When your business puts its trust in an IT consulting partner or offshore software development vendor, it must ensure that the service provider has the skills and knowledge to execute the project – from concept to deployment and beyond with support, maintenance, upgrades and goals for business growth. In this article, we highlight three areas of focus and skills your business will need if it is to succeed with custom ERP or custom software development projects.
‘Be sure the IT consulting partner has the skills to complete all tasks – from feasibility studies and proof of concept to mobile application testing, industry standard security and compliance certification to software product or application upgrades and training.’
Here are three areas of skills, knowledge and focus your Custom ERP or Custom Software Development team should possess:
Software Product Development vs. Software Application Development – Understanding the difference between software product development for the market and software application development for internal business use is something your custom ERP or custom software team must understand. It must provide appropriate skills to suit either project type. If it is to succeed, Software Product Development must include state-of-the-art software engineering practices, appropriate technical architecture, versioning control, detailed technical and user documentation and high development and quality standards. The software product development process must include steps to refine product requirements and to create and manage clear goals to meet business and technology objectives, mitigate risk and produce products and output. The business must perform market analysis, comparative analysis, and functional and technical feasibility studies to facilitate and accelerate growth and market success. Very few internal business IT teams possess the resources or domain expertise to successfully develop a software product for market. If your business leverages the experience and skills of software product development experts to design and develop software products, your team can focus on core activities to advance market position and grow the business.
Software Security and Privacy Compliance – Whether your business is global, regional or local, your business strategy must include a security component and comply with relevant standards, including industry standard information security, data security, application standards and interface standards. Some businesses must also enforce legal compliance standards or comply with government and industry regulations like HIPPA and Sarbanes-Oxley. A custom ERP or custom software service provider must have a comprehensive understanding of all of these requirements and provide the structure your business will need to ensure that data and information related to business strategy, proprietary data, pricing data, HR data, financial data, personnel and other critical information is protected. Security threats can come from inside or outside the enterprise and the implications can be devastating to the business, causing damage to reputation and threatening legal, financial and ethical integrity.
IT Staff Augmentation, Resources and Skills – When your business engages an IT consulting partner or offshore development team, it must be assured that technical skills and leadership skills are available and that the right resources and team members will be assigned to ensure a successful outcome, both during a project and for ongoing support or upgrades. A comprehensive suite of skills to cover the enterprise technology environment, application development and integration, software product development and infrastructure management and support, is mandatory, as is a stable communication and reporting process to deliver a new software product to the market or upgrade, migrate or change systems, network, databases, applications, integration landscape or other technology components.
When interviewing an IT consulting partner, it is important that the business outline its requirements and review service provider skills, resources and experience to ensure that the partner team can engage in all activities with confidence – from feasibility studies and proof of concept to mobile application testing, industry standard security and compliance certification to software product or application upgrades and training, the right IT consulting partner must assure the business that it can accommodate all needs and produce a successful outcome.
‘Here are three areas of skills, knowledge and focus your Custom ERP or Custom Software Development team should possess.’
The right IT consulting partner can help you to achieve a positive outcome for your custom application development project, Custom ERP or Custom Enterprise Application project. Read our articles, ‘Three Reasons to Engage a Partner for Custom ERP and Custom Enterprise App Development’ and ‘3 Business Benefits of Custom ERP and Custom Software Development.’
