How A Custom Web Application Can Help Your Business
Years ago, a business owner, chose to invest in an attractively designed website, with engaging pictures, and concise, but persuasive information about the products offered. The business owner took care to frequently offer new and engaging content, update enticing images, and provide extensive testimonials. Maintaining the marketing website became a full-time job and over the years, the business owner realized that with the work required to maintain the website, he/she was not realizing comparable results. This is when you decided not to work harder, but to work smarter.
If you are a business owner, you may have acknowledged that website development is not your expertise. However, as a business owner you no doubt realize that as your business continues to grow, web applications that can integrate your different business systems, and departments, and automate a multitude of business tasks may just be the business solution that will advance your productivity and increase profits. There are generic web application systems on the market that generally help businesses to save both time and money, but because these applications are not designed or tailored specifically for your business, they are often inefficient, and in the long run, more expensive than custom development. Following are four reasons why you should invest in a custom web application.
Department Integration
One of the most challenging aspects of business ownership is integrating the various departments, as each of them have their own distinct responsibilities. Typical departments include:
- General Office
- Finance
- Accounts
- Purchase
- Sales
The departments may be using different packaged solutions that are effective for them, such as Quickbooks for accounting, or Google Docs for word processing. A custom web application can link apps across the board, integrating the departments, and making sense of all the varying aspects of running a business. The custom web application puts the pieces together for you and makes it simple to inspect and supervise all departmental activity.
System Integration - How Custom Web Applications Can Help:
There are numerous technologies on the market that allow managers to collect, analyze, and process information they need to operate, and make decisions. Three of these information systems are:
- Transaction Processing:
Transaction processing systems collect data from users, which prompts an output based on their input. A typical retail example would be a customer selection, resulting in an inventory reduction, a generation and payment of the bill, and collection of shipping data.
- Customer Relations:
Customer relations systems gather and identify customer actions, such as buying trends, customer questions, and product defects. These systems are designed to promote customer interaction, provide problem resolutions, and to invite consumers to provide feedback. The information provided allows business owners to coordinate their sales with their marketing strategies.
- Business Intelligence:
Business intelligence systems collect and compile data from a variety of business operations. Once the data has been extracted, it is analyzed resulting in information that can be vital for business decision making. The information may:- Summarize current expenses
- Estimate future sales revenue
- Predict future sales patterns
A custom web application will allow your business to collect only the correct and relevant data for your business activity, even though you have information coming in from a variety of systems, and sources. The beauty of a web application, tailored to your unique business needs, is that it can quickly sort, and assimilate the data in a central site, that can then be accessed for specific analysis.
Automation - How Custom Web Applications Save Money & Time
Every business has myriad tasks that, prior to technology, required tedious manual labor. Automation can be customized to fit your business needs, speeding up processes and significantly increasing efficiency. Not only are repetitive, pointless work tasks eliminated, there are other substantial benefits that automation provides.
- Speed:
Automation is faster than human responses. Employee responsibilities can be refocused into areas where human interaction is required and will be most productive.
- Increase Production Without Hiring New Staff:
Automation allows production and efficiency to increase, without increasing the payroll. Automation can be the competitive edge to an organization’s success.
- Error-Free:
Workflow automation eliminates the human error component. With fewer mistakes occurring, business credibility and reliability only increase.
- Reduced Product Cost:
Workplace automation uses and relies on cloud technology to store and retrieve information. This reduces the costs of office supplies required, including paper, toner, and other office resources.
Security - How Custom Web Applications Keep Your Business Safe
Network security is one of the most important factors a business must consider. Pre-packed web applications will generally include user-based security measures, but they may not provide the level of security you require for your sensitive data. Without specification, the security levels offered by generic web applications may actually inhibit work processes that are necessary for your business operation. Customization allows all security standards used, to be tailored specifically to your business’ needs.
Resources
If you don’t have the budget to have us build you a Custom Web Application we have included a list of some prebuilt, customizable, systems. If you need help implementing one of the systems or need to integrate one of them with an existing system let us know and we can help.
