Your Business and COVID-19: Doing More with Custom Software

COVID-19 is showing businesses the need to adapt and adapt quickly. Businesses are sending employees home to work, reallocating office space, and exploring new opportunities in a changing marketplace. As they adapt, their software needs to change with them. Custom software, in fact, needs to play an integral role in aiding the business in making these changes. Can that be done quickly? Strategically? As we discussed previously, building your custom software solution around a core function and then connecting other services to it can be done faster and more cost-effectively than trying to create a monster program that tries to do it all.

Business Trends and The Pandemic

Most of us didn’t have “Pandemic” in our business plan going into 2020. But at the same time, businesses have made significant adjustments to the changes in the economy and the market. Many of these changes are now likely going to stick and become trends going into 2021.

The business trends going into 2021 include:

• Remote Workers: In order to stay healthy, employees are working from home and proving that productivity can stay just as good as before, or even better.
• Hacking: Hackers are always looking for new vulnerabilities. With employees working from home and connecting to corporate assets, hackers are now finding access through doorbells and thermostats.
• Automation: Businesses are using these times to identify parts of their operations and communications that can be automated.
• Online Collaboration: Do you have a Zoom meeting coming up soon? Meetings have gone online and with it collaborative work.
• 5G: With speeds up to a Gigabit coming to smartphones, employees and customers will expect even more of their work lives to be accessible from the palms of their hands.

Many of these trends can be looped into a larger strategy of “Going Digital,” from marketing to meetings to the remote workforce. As your company goes digital, it is custom software that enables these changes, that facilitates these changes, which turns these changes into opportunities.

How Custom Software Can Get Your Business Through COVID

Using the right development strategy, we can develop a custom software solution that helps your business survive and even grow during the “new normal” economy that is emerging from the pandemic. Using a strategy of building a strong foundation, focused on a key, core functionality of your business and integrating connected services, you can get this up and running quickly while controlling the budget, so that your business can make the necessary adjustments.

Here’s how Custom Software can get your business through the pandemic:

1. Mobility: Your workforce is likely spending more time working from home, not in the office. Custom software will give them access to data and processes on their mobile devices.
2. Security: Custom software protects your data from new vulnerabilities introduced by the remote workforce.
3. Automation: Identify processes that can be automated. Custom software can run those tasks and processes automatically.
4. Communication: With your workforce spread out across the country, communication remains a top priority and your software should accommodate that flow of information.
5. New Revenue: Your software can enable you to offer digital versions of your products and services, creating a new revenue stream.

Getting Custom Software Built Right -- And Quickly

Creating a custom software solution for your business might seem like a daunting task, and it might feel like it’ll take too long to implement in time to take advantage of this shifting market. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Using our strategy of building a central, core foundation and connecting other services from there, you can get your software up and running relatively quickly and save on budget.

Getting your custom software up and running quickly doesn’t mean any corners are cut. You will still see a fully integrated solution that ensures your data is not siloed, that functional teams share data, and that users -- internal and external -- are able to maximize the benefits of the software. We accomplish that by integrating other pieces of software and existing services into the core project.

If you would like to know more, contact us to set up a time to review your business’ needs and get your software strategy in place.