As different as custom business software can be compared to off-the-shelf solutions, it does have something in common with those other one-size-fits-all options: the learning curve. Every piece of software has one. From our perspective, software development needs to keep the learning curve in mind. It’s a big deal.

The learning curve in a software environment relates to the amount of time and effort necessary to become proficient with that particular package. It is often expressed as a line graph that takes into account both the time spent and the amount of effort required.

Software learning curves generally begin with a rather steep incline before leveling off later on. As specialists in custom software development, we have come to understand that minimizing the learning curve as much as possible makes for happier and more productive clients.

Mastering New Software Is Hard

Learning curves exist for the simple fact that mastering new custom business software is hard. Learning anything new has its challenges. But for so many people, software is more obscure than it is tangible. Even though it might be presented with a graphical user interface, understanding a new software package’s functions can be elusive.

A new package’s learning curve matters because it influences how easily and thoroughly workers learn and adapt to it. The steeper the curve, the more difficult proficiency is. The more there is to learn, the less likely employees are to master it.

Things That Exacerbate the Learning Curve

It is impossible to build any type of software for small businesses without a learning curve being part of the user experience. There is learning involved with every piece of software regardless of its purpose. But know that there are things that can exacerbate the learning curve to the point of making it more difficult than it needs to be:

• Software Complexity – One of the unwritten rules of software development is that complexity adds to the learning curve. The more complex a package is, the more difficult it is to learn and master.

• Software Familiarity – The practical impact of the software learning curve is influenced by a user’s familiarity with software, both in a general sense and relating to other software similar to the package being learned.

• User Willingness – Along with familiarity is a user’s willingness to master the new package. There are those workers who will always be extremely resistant to change. There will be others who embrace it enthusiastically.

• Training and Resources – The impact of a software package’s learning curve can be minimized with proper training and sufficient help desk resources. On the other hand, expecting users to be proficient in software for which they receive no training is foolish.

There is no escaping the learning curve. Whether your company uses custom business software or an off-the-shelf solution, new software must be learned and mastered. But there are advantages to custom business software development.

Minimize the Learning Curve

Our position is that software complexity is the number one factor in determining a package’s learning curve. When companies choose custom business software, they can get solutions designed with only the features they need. Keeping unnecessary features out reduces complexity and keeps the learning curve manageable.

Custom business software also tends to come with custom training. Nothing helps reduce the impact of the learning curve quite like solid training provided by people who understand all the finer details of the software itself.

The learning curve is important to software development because it ultimately affects user experience and productivity. We design with all of this in mind. Is there any other way to do it?

Software bloat. It is something we’ve all experienced a time or two. For some reason, so many makers of commercial software feel it necessary to fill their applications with a cornucopia of unnecessary features, creating a bloated package that doesn’t do right by its users. We think that’s a bad idea.

One of the reasons Modest focuses on custom software development is a desire to give clients what they need without any bloat. Software bloat is the enemy. By its very definition, it is completely unnecessary. Our clients want business management software that does what it’s supposed to do – nothing more and nothing less.

Still not convinced that software bloat is a bad idea? Then check out these five reasons to avoid it at all costs:

1. Bloat Creates Steep Learning Curves

Whenever you bring on a new employee, a huge part of the onboarding process is becoming familiar with company software. Enter the learning curve. New employees need to learn how to use software proficiently. At some point, they must master it.

One of the big problems with bloat is that it creates a steep learning curve. Bloat gets in the way. It makes learning more difficult than it needs to be. To top it all off, a steeper learning curve is totally unnecessary. With custom software development, you can also build guides and tutorials that will explain the best use of your application.

2. Bloat Reduces Usability

Even after employees reach the upper end of the learning curve to finally settle in, software bloat still reduces usability. Commercial office suites and bundles, here’s looking at you. Some of the most popular office suites on the market are so bloated that you may feel you need a master’s degree just to navigate the menus. That doesn’t make for very usable software, does it?

3. Bloat Consumes Valuable Resources

Commercial software developers tend to load their applications with tons of features just so they can differentiate themselves from the competition. But here’s the thing about bloat: it consumes valuable resources. Every feature adds to an application’s size. It adds to the volume of computing resources necessary to run it. Bloated software is too big, too slow, and too resource hungry.

4. Bloat Creates Security Issues

A well-known rule within the software development environment is that complexity creates security issues. The more complex a piece of software is, the easier that software is to breach. It is an inverse relationship that is easily charted by anyone who understands software security.

The most bloated applications are the easiest targets for hackers. Every feature represents a potential way in. On the other hand, eliminating bloat makes developing secure applications much easier. Bloat-free apps tend to be safer and more secure all the way around. Custom software solutions often have security needs built into them.

5. Bloat Adds to Development and Maintenance Costs

If bloat increases software complexity, it stands to reason that it also adds to development and maintenance costs. Complex applications are harder to develop. They take more time to build, test, and maintain. That’s why so many commercial applications cost a lot more than they should.

Approaching custom software development with the mindset of minimizing bloat helps keep costs under control. Fewer financial resources are needed to get a package from conception to deployment. And once up and running, less money is spent on maintenance and upgrades.

Custom Software Development is the Gold Standard

You have probably guessed by now that Modest has very little good to say about software bloat. From our point of view, bloat is both unnecessary and detrimental. We would far rather design custom business software that offers only the features clients need.

We have a thing for bloat – and it’s not a good thing. We strive to develop bloat-free software that just works.

It wasn’t so long ago that custom business software-as-a-service (SaaS) was a hard sell. People preferred custom business software hosted on their own local networks and maintained by their own IT teams. But as is often the case, things change. Today, SaaS is where it’s at. But it is still not perfect.

Custom business software running on local networks and computers had its pros and cons back in the day. When the SaaS crowd came along a little over 20 years ago, they began promoting a model designed to overcome some of the problems inherent to locally hosted software. SaaS did manage to accomplish its main goal. But it has its own inherent weaknesses.

The question for companies and their IT teams is how to handle software needs. Given that the SaaS model rules the day, it is probably helpful to look at its good and bad points.

SaaS: The Good

Let’s be clear about one thing: here at Modest, we are essentially in favor of the core SaaS model. We believe it is superior to purchasing custom-built, locally hosted, or cloud-based software for most applications. The model has plenty of good things to offer:

1. Lower Costs

One of the primary benefits is lower costs. Initially, companies spend less because they aren’t paying for a software package they will own and eventually need to upgrade. Rather, they are paying for a subscription of sorts. They are paying for a service wrapped up in an application.

2. Better Scalability

In order for SaaS to work for the service provider, it must be cloud-based. Software in the cloud has a decided advantage inasmuch as it makes for better scalability. You can scale up cloud applications a lot easier than locally hosted software.

3. Maintenance and Updates

Software in the SaaS model is routinely maintained and updated. Customers get regular bug fixes and security patches. They also get plenty of support, at least in theory. Support is something that tends to be sorely lacking with purchased software.

SaaS: The Cons

Not everything about the SaaS model is sunshine and roses. It does have its negatives. But if a company can overcome them, the SaaS model does seem to work quite well most of the time. Here are some of those challenges:

1. Lack of Customization

SaaS solutions are designed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. More often than not, customers get a generic application with little to no customization opportunities. When customization is possible, it is typically limited.

2. Limited Support for Unique Needs

Service providers cannot possibly account for every unique need among their customers. That being the case, there are times when a company has certain needs that just cannot be met by SaaS solutions. Instead, they must adapt their workflows to the limits of the software.

3. Too Many Options

Believe it or not, the SaaS model can be overwhelming to business owners because it offers too many options. It is easy to start shopping for software only to be presented with a laundry list of features that one cannot make heads or tails of. A business owner does not know which service to sign up for because he doesn’t even understand his needs in relation to all the options.

SaaS is still the better way to go for software in the modern cloud-driven era. But pure SaaS doesn’t always work. That’s why we developed the Modest model. We combine the best of SaaS with the power of custom business software to create unique solutions for each of our clients. Why not give us a try?

Modest’s development philosophy is fairly simple, and the largest component is the kind of developers we try to be. We are a team that emphasizes experience in hearing what people want, understanding what they need, and then building something that works better than they expected.

From a customer’s perspective, taking full advantage of the team’s capabilities is a function of that first step – of both you and us maximizing the information Modest gets from conversations with you about what you need and what you are trying to accomplish. The more we are able to learn, the more effective we are at building you a streamlined, effective piece of custom business software that lets you get your work done faster.

Don’t get us wrong – part of our job here is to apply our years of software production experience to your problem, and we are glad to help you work through the process. But we’ve found that a little bit of prep work goes a long way and we thought we’d talk a little about what we’ve learned about the best way to approach getting ready to communicate your exact needs.

Study your current process

Most of our clients already have software they use to run their businesses, but find it failed to scale as their business changed and are looking for something faster and with more functionality. If you’ve found us, it’s likely because you have a similar issue. Now it’s time to put that problem to work by examining it closer, mining it for ideas, and using what you learn to design a better tool that addresses your needs today.

At the most basic level, that means going through every aspect of how you are doing things already and noting every step of the process. And we mean every step; Modest is a custom shop, and that means you have an opportunity to get a piece of software that is tailor-fit in every way and is as automated and labor-saving as possible. The more we know about your process, the closer we can get to that ideal.

It might be that some of the notes you take don’t end up getting used, and that’s fine. Whether it ends up part of the final design or not, knowing more helps us have the context we need to do our work well.

Consider Every Input

Every program runs based on the information you feed it – whether that’s customer information, dates and times, experiment parameters, or some other kind of data. And the information relevant to your process might come from many sources. For instance, it’s common for us to see one process that talks to information from several sources; different programs, for instance, or a daisy chain of different spreadsheets.

When we make software, we try to bring all those data entry elements into one program, organized in a way that makes intuitive sense at a glance. We make sure imports work smoothly and manual data entry is easy and quick. We work with our clients so any information can be added smoothly in a way that doesn’t break the flow of what they are trying to do.

Define Your Dream Output

Just as with inputs, every software has an output – something it accomplishes for you that helps you with your work. Most programs have more than one – customer relationship management systems, for instance, output both current clients, lists of prospective clients, reports related to their needs, lists of tasks to be completed, and more. Every client’s perfect output is a little different, and a big part of our job is making sure the software gives them exactly what they need.

On your end, this means sitting down and considering what you want your software to do that you aren’t currently getting. Do you want more information in an easier-to-use format? Do you want richer data? Do you want more flexibility in your invoicing or better-customized template emails? Knowing exactly what you need gives us a clear goal to work towards.

On our end, this means helping you envision and realize the best possible result. We’ve worked with a huge variety of businesses with complex, varied needs and as a result, we are experts in not only fulfilling the stated needs but exceeding them by combining our knowledge of software design and user experience with client requests to make a sum greater than either component part.

Design the Perfect Workflow

Modest was founded on the idea that software is the fastest and easiest to use when it’s as simple as possible – when all the tools you need are within easy reach, and there are no tools you don’t need where you can grab them by mistake. Simple is quick, simple is easy to use, and simple helps you avoid errors.

Actually getting that idealized form simple is, well, less simple. For one, it takes direction. When we talk to you, we are going to be asking questions about how you work. We will ask how long you spend on each step, which points are the most or least painful, and which parts of the process are the most important. We might ask to see your work through various processes in the way you do them currently. We do all this so we can understand the workflow you want and get an idea of where your current workflow fails to attain it.

Refine Your Custom Business Software Idea With Us

As we said at the top of the article, we don’t expect you to do any of this alone. We recommend you get the best mental picture of what you want as you can, but we are available at every step of the process to help with your thinking. We want to take your best ideas and enhance them, and that means communicating, collaborating, and making sure our plans are in line with your desires every step of the way.

Again, don’t misunderstand — we will work with you from any point in this process. If you have a problem, we’re available to jump in and help you solve it. But if you want a clearer picture of what you are shooting for before our first meeting, these are the steps we recommend. And regardless of when we join the process, Modest is ready to build you a custom-fit, maximally useful way to optimize your work.

We look forward to helping you get started – see you soon!

If you have ever purchased any kind of software for small businesses, you know that off-the-shelf products don’t always work the way you want them to. The same is true for SaaS solutions. Your business may have certain ways of doing things that just cannot be accomplished straight up. So what happens? You need to come up with software workarounds or you can develop and implement a custom business software.

Software workarounds aren’t a good deal for any business. They represent a compromise, for all intents and purposes. You have a piece of software you want to make work despite the fact that it wasn’t designed to work the way you need it to. So you find ways to work around its shortcomings. Here at Modest Dev, we believe in the power of custom business software that is suited to each business’ different needs.

Here are five reasons doing so is not ideal:

1. Workarounds Reduce Efficiency

By definition, workarounds require employees to do things with software they otherwise would not. It requires them to change the way they do things. Either way, a bit of efficiency is lost. Team members cannot be as efficient if their software is holding them back. But that is exactly what happens when companies have to settle for packages that aren’t quite right.

2. Workarounds Affect Workflow

Hand-in-hand with reducing efficiency is interrupting workflow. The classic spreadsheet illustrates this particular point perfectly. Remember that spreadsheets were originally designed to be accounting tools. Yet so many companies now use them to generate reports.

Spreadsheets are not built for reports. You can make them work, but you need to go in and do all sorts of custom formatting to get the kind of presentation you want. You spend more time formatting than actually inputting data. That is not good for workflow.

3. Workarounds Lead to Mistakes

A more important issue for some companies is that workarounds can lead to mistakes. This is never good. Software for small businesses should help minimize mistakes, not create them. A software package’s deficiencies become unacceptable at the point at which mistakes become routine.

4. Workarounds Waste Time

Another thing about software for small businesses is that it is supposed to make a company more productive. Software is supposed to eliminate much of the manual work that is used to eat up valuable time. But when a package is incapable of meeting a company’s unique needs, the time-saving benefits evaporate.

One or two workarounds might be manageable. But if a company relies primarily on workarounds to make software doable, you now have a situation where a tremendous amount of time is being wasted. That time that could be spent on serving customers or improving products and services is put into making software work.

5. Workarounds Make Everything Harder

The previous four reasons explaining why software workarounds are a bad deal can be wrapped up in this final reason: they make everything harder. By their very nature, this is what workarounds do. Just think about the term itself.

To work around something is to take a less direct path to the same destination. You’re taking a less direct path because something is blocking your way. Going around makes your life harder. It takes longer and causes delays. It forces you to do more work.

So many companies accept workarounds as a necessary part of using the software. We don’t. We believe software for small businesses should work exactly as companies need it to work. That’s why we developed our model of building custom business software based on the modern SaaS model.

Yes, it really is possible to have customized SaaS solutions running your business. It’s possible to have software that doesn’t require workarounds. If you would like to know more about how we do it, feel free to contact us.

If you found your way to Modest, it’s because you have something you want to accomplish. You might have a task or workflow you want to make more efficient. You might have a job that you can’t do without better tools. Perhaps you’ve been running your business with spreadsheets and other software you’ve cobbled together, and you want to make the transition to custom software that scales with your growing business. Whatever your needs are, the best solution is a custom-built tool that accomplishes exactly what you need quickly, accurately, and without hassle. You want software that makes your business run better, smoother, and with fewer mistakes. 

If you’ve found us, you probably have a third goal: You want software that does all that without frills, without hassle, and without any unneeded features getting between you and the functions you actually want and need. 

For us, that means building you a tool that’s not too big. It means building all the functionality you need without charging you for tabs you won’t click on and tools you won’t use. It also means not building something too small; we need to make sure that we capture all the efficiency and utility you need to do your job well.

Hitting that Goldilocks zone of “not too big, and not too small” is where Modest shines; it’s what we do, and we do it better than anyone else.

Building Too Big

One of the worst things that can happen to your productivity is getting stuck with a program that has too many features. This might sound counterintuitive — after all, aren’t features good? Wouldn’t you want as many as you could get? It only starts making sense when you find yourself reaching for some function or page you really need, only to grab a useless tool for the tenth time that day.

That’s the danger of overbuilt business tools; they might be able to do everything, but all that everything gets in the way of anything you actually need. Some companies have spent decades adding every feature they can think of to the same programs they want to sell you, and then they pitch those same programs as able to do anything. 

They are right, but they leave out the part where all that completeness means their programs can’t do anything very well, and certainly can’t let you accomplish anything quickly or easily. Modest focuses on usability and utility, but that’s rare; it’s typical for software companies to focus on the flashy features and their company’s valuation, sacrificing the ability of your software to do its job in the process.

Form-over-function is an easy trap to fall into, and that’s why the “custom software” label isn’t in and of itself enough to ensure you are getting what you need. Custom software means you start from scratch every time, and a custom studio that builds a lot of different kinds of software in a bureaucratic environment moves slowly and inflexibly. Modest only builds business software, which lets us maintain smaller teams, quicker turnarounds, and (most importantly) lower prices. 

It’s not enough to have software custom-built, because starting from scratch has its own headaches. Most custom studios build lots of different software and so they’re always starting from zero. And because their process has to handle everything it’s cumbersome and bureaucratic, with sometimes dozens of people involved. At Modest we only do business software, so we have smaller teams, quicker turnarounds, and most importantly lower prices. 

Building Too Small

The other side of the wrong-sized program coin is building as little as possible to meet the client’s exact initial request. Imagine a new customer contacting a developer with a list of features they’d like, and the developer getting to work and building just that; they check every box, deliver every function asked for, and call it a day.

If this sounds great, that’s because sometimes it is; If a client has a good grasp of the workflow they want to see and knows every feature they need to get there, sometimes a developer can build to their exact spec and turn out a program that works great for their needs. But often a client doesn’t know exactly what they need or doesn’t know how to express their needs in a way that gets them exactly what they want.

That’s where a developer can save the day by bringing their own experience to the table. When the client doesn’t realize they are missing a key component that will make their user experience better, a developer should. If a client doesn’t know how to communicate their needs perfectly, an experienced developer needs to be able to interpret and continue the conversation until they are sure the tool they plan to build will solve the problems it needs to solve.

Why doesn’t this happen every time? It’s because it takes both experience and effort. It takes a developer who has sufficient history building useful things to meaningfully enhance a client’s plans. It takes someone who will take the time at the blueprint stage to ensure that what they build is exactly what the client needs. When either of those requirements isn’t fulfilled, the customer stands a chance of ending up with a tool that’s exactly what they asked for but fails to satisfy their need.

Right-size Custom Software Development

A client’s first interaction with Modest is always a conversation. We ask what you are trying to accomplish, and how you’ve been tackling the job so far. We talk about every step in the relevant workflow and take notes, and we ask pointed questions to make sure we fully understand every aspect of your needs.

Then we go to the drawing board and start to design what you asked for, but we don’t let the conversation stop. As we mock up the program, we keep you in the loop so you can let us know if there’s anything we missed or misinterpreted. At the same time, we are keeping our eyes wide open to see if any holes in the process reveal themselves as we build; if we see something that looks like it might slow us down, we bring it up.

We then use decades of experience and a habit of thoughtfulness to build you the best possible version of what we’ve planned together. We work to produce software that functions like a well-organized workshop; when you need a particular tool, you will find it’s already right under your hand. We put every button in the right place, and we make sure everything works in an intuitive, easy-to-understand way.

You end up having a best-of-all-worlds experience. We deliver a tool that helps you work faster, better, and with fewer mistakes. We create software that’s streamlined and optimized for the task you are trying to accomplish without any extra mass slowing it down. We do beautiful work we are proud of to make sure you end up with software you will love to use. 

Most importantly, we do all this without building a single component you won’t use or don’t want. This means a less expensive development process that gets you the utility you need without any unnecessary cost. We deliver custom built software that works better, runs faster, and accomplishes more, all at a lower price point than you might expect. 

That’s the magic of building at the right size. 

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