Best ways to reduce custom software development costs

June 22, 2020 3:02 pm
by Ajanth

Find out the best ways to reduce custom software development costs.

Developing custom software for your enterprise involves high monetary investments. Generally, the requirements of custom software solutions can vary from one business to another. This volatility of requirements makes developers the need to build it from scratch. So, let’s dive into the best ways to reduce custom software development costs that will enable you to build an affordable custom software product without compromising on its quality.

Custom Software Development: Analyzing the costs

Before initiating a custom development project, you need to analyze the cost involved in developing custom enterprise software. Below we’ve listed some of the important parameters that determine the cost of building custom software.

Size and complexity of your project: These two factors greatly determine the cost of a custom software solution. A business that has more complex requirements will need to implement complex business logic to their software. Hence, custom software development projects that need complex business logic will be more costly to develop. Let’s illustrate this with an e-commerce website for electronic gadgets. One version of the website displays products in a predefined manner where users can choose from them, whereas the other version accesses customer data from cookies and makes product recommendations according to their preferences. The latter has complicated business logic and will be more costly to develop.
Functionalities and features of your software: The amount of features and functionalities in your software is a major factor that determines the overall expense of your software. The more features and functionalities you plan to integrate into your software, the more will be the cost involved in developing it.
R&D involved: To keep up with today’s competitive business environment, companies usually come up with innovative business ideas that can improve their current business process. However, applying this idea in their software can be tricky. In order to successfully incorporate your business logic into your custom software, you should deploy an R&D team that can convert your business idea into a working model.
Hourly rates of developers who work on your project: The cost of your custom software development can shoot up if your in house programming team have high hourly rates. Programmers who are based in the US and Europe have the maximum hourly rates in the world. Hence it won’t be a wise decision to cost-effectively develop custom software with your in house team. If you plan to develop it cost-effectively without compromising on quality, outsourcing your project to software development companies in Asian countries such as India will be a great option. It’s interesting that many of the software development companies in India provide its services with one by third of the hourly rate in the US.
Maintenance cost: The cost of maintaining your custom software may account for a fair share of your total development cost. Maintenance activities such as bug fixing, releasing new versions by adding more features, stability improvements, adding support for new devices, third-party services & operating systems, and performance improvements are unavoidable in custom software development. These maintenance activities itself can sometimes exceed your budget and burn a hole in your pocket.

What are the best ways to reduce custom software development costs?

1. Outsourcing can save you big money

You can cut down your custom software development cost to almost 75% by outsourcing to Asian countries such as India and Vietnam. Overheads such as inhouse employee salaries, insurance, perks, workstation setups, and other infrastructure consume a fair share of your software development budget. Outsourcing enables your company to eliminate these expenses.

If you already have an in-house team of programmers and need more programmers to complete your custom software development project, you can hire programmers from offshore software development companies in India instead of hiring onsite programmers. Apart from their low hourly rates, hiring an offshore development team helps your in-house team access to work with global talents.

2. Blended teams can reduce overheads

The more skilled programmers you have in your development team, the more you can save on your custom software development costs. This is because programmers who have more expertise in building custom software products can contribute more to your product when compared with less experienced ones.

However, hiring an experienced developer in the stateside can be highly expensive and won’t benefit your cost-cutting strategy in any way. This is where the idea of “blended teams” comes in. Many of the global businesses have tried and tested this strategy and gained significant cost savings in their custom software development. To set up a blended team, all you have to do is to hire a developer from an offshore development center to work with your in-house development team.

3. Functional understanding of the project

Your custom software can become successful only if your development team has a solid understanding of your business goal and the purpose that it is built for.

Lack of functional understanding within your custom software development team can build confusion that results in the development of functionalities that deviates from your requirements.

4. Don’t skimp on the security

Security is highly critical for any custom software development project. Less secure custom software is more vulnerable to cyber threats and malware that can steal customer and business information such as sensitive information of your customers, enterprise information, financial records, analysis reports, confidential documents, location information, etc.

Losing these data can cost you even your business itself, so it is highly important for you to develop your custom software by keeping security as a high priority.

These are some of the best strategies that you can follow in order to cut down the overheads that are associated with your software development.