Custom software or a software vendor: how to choose without regret

What we have seen in the field

Project after project, the same thing: the customer writing on WhatsApp at midnight, the salesperson taking orders with no network, the payment going through mobile money, the rule that changes without warning. And companies paying, each on their own, to adapt software designed elsewhere. Fifty customers, fifty versions, fifty maintenance contracts. When a channel or a rule changed, someone had to intervene everywhere.

Custom work: when it is justified, when it traps you

Custom work is justified when the need really is unique: an industrial process, an integration with a proprietary system, a trade with no equivalent. It traps you when the need is in fact common (answering customers, taking orders, delivering, hiring) and is treated as unique. In that case the company pays alone for development that thousands of others are also paying for, each on their own, and inherits software nobody else maintains.

What a packaged product changes

• One product, maintained for all customers at once. When a channel or a rule changes, everyone is up to date the same day.
• A monthly subscription in the country's currency, with no commitment, setup included, instead of a five-figure quote followed by intervention invoices.
• A single product, improved for everyone: what a merchant in Dakar asks for benefits a merchant in Casablanca.
• Shared artificial intelligence, governed by a public charter: it proposes, you decide.

The three questions to ask a vendor

1. 1Does it know my market: my languages, my channels, my payment methods? Ask for a demo on your own conversations, not on a demo dataset.
2. 2Can I export my data at any time, in a standard format, and what happens when I cancel?
3. 3Is a human reachable, in my language, during my working hours, with a response time written into the contract?

And when custom work is still needed

There is a full place for custom work, and we do it: connecting a packaged product to your existing tools, your ERP, your invoicing or payroll software, adding a module specific to your trade, building a dedicated application when nothing on the market answers. The right question is not “product or custom”, but “what, in your company, is genuinely unique”. What is unique deserves custom work. The rest deserves a product maintained for everyone.

The question to ask yourself

Before commissioning custom development, ask yourself whether your need really is unique, or simply badly served by the software you have tried. In the second case, what you need is not a project but a product built for your market. What counts is what works on Monday morning, in a real company, with real customers.