Why Custom Applications are often cheaper then SaaS Applications
“Our project just cost us $250,000. That’s a lot of money to spend on software development this year!” That is a quote from a VP of logistics that I recently meet with. What she didn’t realize was that her company was spending $115,000 per year to license their existing software that their new application was going to replace. The new application had not licensing cost and about $5,000 per year in new cost from web hosting on Amazon’s EC2 platform. With those numbers along their new site was going to pay for itself in about a year. What she didn’t realize was that they were making another company (their SaaS vendor) rich by paying them each year.
There are a number of different way’s investing in a custom software project can save you money. Even though the initial cost is almost always higher then an off the shelf solution or a year of licensing a SaaS Application Development application . Below are a few of them.
You don’t waste time dealing with someone else’s process
One of the key frustrations and money wasters our clients express with their off the shelf system is this one. The problem is based on the fact that an off the shelf system is built for many different clients, not just you. This often means that clients who use these solutions have to complete extra steps that are not relevant for their company but that were built in for someone else. For instance, we have a client right now who completes 12 million deliveries every year. They asked us to be their web application development company because of our experience with their company. In our early meetings we discovered that their employees where having to log into three separate application every time they needed to complete a part of their process. There was no reason for this, it’s “just the way the application works.” The approximate time it took to do this was about 45 seconds. Multiply 45 seconds by 12 million and you get more then 17 years of time wasted each year. 17 years their employee’s spent clicking buttons they didn’t need to. Our final web and mobile application will save them that much time just because we didn’t make them click a bunch of stupid buttons.
You own the asset
It might seem small but if you are going to sell your business and the buyer sees that you are spending $X per year on a software license they are going to pay you less for your business based on that cost. However, if they see that not only do you not have that expense but you own a valuable software application that could be resold to someone else you now have something extra to leverage. Don’t believe me? One of our clients did that exactly.
You are in control
Another reason to find a web application development company like Switchbox is that when you build your own application you get to make the changes you want. Another one of our clients had an online software package for showing custom data sets. All they needed was a slightly different way to show and search data online. Their online vendor said the feature was coming… in 6 months. They had us rebuild everything in approximately 3 weeks. What does a delay in getting new features cost you?
Building a custom web application is not always the right solution. But if you are in Columbus, OH and are looking for a web application development company give us a call.