Do you need a custom system, or will off-the-shelf do?
Custom software is not automatically better. Here is how to tell which one your business actually needs.
We turn down custom builds fairly often, because an existing product would serve the business better and cost far less.
Off-the-shelf usually wins when your process is common — standard accounting, a normal online store, ordinary booking. Someone has already solved it and maintains it for a monthly fee.
Custom starts to make sense when your process is genuinely specific, when you are paying staff to bridge two systems by hand, when per-user licensing is outgrowing a build, or when the data is sensitive enough that it must stay on your own infrastructure.
A good test: if you can describe your process in a way another business in your sector would recognise, look for a product first. If your answer is full of exceptions nobody else has, that is where custom earns its cost.
An engineer replies within one working day — not a sales sequence.
