Bespoke software is used by many companies and some of the biggest major blue-chip companies to ensure they remain leaders in their field and is a solution that should be considered to keep you above your competition.

Designing and building bespoke software can be as simple or as complicated as you like – it could, for example, be a simple phone calculator or a complex full enterprise accounting system that is used by millions every day. It is extremely important before you commence with working with an agency to design your bespoke software, to take into account the costs of upfront development costs and the total cost of ownership – it’s also really important for you to take into consideration your return on investment.

We have put together some of the most costly factors of custom software development.

Software Integration.

You will need to decide if your bespoke software needs to integrate with external software and depending on the type of integration you require could add further costs to your project. An example of this would be that integration into payment providers like PayPal is relatively simple but older, lesser-known systems could pose significant challenges and increase the costs of your final bill.

Upfront Costs Vs Ownership Costs
What are the upfront costs? These will be the initial costs of the design, development, testing and launching of your bespoke software. You then need to consider Ownership costs which are all the costs associated with operating, enhancing and retiring the legacy software.

Take note that the less you pay upfront, the more you will pay later on for improvements, scalability, fine-grain user experience, or any problems affecting performance. So it’s important to consider both aspects when considering creating custom software for your business.

Don’t forget, there are always ongoing costs, such as cloud storage and processing.

The Size of Your Software
It may sound obvious but the more processes and functions your software has the more work is entailed to develop your bespoke software, which means your project will become more costly.

To put things into perspective if you are looking at building a complex enterprise system it can run into hundreds of thousands even millions of pounds. On the other hand, a smaller more formula-based software requirement may be around a thousand pounds.

Complexity of Bespoke Software Functionality
As per the above, the complexity, as well, the size of your bespoke software will increase the costs of your project. If there is a need for cumber crunching, heavy analysis and/or scoring then more complicated logic will need to be developed and coded. The permutations and nuances, the more your costs will increase.

Your Bespoke Softwares Creativity and Usability
When designing your bespoke software system you can let your creativity flow, but, this can come with additional costs. A more basic design will come with a lower price tag but if you want a heavily user-researched design based on demographics and to use custom imagery there will be additional costs as more resources will need to be used.

Data Migration
If you currently hold data this will need to be migrated over to your new system – this is done using custom scripts or export functionality from your old system to the new system enabling it to fit into the new system.

Data migration will need to tested to ensure a smooth transition of data from one system to another and that the new system is using the data correctly. The work to undertake this data migration can contribute to increasing costs of your total bespoke software project as the developer will need to write scripts to export the data and conduct a series of tests to ensure a smooth migration.

Design
The design of your bespoke software project can be adapted around your budget – although expecting a development company to design and build your project for £100 is never going to happen! Once you have worked with your developers and costs have been created it is always possible to add or remove certain features until your budget is met. It is important to be aware that a standard bespoke software project can cost between £40,000 – £250,000

Our previous blog, Planning A Bespoke Software Project contains further information that must be considered before commencing with a project of this importance.