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Issue 6.5

COLUMN

Selling Custom Programming

Issue: 6.5 (July/August 2008)
Author Bio: Bob is the founder of BKeeney Software Inc. located in Kansas City and is the president of the Association of REALbasic Professionals.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 4,444
Starting Page Number: 39
Article Number: 6513
Related Link(s): None

Excerpt of article text...

Does your customer really need the type of custom programming you're selling? I often get a request for a quote that involves fairly standard business applications such as accounting and contact management. It's hard to justify, to myself at least, why they'd want to spend tens of thousands of dollars when they could spend merely hundreds of dollars on off-the-shelf software.

Off-the-shelf software has some advantages over custom programming. It's generally cheaper. It's also available immediately, rather than the months (or years) it takes to develop and debug a custom application. The off-the-shelf software usually has pretty good technical support and a community behind it that can answer those tough questions. The customer also enjoys the comfort of knowing that the company behind the commercial software will likely still be in existence five years from now.

Custom programming, on the other hand, is expensive and time consuming. If the customer wants you to write a QuickBooks killer they'd better be prepared to wait a while and spend some serious money. Creating software that competes with established, feature-rich applications is a daunting task.

...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.