Why no-code beats custom software and turnkey solutions for business

When looking to adopt automation to streamline processes and drive efficiencies, businesses are often faced with an important decision – whether to purchase a ready-to-use turnkey solution, or to invest in custom software.

While both custom software and turnkey solutions have their merits, there is, however, a better choice to make – namely to invest in a no-code configurable platform, which allows businesses to build software applications without the need for coding.

In order to understand why no-code offers the best option to businesses though, it is necessary to explore the constraints associated with both custom software and turnkey solutions.

Cost

Undoubtedly, the most cost-effective approach is to buy a licence or subscription to an off-the-shelf, turnkey solution. With these, all the research, development, and testing have already been paid for, and users can be assured that they will work – otherwise they can simply cancel their subscription.

Building custom software in-house, on the other hand, has many costs, some of which are particularly well hidden. Furthermore, the software often takes longer than expected and can end up costing far more than was estimated. There’s also no guarantee that, after all of this, the software will actually work.

No-code platforms are essentially the same as turnkey solutions from a cost perspective, but can carry a slightly higher upfront cost to configure to a specific business case. However, they give companies much more freedom to tailor their software to their individual requirements and processes.

Control

The biggest appeal of building software in-house is the notion that it can be moulded to meet a company’s specific requirements as they arise, whereas turnkey solutions do not ascribe users much flexibility.

What choosing to build software in-house also means, however, is that organisations will be heavily reliant on the developers responsible for building or updating their software, and this can be expensive.

No-code extensible platforms, however, can be customised and adapted by businesses and new functionality can be added. In this way, it is feasible for the software to fulfil 100% of an organisation’s requirements, without the company having to develop anything.

Connectivity

Every company has its own systems in place that play a fundamental role in the efficient delivery of practices and processes. As such, it is vital for any additional purchased software to be compatible with existing systems.

While turnkey solutions may provide a raft of useful applications that can easily and quickly be rolled out across an organisation, they may not connect particularly well with the existing tech stack due to the lack of flexibility afforded by them.

By building their own custom software instead, businesses can help ensure that these connections are made, However, this approach is contingent on teams having the capacity and the ability to undertake the extensive process of stitching together various smaller solutions, which is highly unlikely for most companies.

No-code extensible solutions allow businesses to easily integrate a wide range of new applications alongside their legacy systems.

The bottom line

It is evident that the main benefits of building custom software are high adaptability, as well as the level of control that doing so can ascribe to businesses, enabling them to build their own unique selling points [USPs] around the technology.

Despite this, a business embarking upon the task of building its own software will need to bear in mind the high cost and slow deployment times that may be involved, in addition to the level of expertise that is required – something that many organisations lack.

Similarly, buying turnkey SaaS software – while quick and cheap to roll out and requiring no maintenance – really limits the control a business can have over its software, as well as the software that it uses as a company.

Investing in a no-code platform delivered by a specialist provider like askporter can often be the most sensible and seamless option for the vast majority of companies looking to automate their processes and practices, being that it incorporates all the best parts of custom and turnkey solutions without the constraints associated with them.

ENDS

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