Custom built software solutions for individual companies, are becoming a thing of the past. Technology has passed a tipping point, similar to how the car industry changed over 100 years ago. Vehicles used to be built by hand and eventually replaced by assembly production. Like vehicle manufacturing, software is also industrializing. Choosing a software platform will be essential for organizations looking to invest in using software to improve their value.
There are exceptions to this conclusion. Embedded systems, experimental design systems, and new software niches will emerge as they always have. However, the vast majority of business systems are not revolutionary, but rather evolutionary.
The next logical step in the evolution of software will follow the automobile industry as well.
The Auto Industry And Software Industry
Many people assume these are different businesses, but in many ways they share similar attributes. Car manufacturers want to reduce their time to market with new products, and reuse components amongst many vehicles. Likewise, businesses will want to streamline implementing new features that allow them to change quickly due to changing circumstances.
Like vehicles, software is a means to an end. As software becomes more and more complex, it becomes more expensive for companies to hand build new solutions. Regulatory requirements, changes in the delivery of services, and competition with other businesses require new functionality to be implemented.
Doing this for every hand built system is unsustainable and will deliver a poor ROI over the life of most systems.
There is a need to control the chaos of a constantly changing business environment.
Platforms Are Becoming A Necessity
Car manufacturers learned this a long time ago. Having a common vehicle platform creates economies of scale through shared parts, and improves speed to market. Having a stable common platform also allows manufacturers to quickly adapt to business changes. This agility would not be possible when cars that use different parts and require multiple engineering teams taking years to validate. It is much more efficient to have a single platform that has just minor tweaks to support specific requirements.
Software is no different.
With platforms you also gain the advantage of leveraging future enhancements. These are features that were not originally built, but can be added for a fraction of the cost of developing from scratch. Even if your custom built solution is more efficient, it will never make up for additional platform features that you will miss out on.
Low Code and No Code as Platforms
Low code or No code systems like Salesforce, ServiceNow, or Appian are changing how businesses address business challenges. Unlike traditionally built systems, these platforms provide huge amounts of pre-built and validated functionality. Many of them have already built solutions for common situations.
Implementation of customizations are usually configurations, or make use of extension points for the platform. Most platforms have integrations with other platforms, allowing for simpler transfer of data across system boundaries. You need single sign on integration, flip a switch. Exchange data with your corporate calendar; simply create the connection and create a little configuration.
These platforms are doing what spreadsheets did to the business landscape, but a magnitude larger.
Software Development Is a Commodity
3. a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price
Merriam-Webster definition
Even prior to ChatGPT, programming in the traditional sense was becoming commoditized. Fiverr and other outsourced work platforms have turned traditional programming into a race to the bottom for pricing. The value of developing software is not the software itself (unless you ARE a software company), but rather the value it provides to the company. Understanding the problem is 80% to getting your solution.
Create a Custom Platform For Your Needs
Creating your own custom platform is advantageous in many respects.
- Tools are specific to a domain
- Custom platforms can use domain language
- Regulatory needs can be integrated into the platform, instead of bolted on
- Built correctly, these can allow for quick integration/changes of new requirements
- Building in house Intellectual Property and selling this as a product, or bundled with services
Building a new customized platform means choosing or building a platform on top of an existing product suite, or creating a platform for others to use. Creating your own platform using already tried and true frameworks and libraries means you have control over the direction of the product, but at the cost of economies of scale. The important part is that there is a platform that can be adapted easily to domain changes without requiring weeks or months to make changes.
There are still many domains that are not large enough for companies to build domain specific applications on top of these platforms. This is where there are opportunities for those with domain knowledge and some technical background.
Either way, custom built or off the shelf assembled platforms, will provide a higher ROI over most custom built applications.
The Future of Custom Solutions
The future of most software will be moving away from traditional information complexity theory, and moving into knowing how and which tools to use. Just as programmers no longer need to know how to sort records in an efficient manner, they do need to know which solution to use. The “how” of making the software work has become less important than “why” we choose to make it work a certain way.
Programmers will need to evolve into solution developers and not just programmers.
Create a platform or choose a platform, there are few other good options.