Standard Software or Customized Software: Which Should You Choose for Aftersales and Service?

A few years ago, anyone who wanted to introduce software into a company either had to search for the right solution for a long time or rely on the programming skills of accomplished IT professionals.

Particularly for specialized machine and plant manufacturers, the range of products on the software market was manageable. Those who had the resources developed the necessary tools themselves without further ado in order to network internal processes.

Today the tide has turned. As digitalization progresses, tech startups and software tools are springing up like mushrooms. Even companies that operate in niche areas can usually find standard software that covers their needs, at least to a large extent. For example, today there are ERP systems for a wide variety of industries and company sizes.

But there’s even more to it. Back in 2019, the weekly magazine Computerwoche reported that machine builders are increasingly taking on the role of software providers. Challenges such as increasing cost pressure must be met with ideas for new business models. There has also been a shift in focus from products to services. Machine builders are becoming service providers whose customers expect to receive digital services.

As a result, in the service area of machine and plant engineering, software is becoming increasingly important and more and more processes and data now need to be networked. But which software solution is best suited for digitalizing spare parts information and technical documentation and setting up aftersales and service for the future?

Buying software is similar to the purchase of a tool or a machine: You can find a customized solution for specialized and individual requirements — if you’re willing to invest a lot of time and money.

Customized software solutions usually run on the servers of the companies that use them. This is why they are referred to as on-premise solutions. The processes and workflows are precisely tailored to the needs of these companies. However, such programs quickly become outdated because they are not updated centrally by a software provider.

So-called legacy software, i.e. outdated programs from ten or twenty years ago, are posing serious problems for more and more companies today. The structures that have grown up in them are usually no longer up to date and can only be updated or linked to other systems with difficulty. Given the rapid pace of technological change, it therefore makes sense to consider an alternative.

Advantages of custom software

• customized software
• the functional range corresponds exactly to the need
• immediate and precise integration into existing infrastructure
• low follow-up costs after the investment

Disadvantages of custom software

• initially high programming costs
• dependence on programmers
• costly implementation and development
• many adjustments are necessary, since empirical values are missing
• quickly becomes obsolete

For many tasks in companies today, there is a large selection of software solutions that are standardized and yet flexible. Of course there is no software that is 100% congruent with the individual process requirements of a given company. However, the range of offers is so wide that an approximately suitable software can be easily used for a company’s own purposes with only a few adjustments.

Many standard tools have a modular structure. Machine and plant builders can select from existing functions and use them for their own purposes, just like a construction kit. The advantage of this approach is that these functions are also used by other companies and are continuously improved. As a result, all of the users get the most out of the functions for their own use cases.

Standard solutions are often cloud-based. The advantages of a cloud platform include being highly available and always complying with the latest security standards.