Tailored software is taking a previously developed software package, reworking it and adding in some fresh code to customise it to fit your requirements exactly. As you can imagine this process is hugely time and cost saving and is something we specialise in at Alinea.
There are many software products available that have been written by communities of businesses and enthusiast under a no cost share basis (called Open Source. Here is more detail on the principles of open source ). Some of these developments become very large enterprise level solutions and the benefit is that we are able to add functionality to them or even join them up with other open source packages to deliver a powerful finished product.
Other mainstream software packages sometimes offer integration, where we can develop a small piece of code that meets your specific need that then talks to the mainstream package through an open door that the developers have created for such a task. This is called an API. Here is some more information on API’s but it get rather technical.
The need to develop a custom software package from scratch should not be the first port of call. Speak to a developer like us first as we have extensive knowledge of the availability and suitability of hundreds of open source packages and packages that have open doors for all sorts of disciplines.
There is an opportunity to avoid the cost and time reinventing the wheel with a tailored solution.