What is custom software?

Custom Software is a computer program or Web site written specifically for your company, according to your company’s way of doing business. The opposite of custom software is off-the-shelf software, also known as pre-packaged or pre-written software. One major difference between custom and non-custom software is that with pre-written software, you do not technically own the software – you are paying for the right to use the software (a license), and the amount of money you pay usually increases with the number of users. With custom software, you own the rights to the software, and you do not pay additional fees to add users. You are free to resell the software to any other party.
Software designed specifically for your company can revolutionize the way you operate and improve your bottom line – by maintaining precise records, eliminating repetitive tasks, sharing information, generating statistical data and much more. Custom software can be used to combine features from other packages with the features that your company needs, or it can enable you to instantly access the information you need in a format that makes sense for you.
What are the benefits of custom software? There are hundreds of programs on the market that can do almost everything you will ever need to do. So why would you need custom software? Because there are so many programs, serving so many generalized purposes that it is almost impossible to find one program that does exactly what you want it to do.
Many computer users spend a great deal of time manipulating data on Excel spreadsheets, or manually producing Word documents, combining information from a variety of sources. You send reports as attachments to your email, and receive reports in a different format that you might have to incorporate into your files in some way. All this may be performed easily within a single application designed and developed specially to fit the needs of your company.