Custom Job Management

However, keeping all of your jobs and appointments in a spreadsheets or paper diary will set you up to fail.

As your business grows, you'll face the decision of building your own job management software versus opting for the pre-made solutions.

Requirements

Before deciding whether to go custom or off-the-shelf, you need to work out what your business really needs from a job management system. If you work with us at Switchplane, we can make a lot of recommendations too.

Once you have your list, you should rank all the requirements on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of importance. With the final version, you are ready to approach and assess various existing solutions, alongside the cost of having something developed from scratch to fit your precise needs.

Consider the time factor

One of the great things about custom building your own job management system is that the end product will meet all your exact requirements and slot in seamlessly with your business processes.

However, it's important to bear in mind that certain requirements may be difficult or costly to implement in the alpha product version. You therefore need to be realistic about the length of time you will need to invest in its development and have the absolute finished product with all your feature requirements in your hands.

Off-the-shelf packages, on the other hand, arrive pre-built and ready to go. The time to roll out the software however can be more lengthy than for a custom platform - you will be less familiar with all its features (having not been part of its build), and there are likely to be a number of unwanted features creating extra noise and complication for your staff to navigate around.

Company size matters

The majority of existing job management software are usually priced per user. This means that the larger your team grows, the more you'll be forced to pay on a monthly basis.

You will be required to pay for monthly users regardless of how often they actually use it. With this in mind, you may be forced to restrict access, yet this means that the overall company efficiency and productivity may suffer.

Now, let's move on to the topic of cost, and examine whether hiring developers to work a project will actually cost you much more than purchasing an existing product.

How much does job management software cost to develop?

The initial cost for job management development usually starts from £5000 based on your requirements.

Job management systems are usually developed continuously. A benefit from creating custom is that if you stop paying for it, you can continue to use the service. With off the shelf software, the moment you stop paying, all your data is lost and you lose access.

Now, let's take a look at the pricing of one of the most popular off-the-shelf job management platforms. Their enterprise-sized package is priced at £120 per user per month. Some quick maths here:

25 users x £120 = £3000 per month = £36,000 per year = £180,000 for 5 years.

For the same amount of money your company could have already built a powerful, custom job management system unique to your business processes which would require far less investment in terms of maintenance and possible tech support.

Whilst development may initially seem like a costly and unnecessary investment, the costs are typically justified when you review the longer term opportunities. Avoid paying for features that you may not need or a product that does not meet all your requirements by investing in a custom job management system with Switchplane.