The Future of Digital Products - Custom will be King
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “custom”?
Expensive!
This makes sense—most of the products we buy result from a mass-production world where items are produced in the millions. Custom is expensive because it relies on someone doing a special task just for your item or service. This adds costs, and this “special” item is now worth much more.
We are familiar with this paradigm. If you want a black car, that’s ok; if you want a custom colour, you pay more. Most people are ok with the standard 5 or 6 colours they offer at the dealership and don’t see the value in a custom colour, but there are a small number of folks who are willing to pay the price for a custom colour.
Where does this fall over, though?
Business software is a big business typically relying on mass-produced software products. Think accounting and payroll software, which has been around for decades. Accounting principles are standardized and well-documented, so this was the first victory in the analog-to-digital transformation. The next winners were products like customer relationship management (CRM) software for sales and marketing, but these are still relatively uncommon in traditional SMEs.
However, most businesses still have not adopted digital products for their operations. This is because each company has unique processes and needs to address, making it impossible for mass-produced “one-size-fits-all” software products to satisfy the need. Often, the way they operate is their special sauce that makes them good at what they do.
We hear it all the time:
“We checked out [software product], and it looked good, but we couldn’t see how it would work for us. We do things differently here.”
This leads these companies to either (1) stay with analog (paper-based) processes or (2) spend lots of money to build custom software. Smaller companies usually stick to paper-based processes, while larger organizations spend boatloads of money on consultants and custom software development.
However, the math behind custom software development is rapidly changing.
What if the skills required to make custom software are reduced by 10X? What if the cost of producing custom software is reduced by 10X?
What if you can buy custom solutions for mass-production prices?
This is all happening now! There are lots of reasons why this is now possible:
Modular and Scalable Architectures - These are like Lego blocks for software, making it easier to customize software solutions for a particular customer.
Cloud Computing - provides scalability, flexible deployment models, collaboration with technical expertise worldwide, rapid updates, integration capabilities, and cost efficiencies.
Low-Code and No-Code - allows non-technical users to create and customize software solutions without extensive programming knowledge. These platforms provide visual interfaces and drag-and-drop functionality, enabling users to customize and configure software applications according to their needs. This democratization of customization opens the door for a broader range of users to personalize software products.
AI - The rapid advancement of AI is helping nontechnical users develop their own software solutions, speeding up software development and dramatically reducing costs.
We use all these methods at Mabel Systems to speed up the development and reduce the cost of custom solutions. We work with many seafood companies and realize a “one-size-fits-all” solution will not work here. These tools are why we believe there will be an explosion of custom solutions that fit the needs, particularly for small businesses.
Please reach out if you want to learn more about our systems and how we can help you move from paper-based processing to digital solutions.
We are also approved advisors under the Canadian Digital Adoption Program, which provides support for the digitization of Canadian enterprises.