Business software is not unlike fashion: Wait long enough, and your old jeans are back in style. This is what’s happening in IT strategy today: The highly customized, do-it-yourself craftmanship of the early days of code is making a comeback after two decades of IT relying on canned packages from commercial vendors.
This move to purpose-built software marks a seismic shift from the familiar, generic CRM and ERP systems that have dominated the industry for a generation.
Why the shift to purpose-built software?
Companies want best-in-class software that fits their businesses and delivers a competitive advantage.
When companies subscribe to a generic vendor platform, thousands of others — including their direct competitors — are using it, too. There is no uniqueness, and companies struggle to adapt their workflows to the software when the reverse should be true. Moreover, companies have little control over when a generic software vendor will deliver an enhancement they need — if it is delivered at all.
Vendor lock-in is an additional concern. What happens if your business model changes dramatically and you need your software to do something fundamentally different? Purpose-built software can be modified to achieve best performance and company-specific functionality. Vendor packages generally cannot. In short, companies are in a better position to respond to business changes if they control their own software destinies.
Collectively, these advantages reduce risk — and they free IT from relying on outside vendors to develop new enhancements the company needs now.
How are firms executing purpose-built software?
The supreme irony in purpose-built software is that its development methodology bears a high resemblance to traditional Waterfall application development:
Waterfall elements. As in the Waterfall methodology, purpose-built software includes a formal application requirements definition and analysis phase. Purpose-built applications are also subject to rigorous code management and version control, QA testing and performance and security testing.
Agile. At the same time, purpose-built software incorporates elements of Agile application development. Like Agile, it “chunks up” applications into smaller “sprints” of software that IT and users collaborate on and continually revise.
DevOps and automation. Purpose-built software also takes advantage of new DevOps and automation tools, including:
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Robotic process automation, which can scrape data off a screen and infuse it into automated processes (such as invoice processing and payment) that run certain business workflows consistently and reduce human error.
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Modern containerization tools such as Docker, which packages an app with its dependent infrastructure into a single container; and Kubernetes, which is able to automate containerized operations.
Purpose-built software in action
The story of purpose-built development dates back more than 50 years, to a time when companies developed custom software to enshrine their unique “secret sauces” — the operational and strategic innovations that gave them a competitive edge in their industries. These now-ancient algorithms, many of them written in COBOL, Assembler and Fortran, are still running in the bowels of some enterprise software today.
What’s different now is a new generation of purpose-built software development capable of producing today’s competitive “secret sauces.” Examples include:
The success of these use cases is encouraging more companies to develop their own software rather than deploy generic solutions used by everyone else.
Hybrid approach to new purpose-built software
Developing purpose-built software is not a full retreat to the older world of custom software development. Instead, it represents a strategic evolution that merges elements of traditional Waterfall development with the iterative flexibility of Agile methodologies, supported by modern tools and methods such as containerization, workflow automation and AI.
Purpose-built software is a natural fit for IT teams, which typically include staff developers who come from both the Waterfall and the Agile development worlds. Since most IT departments already operate in both frameworks, the adaptation to a purpose-built software approach can be easily facilitated.
Of course, there are the challenges, notably the complexity of choosing the right software and tool stacks. IT teams may also have to potentially take charge of custom API development, moving away from the “plug-and-play” integration offered by many generic applications. However, the long-term advantages of purpose-built software are significant: It eliminates vendor lock-in and gives companies the ability to control their own business software, so the next strategic “secret sauce” can be built on their own terms.
