScript, Clojure, and Java, to build its applications, in addition to various types of software development tools like Node.js, React.js, and the React Native framework for custom mobile app development.

Custom Software Development Best Practices

Best practices for custom software development apply as soon as the requirements gathering phase begins. Clear, robust, and accessible documentation of goals, responsibilities, and processes is essential. As a foundational source of truth, such documentation plays a significant role in preventing fruitless design and scope creep (of both product features and individual contributors’ responsibilities). The latter can be an especially tricky pitfall for organizations new to custom software development because the difference between major and minor changes to documentation can be far from obvious.

Since a project’s documentation will be referenced continually by all relevant stakeholders, including developers, it’s advisable to agree from the outset that any change to the documentation will trigger a corresponding review of the project’s roadmap to see what adjustments need to be made to its timeline or budget. Another best practice is to provide transparency at the project management level by allowing full stakeholder visibility through tools like Jira or Trello.

Best Practices in Architecture and Design

Before crafting the software’s architecture, consideration must be given to the current size of its target audience and how many users the software may eventually have. While it’s important to keep scalability in mind, take care not to swing too far to the opposite extreme and overengineer in an attempt to account for every possible future use of an app. It’s best to have an expert regularly review the application’s design to verify that it follows best practices for adaptability, such as loose coupling, which promotes code modularity and flexibility.

Be sure to pay attention to user-centeredness during design, as well. Having a user experience design expert weigh in on project plans will keep them grounded in what’s necessary, desirable, and feasible. Consulting an accessibility specialist is vital to ensuring that your digital product accommodates all users, including those who use assistive technology like screen readers and alternative input devices. Depending on the project context, conforming to inclusivity recommendations like the W3C Standards and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) may even be a requirement.

Agile Methodologies and Their Benefits

One of the most advantageous best practices when developing custom software is adopting an Agile project management methodology (with or without Scrum or Kanban) instead of a traditional Waterfall methodology. The shorter cycles of Agile software development (called iterations or sprints) usually last between one and four weeks, which allows feedback to be delivered rapidly and taken into account continuously as development progresses. The end of each iteration also offers a natural opportunity for general code reviews and mentorship sessions between senior and junior developers.

Moreover, the end of an iteration provides an efficient window for seeking any necessary guidance from specialists. For example, at this point in development, a team may call on a cybersecurity expert for assistance strategizing the implementation of sensitive features in an upcoming iteration, after which it may consult the expert again to verify that it has complied with best practices during implementation. In another case, a development team might recruit a privacy compliance specialist to ensure its software development process adheres to relevant privacy laws and regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the EU’s GDPR.

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Pipelines

Agile software development methodologies and CI/CD pipelines can, and often should, be used in conjunction. In the same spirit as Agile software development, CI/CD pipelines promote iterative development, continuous feedback, and structured collaboration. More specifically, they are a method of automating the testing, integration, and delivery of changes made to a codebase. Adding new code to a repository triggers automated building, unit testing, and deployment to a staging environment for further manual testing—or an automatic rollback of changes if any of these steps should fail. By working in this way, developers on large-scale projects stay privy to each other’s changes, and QA specialists can always test the most up-to-date code, increasing the relevance of their efforts. A key advantage of CI/CD pipelines is that they reduce the risk of major issues going unnoticed by means of frequent releases and continuous testing, all while keeping the software in a deployable state. Because they complement each other so well, a best practice is to integrate both Agile methodologies and CI/CD pipelines in a team’s approach to providing custom software application development services. By doing so, teams can maximize the efficiency, quality, and adaptability of their processes.

Testing Best Practices

There are numerous types of manual and automated testing, each of which yields different benefits for a custom software engineering project. Some of the most effective and broadly applicable types are as follows:

• Unit testing is the automated testing of code modules in isolation. All custom software projects should use it, as it’s an efficient way to ensure code behaves as expected and to encourage other best practices, like decoupling code.
• Integration testing ensures that modules work together as intended. Changing one part of the custom software system may unexpectedly break a seemingly unrelated part. Unit testing can’t detect this mishap, but integration testing can.
• Regression testing prevents the recurrence of bugs by creating automated tests specific to them. Once a bug is fixed, its corresponding regression test ensures that no future change brings the bug back.
• Hallway testing, or guerilla usability testing, is a highly effective form of manual testing in which new features are given a quick test by random (but relevant) individuals, such as those passing by in the hallway of a custom software development firm.

Because custom software testing is so crucial to success, another best practice in this area is to always write tests before writing any code for the software itself. As previously mentioned, three popular ways of doing so—test-driven, behavior-driven, and acceptance test-driven development—ensure that the desired result is determined up front to keep technical efforts focused on achieving it.

Custom Software Development Processes, Technologies, and Methodologies

Beyond the basics of effective project management, there’s a significant amount of domain-specific knowledge that is imperative for success. It’s not only about what’s possible and practical to develop, but also about how best to develop it.

Because off-the-shelf software is built around many companies’ previous, current, and predicted needs, its design can easily translate into a bloated end product. Custom software engineering, on the other hand, crucially begins with focusing only on what’s best for your business.

The Custom Software Development Process

Customized software development agencies typically follow this standard process: requirements gathering, planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance.

Requirements gathering: Requirements gathering is the foremost preliminary step in the process of custom software design and development. At this stage, key stakeholders (e.g., business owners, product and project managers, IT staff, end users, and sometimes external partners) define the scope of the problem. They then provide as much detail as possible about current pain points, focusing solely on the issues, not on any proposed or supposed solutions. Such an approach—when undertaken with a software partner knowledgeable about custom development—ensures a clear understanding of the problem at hand, thereby allowing stakeholders to avoid expensive, ineffective, or inefficient fixes that will later require reworking.

Subsequent steps in the development process hinge directly on the efforts and expertise of software development professionals, who themselves collaborate with additional stakeholders, including design and quality assurance (QA) teams:

Planning: Creating a roadmap with a detailed timeline and budget can only be done realistically with the help of experienced software development product and project managers. Even then, success depends on the accuracy of the requirements list. If the problem scope or agreed-upon solutions shift during the project, the timeline and budget will need to be adjusted accordingly. At this stage, it’s also important to clarify who will own the intellectual property rights to the software.

Design: Specifications for the product’s design must be mapped out in further detail before implementation can begin. A software architect will devise scalable cloud-based or on-premises infrastructure, perhaps with the help of DevOps engineers and cybersecurity specialists. In addition, user interface (UI) designers and user experience (UX) experts will draw mock-ups for each required platform (mobile, web, and/or desktop).

Development: In this phase, custom software developers finally write code according to the design specifications. Software architects, DevOps engineers, cybersecurity specialists, UI designers, and UX experts involved in the previous stage may further collaborate with developers throughout the design’s implementation. Depending on project requirements, still others may be involved—for example, graphic artists to create image assets or technical writers to compile product documentation.

Testing: Manual testing can begin as soon as a testable feature or component has been developed. Strange as it may sound at first, automated testing can start even sooner, as in cases of test-driven development (TDD), behavior-driven development (BDD), and acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), among other approaches. When integrated into the development process, these forms of quality control facilitate the early detection and elimination of bugs. In doing so, they help ensure that software is free of defects before it’s pushed to a live production environment.

Deployment: At this point, the custom software has been thoroughly tested, critical bugs have been fixed, and the necessary support and documentation (including training materials or user guides) are available for end users. Some (or all) of the software is released for practical use in day-to-day operations, backed by a range of services to ensure smooth rollout and comprehensive support.

Maintenance: Even the most well-designed and bug-free software can inspire ideas for further improvement. However, barring any supplemental enhancements, software still needs periodic maintenance to stay compatible with the environment in which it runs. Thankfully, ongoing maintenance costs—especially when no feature additions or bug fixes are required—are typically far less than the initial investment. However, software updates may involve some specialized development, depending on the circumstances. For example, updates to a software’s back end may be more complicated than the initial deployment if there’s a need to make sure that downtime is within acceptable limits.

All custom development projects will follow the above steps in some form. But unless they follow established industry best practices along the way, there’s an increased risk that they’ll have a slower time to market and be more expensive to complete than predicted.

Benefits and Challenges of Custom Software Engineering

Eschewing an off-the-shelf solution in favor of custom software design can be a boon to business performance. Still, like any decision, it has its pros and cons. First, the benefits:

• Efficiency. Custom software lets computers do what they do best, enabling more intuitive information systems and automating tedious tasks. The result? Your workforce can concentrate on more creative, lucrative, and fulfilling activities.
• Innovation. When devising new value propositions, custom software gives you the flexibility you need to break the mold. Unlike one-size-fits-all COTS or FOSS options, tailor-made solutions enable you to build tools to meet your precise business goals.
• Agility. Markets change at an ever-accelerating pace; custom application development services allow your business to quickly adapt and streamline new processes while your competition struggles to shoehorn its software into something workable.
• Precision. The more specific your business needs, the more likely it is that generic software will cause problems that require mitigation down the road. Building custom software for business applications, however, allows you to meet distinct challenges with advanced solutions that are designed to prevent future complications.
• Control. Only tailor-made software allows organizations to take full ownership of their business processes. Even the best of COTS software vendors and FOSS projects can eventually cease to support technologies your business may have come to depend on.
• Security. Custom software reduces security risks by implementing protection measures that respond to a business’s distinct vulnerabilities. Additionally, FOSS and COTS software are more tempting security targets due to their larger user bases.
• Integration. While seamless integration is sometimes marketed as an advantage of off-the-shelf solutions, only made-to-measure options provide the freedom to take an individualized, holistic approach to API-driven development for custom software integrations. This results in faster, more accurate data transfer and long-term cost savings, unimpeded by generic assumptions about other companies’ design choices.

The Challenges of Custom Software Development

Despite its many advantages, custom software development may not be the best option for short-term projects where a simple off-the-shelf solution exists and satisfies business requirements.

• Developing custom software takes significant up-front resources and often yields a longer-term ROI than FOSS or COTS software. Even one iteration of the software development life cycle can be costly, involving several phases (e.g., ideation, creation, testing, launch, and maintenance), and at least three iterations are typically required to ensure a high-quality end product.
• Companies may face increased costs related to upgrading their technological infrastructure and investing in human capital.

An organization’s ability to maximize the benefits and moderate the challenges of custom development depends on which development partner it selects. A shoddy custom technology solution from an inexperienced team can easily cause more problems than it solves, both short term and long term, as a business continues to scale. Conversely, a dedicated team of experts will know how to deploy a successful and sustainable solution. They’ll be able to communicate effectively with key stakeholders to translate business objectives into design goals while keeping software development costs appropriately minimal. It’s key to choose a quality development partner with access to top engineering talent, a clear track record of positive client reviews, and adherence to best practices during development.

Why Choose Custom Software Development?

Beyond weighing the benefits and challenges of custom software development, the choice ultimately depends on your business goals. Suppose your business needs a content management system (CMS) to publish information online. You could pay a software as a service (SaaS) provider to manage a solution, perhaps based on WordPress, a strategy your competitors can use to attain similar results. But if you want a highly specific, efficient, and scalable solution that only your business can benefit from, you could instead partner with expert developers to create your own WordPress-based system that extends the platform’s built-in features and functionality with custom plugins.

Whether your made-to-measure CMS software is ultimately WordPress-based or not, the pivotal fact is that it’s an advantage exclusive to your business.

Unique Advantages of Customized Software Development

COTS applications and free and open-source software (FOSS) are built to appeal to a broad range of organizations without concern for a particular company’s business goals or internal processes. Because of this, the capabilities of FOSS and COTS software are generally limited to what its developers believe the majority of customers need. The technical effort required for customization of these programs can be immense, and even then, some limitations may prevent all desired functionality from being implemented. When FOSS and COTS software can no longer be adapted to meet business needs, custom software product development is the only option.

Because ready-made software is often limited in how it can be modified, it can be a stumbling block to keeping up with external requirements such as regulatory compliance, industry standards, and hardware constraints. For example, COTS software not initially designed to handle the privacy requirements mandated by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may need extensive updates to incorporate features for data anonymization, user consent management, and data portability. Due to the broad functionality and diverse environments that commercial software must support, development time can be lengthy, and the results may not align with your business processes. Custom design and development, on the other hand, allow you to implement such features from the get-go and define precisely what you want your processes to look like. By leveraging these advantages, your organization can focus on business growth and maintain a competitive edge.

FOSS and COTS software certainly have their place, even among the largest enterprises. But the unique advantages of custom software help advance technology, drive digital transformation, and determine market leadership—whether your transformation process involves legacy software modernization, AI-powered app development, or cloud migration to a platform like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

Business Applications of Custom Software Development Solutions

Leaders in a range of industries rely on custom solutions to drive growth and gain a competitive edge.

• Healthcare:
  • Medtech company MediView XR, in collaboration with GE HealthCare, is enhancing surgical visualization capabilities through the use of augmented reality (AR) and interactive 3D holographic models of patients’ anatomy. This cutting-edge technology has made significant headway in overcoming long-standing limitations of existing medical imaging technologies, and it has only been possible because the company developed its own groundbreaking new software.
  • The Mayo Clinic, widely regarded as at the forefront of American medicine, depends on custom software for its biomedical research.
• Finance:
  • Major banks like Bank of America, Discover, Citi, and Chase commonly have custom mobile applications that allow customers to manage their accounts, track expenses, and transfer funds. For banks, an investment in mobile development can reduce traffic to ATMs and other brick-and-mortar locations, allowing financial institutions to save on maintenance and other costs tied to local branches while matching consumer preferences.
  • Personal finance company SoFi shifted from a reliance on third-party service providers to internal custom technologies by acquiring Technisys in 2022 in a move it predicted would save tens of millions of dollars annually.
• E-commerce:
  • Online apparel retailer Zappos switched to a custom software solution underpinned by several cloud computing building blocks provided by AWS. The resulting improvements in customer experience, in turn, boosted click-through rates and reduced product returns.
  • Subscription beauty box service Birchbox turned to a custom digital solution in order to scale the business and break free from the outdated feature set of its previous software solution.
• Manufacturing and supply chains:
  • Walmart’s custom supply chain management (SCM) system was so successful that the company decided to turn it into a SaaS offering that itself yields revenue.
  • General Electric reaped many rewards from integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) in its custom software platform for predictive maintenance, Predix. The success of this application led its creators to market it to other companies wanting to lower maintenance costs.
• Public sector:
  • In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) rolled out a custom data platform that integrates information previously stored in separate NHS systems; pilot tests saw lower wait times for planned care, faster diagnosis and treatment, and a reduced rate of long-term stays.
  • Transport for London (TfL) created a custom API hosted on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure that allowed millions of customers to regularly top up their transit cards via the TfL Oyster mobile app for public transport.

As several of these examples show, companies that opt for custom software design and development often spearhead innovation and end up reselling the software following its initial success. Other common use cases for tailor-made software include workflow optimization systems for operations management and customer portals, and order management systems for e-commerce stores.