When you’re running a business it’s always difficult to avoid wasting time carrying out tasks that don’t earn you money. That might be as simple as entering sales invoices in your accounts package or managing sales enquiries. That’s where custom software can help.
Open Sauce Systems have been designing and developing custom software for businesses for almost ten years and we have worked with businesses in many industries including transport, debt collection, cake making, waste processing and even a horse farrier! But what makes a business choose custom software when there’s so many apps available at low cost or even for free?
Whilst your business is small it may well make sense to use off the shelf software which may be low cost or even free but you need to think about what you are putting your trust in. Where will your data be stored? Who has access to it? What if the system is closed down (or shuttered) as is common? You should also think about whether the system will work the way your business operates or if you will need to change your business to fit the system. If you have to reorganise your business to match your systems then you might need to think about how much it is worth to you.
When taking on a custom business system project we normally start with a basic (or sometimes detailed) brief from the customer. We will then use our years of experience to analyse your current business model and report back about what we have found as well as make recommendations about what needs changing. On occasions our initial business analysis has been all that is needed as we have been able to recommend changes to the business that negate the need to build new systems!
Once we have designed and developed the software we can work with the customer to train users and roll out the system. We can also carry out ongoing reviews to see if everything is working as planned or whether tweaks are needed. In this way the risk to the business of changing systems is minimised.
Open Sauce Systems build everything from simple integrations between existing systems to full blown Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP) systems as well as integrating with systems such as Xero for doing your accounts.