Getting The Upper Hand
Developing business software is now more popular than it’s ever been. Every day, more businesses are starting to use custom business tools. In recent years, the languages of software development and the hardware that runs the applications have progressed tremendously. This is where you’re seeing an uptrend in contracting custom software applications, especially for companies that are looking to stay competitive.
Let’s take for example, your company has a broad product line that gives consumers the ability to customize products to suit their needs, it would be ideal for you to use a product building tool. In the past, if a customer wanted to customize their product they would generally have to do it over the phone where they would speak to a representative by calling a support number. However, nowadays this method is straight up outdated, complicated, and inefficient.
Is Phoning Too Old School?
You might be thinking, is phoning in a bad idea? Well, the truth is there’s always been a problem with recognizing customer needs or difficulties in communicating over the phone. Doing it the old fashioned way would simply result in a client-representative divide.
Problems include clients not knowing what their product looks like until the day they receive it or plainly receiving a product that looks nothing like what they expected and having to return it. This is especially apparent in industries where aesthetics are equally significant as functionality. The personalization of a product over the phone leads to mistakes at a rather alarming rate and that’s something we want to avoid.
Should You Use ReadyMade Platforms?
A growing trend that’s been making waves is pre-made e-commerce sites. If you have a limited line of products which can't be personalized, your company will benefit from this form of pre-made software.
However, if you have a software framework consisting of different components that come together to construct a single, distinctive product, you’re far better off using a custom business software application instead. Reason being, the functionality of such programs can be limited.
Visual Customization
People desire beauty and enjoy looking at things that are appealing. Aesthetics are key especially to customers who have an eye for design and consider themselves highly visual people. The final look for a product is critical, otherwise customers will be surprised and disappointed if they receive something they didn’t expect.
Developing custom business software for product builder applications helps you offer a design platform to your clients that consists of visual product tools. This will allow them to edit, design, and finalize choices for their project while being able to see the end result as a picture or model modified in real time. Since the software would be integrated into the intranet, customers would be able to access product builders while browsing your website.
Check For Compatibility
Increasing your product range and adapting to an ever-changing environment with minimal disruption is difficult. Ensuring that any component you add to a build is compatible with all the other components on that build is crucial, which is why it’s important to have a visual product configurator.
Completely removing compatibility concerns allows your customers to create a totally unique, designed product with custom product builder software that has automated compatibility checking programmed into the application. Incompatible components are filtered out from every selection.
Inventory Management
Consumers may face delays and even cancelations of orders when it comes to issues involving stock management. This could be where some parts go out of stock, which disrupts the placement of product orders.
Take into consideration employees that deal with customers, who are not aware of the changes to inventory in real time in regards to parts being unavailable. You can see why this could be troubling, but this is where a custom product builder software can help.
Professionals in business software development typically program their product building tools to integrate with inventory databases. This way, if a product goes out of stock the consumer will be alerted during the process of customization. The list of available components will also not include out-of-stock parts.
Cost Savings
Did you know implementing a product builder tool on your website is one way to reduce costs? If the program is well designed, these expenses can be eliminated by as much as 75 percent.
The fact that consumers would be using your product builder platform much more often than calling, displays a unique benefit. There would be far less calls per month to place orders. Decreased frequency of calls results in reduced costs for you, which at the end of the day puts more money in your pocket.
Customer Satisfaction
Satisfaction is important in every industry where clients communicate directly with the brand. A satisfied customer can become your greatest brand ambassador. If you achieve high customer satisfaction, those customers are more likely to share testimonials, refer their friends, and leave great reviews. One way to provide top-notch customer satisfaction is to have an interactive, visually appealing product builder tool on your website.
Ultimately, having a product builder isn't just a cool new addition to your online presence – it's a powerful tool that places you as a market leader who prioritizes satisfaction of your customers above all else.
What Programming Language Should I Use?
There are a ton of different coding languages to choose from, the digital world prioritizes speed and visual effects to create a better user experience. When inquiring about a product builder proposal from a business software development company, ask about the default language they use to code the software. Make sure they use one of the three major programming languages such as JavaScript and Python.
If you’re interested in learning more, ISU Corp is always ready to help, contact us today!
