While customization may sometimes seem like the best way to get exactly the solution that your company needs, this approach often backfires. Whether you call it customized or “configured,” software code that has been written specifically for your company can: 1) make future upgrades of any integrated solutions more difficult; 2) be challenging to maintain; and, 3) end up being less robust than the commercial alternatives. There are several reasons why a customization approach is problematic, but I’ll limit this discussion to my top picks.
One reason that customization falls short is that it depends on “a community of one” - a single customer for the software code that has been developed just for them. Contrast this lonely position to the communities that exist among end users of out-of-the-box software, where customers benefit from collective knowledge and investment that’s continually supplied from multiple customers, as well as partners and prospective customers. There’s no way for a “community of one” to replicate the benefits of this.
Another reason that custom development is risky is that you’re often dependent on isolated development resources for both the initial development effort and for future maintenance. Software development depends on multiple areas of expertise: data architects, systems analysts, developers, test analysts, business analysts, etc. Each of these resources brings his - or her - own expertise to the challenge. A single developer or small team working on one-off solutions can suffer from lack of access to high level expertise and talent, which can lead to solutions that may meet a short term requirement, but aren’t flexible or robust enough to work well in the future.
In a world moving to the cloud, where CFOs are looking to move system administration and support costs outside of their companies, customization needs to be very carefully considered for the long-term ramifications and real costs involved. To justify the risks, a customized solution needs to provide really extraordinary value in today’s fast-paced environment.
Bob Scarborough is the President of Tensoft, Inc. and has more than 20 years of experience in business software design, implementation and support. Before co-founding Tensoft, Bob was the Vice President for West Coast Operations of Deltek, Inc. Prior to that, Bob was the