Custom Software is No Longer a Project – It's a Product. Here’s What That Means for Enterprises

Eyes Here for 10 Mins: From project-based development to building for impact and business value – custom software development is softly evolving to deliver immersive and meaningful outcomes to users. This opinion piece explores the nuances of this shift – reasons, why you must adopt it, what you can expect and everything that you need to do as a business. We’ll talk about building realistic features, feedback-led improvement and most importantly, how to lead in usability. We’ll also talk about designing software products with a product-led, scalability mindset. Let’s begin!

In a very contextual talk, CEO of Blossom, Thomas Schranz, remarked, “Some companies approach software development as an engineering management challenge. Others approach software development as a product management challenge.

Good companies manage Engineering.

Great companies manage Product.”

A comment made in 2015 that holds immense relevance now, 10 years later!

Custom software development, once strictly scope and deadline based has gradually inched towards the narratives of value and impact. Now, it’s no longer just ‘build fast and scale smart’. It’s ‘solve the problem, write the code and build with intent’.

New-age trends in custom software solutions do not just thrive on tailored tech capabilities. It demands:

• Very specific attention towards the end-user, leading every functionality and design decision with the user in mind
• Building leaner, intuitive solutions for delivering deep business impact
• Building with optimism – innovating, testing and pivoting continuously
• Leading feedback loops with realistic prototypes and mock-ups of the solution

Now, this isn’t your typical facts and figures blog. It is an opinion piece stemming out of a careful industry watch, realistic development expertise and deep mastery over custom software development services as a segment. This will serve you as an extensive guide in developing and reimagining custom software as today are going to discuss about a deep mindset shift, for businesses and tech service providers – unfiltered and raw opinion.

The Project vs. The Product Mindset – Why is Traditional Custom Software Development Falling Behind?

This essentially isn’t about how your build a software. Treating custom software as a product is about how you conduct your business – prioritizing transactional sales vs. building long-term relationships.

This is the shift of mindset I was talking about!

The differentiator here is the tech landscape we operate in. Traditional linear and project-led custom software development work well in a fixed-scope setting. Here, requirements are gathered, timelines are set, budgets are allocated, and teams are built for a stable environment – secret recipe for why your software product is failing!

However, in today’s dynamic development landscape, market conditions and user expectations are evolving at the pace of now. And technology is ever changing. This is why the linear software development approach falls flat on its face.

Following the project mindset now means:

• Serious scope creep; rigidity leading to no innovation
• Limited focus on adoption, usability, or realistic ROI pipelines
• Lack of alignment between business goals and outcomes
• Building software that check specifications but not user needs
• Flawed feedback mechanisms
• No ownership in post-launch phase

Working with a project-led approach means you stand at the edge of delivering outdated, underutilized and misaligned software solutions.

Flip The Script with Product-centric Software Development – What Changes?

Custom software development for enterprises is about building a lasting brand image. It’s never about a one-time transaction. As a business you need to shift from selling a product to selling a long-term collaboration.

Now, you can’t be chasing the traditional product development metrics of quick acquisition or viral growth. You’ll rather be delivering true tech impact and sustainable value that your users will be keen on renewing year on year.

You will essentially prioritize:

• User-first approach Over Meeting Deadlines – ask questions like “How will my user interact with this feature?’
• Leading an agile software lifecycle with iterative development and constant product evolution through feedback integration
• Involving security teams from the first line of code written, aligning design, development, marketing and other functions for shared responsibility’
• Building realistic software products that adapt well, scale well and deliver long-term impact by demystifying traditional myths.

How you’ll generate continuous value with Agile and DevOps:

• Build user-centric designs to solve real-world problems with a deep understanding of how your software product is used in context.
• Enhance multi-level engagement (from end users to C-suites and executives) for diverse perspectives on value and challenges.
• Leverage data-driven decisioning for deeper understanding of our customer’s industry trends, business challenges and compliance environment.
• Build rapid prototypes and MVPs for faster feedback acquisition and enhance CI/CD pipelines.
• Leverage cross-functional collaboration between sales and customer success teams for deeper insights that are otherwise not determined through usage data.

Driving The Product Mindset – What’s in It for Enterprises?

Leading an enterprise software development strategy is like driving an oil tanker – complex, bigger and demands a hands-on approach to navigation.

Pete Koomen, co-founder of Optimizely remarked, “If you’re building a product for an individual, your job is to help them solve a problem. But if you’re building for an organization, your job is to help them create a system for solving problems.”

When building enterprise software solutions, you won’t be building just for user needs, you’ll be solving for business outcomes. And the better you understand your customer’s pain points, the faster you’ll drive outcomes through your product. One new feature integration or change in data modelling can cause enterprise clients to restructure entire workflows - The stakes are incredibly high!

How Business and IT Leaders Can Facilitate This Change?

If you are leading a business that plans to adopt tailored tech and software abilities, this guide is for you! You have a bigger role to play than you realize. Your software partner will ultimately build the base product on your business intelligence and goals.

In have driven enterprise software modernization strategies for businesses of several scale and complexities. The winners had leaders who moved over from managing timelines to driving definitive product strategies.

This included:

• Investing in deep user research and innovation, preparing enterprise data to support tech evolution.
• Treating user pain points as results and finding out the exact challenges to define clear product vision.
• Empowering and enhancing cross-platform teams so that the software provider has beyond-data insights.
• Lead continuous project investment and deriving value from the investment by optimizing resource allocation based on strategic value, adoption figures and product performance.
• Building customer obsession in your teams, removing silos, promoting collaboration and pivoting product ownership.

Blair Reeves and Benjamin Gaines in their book ‘Building Products for Enterprises’ stress: “Only with full visibility of the customer can marketing craft stories and narratives around our product that connect with customers and users alike.”

This is a level of user empathy you need to embrace to succeed at enterprise product management in custom software.

Let’s now quickly run though the benefits of the product-led development approach.

Treat Software as a long-term investment – It Brings Immense Business Value

Gartner says that around 85% businesses have embraced or are in process of adopting the software product delivery model given its agile utilization for digital business transformation.

Big names like Google, Apple, Slack have adopted, driven CX, user loyalty and continue to advocate for this shift.

Benefits you can get:

• Easily maintainable, modular tech architectures that scale with your business requirements and reduce technical debt.
• Security-as-design - not as patch, for proactive risk management and compliance alignment.
• Continuous improvement with cross-functional operations and culture of ownership.
• Predictable value-driven investment for justifying product performance and business impact.
• Build cost-efficiency with near accurate forecasting, precise resource planning, elimination of vendor lock-in.
• Enhanced ROI tracking through practical indicators and realistic product metrics
• Improved operational agility, responsiveness and delivery with Agile DevOps
• Improved communication between teams to accelerate delivery and launch
• Higher software reliability with continuous monitoring and feedback integration

Implementing A Product-Centric Delivery Model: Key Elements to Build

A successful software product isn’t made from a checklist, it demands a good strategy. However, given my experience of transitioning business processes through technology, I have pointed out a few elements that has made our custom software projects a success for businesses across industries.

• CI/CD pipelines fostering regular releases pivoting massive connect with users, increasing engagement and building an emotional connect.
• Data-driven improvements to base feature releases on realistic user data and insights from customer-facing teams.
• Effective governance – not just with AI-led and automated functions but over quality standards, aligning business goals with delivery, compliance environments etc.
• Built-in security, scalability, system resilience and compliance adherence from the first line of code.

Real World Use Cases of Product-Led Custom Software Development

Now I could have given you google-ripped case studies, you’ll find them in plenty. But since this opinion piece is built from my deeply personal experiences of building product roadmaps for custom software, I’ll rather give you first-hand experiences.

Case Study 1: Custom eCommerce LMS Reduced Customer Request TATs to below 24 Hours

Challenge: Riley LLC., a USA based HVACR business that needed a one-stop solution combining an LMS and an eCommerce website. Their core challenge was connecting both systems, building data security, enhance content management with user-friendly designs and optimize solution performance.

Solution: We built their solution on nopCommerce, designed SSO based authentications, automated service management to deliver highly optimistic results.

Results: The client reported getting 1000+ unique visitors per day, reduced service request fulfilment timelines to less than 24 hours. They also reported 15+ higher score in client satisfaction.

Custom solutions built with a product approach bring in a different level of efficiency.

Here’s another.

Case Study 2: Custom eLearning Software Boosted Course Completion Rates

Challenge: A Yemen-based educational institute, wanted to enhance digital learning in rural Yemen. He reported students from rural areas often had backdated devices and faulty internet connections. He also reported students repeatedly lost interest in online learning, resulting in high course abandonment rates.

Solution: Our client needed a platform that worked on low bandwidth, functioned on less powerful devices, and kept learners engaged on the digital platform. We leveraged iterative development with VB.NET, ASP.NET, HTML5, C#, CSS3 technologies to build an advanced learning software.

Results: The custom LMS gave them a 17X student increase with 20K+ new certifications and over 65% course completion rates.

Is Product-led Custom Software Development Meant for You?

In user-centered software development, a product is so much more than a set of features – it direct caters to critical business problems. You can’t translate value proposition into compelling user journeys. So, if you really need a product approach to custom development is out of the question.

When do you reassess your software development strategy:

• You notice innovation stagnation in the development process
• You respond to market changes slow or completely fail at it
• Your software delivery lacks agility and is rather disconnected from your business goals

When do you know you’re stuck in the project mindset:

• You lack business data and insights accumulation because your teams don’t collaborate
• You don’t have iterative releases and user feedback is hardly integrated into updates and new releases
• You lack budget to support on-going improvements, your funding is majorly towards a fixed release
• Your software was launched with zero-deployment support and absolutely no ownership
• Your customers are demanding more personalized experiences and responsive solutions
• You have signed up for digital transformation that require scalable software systems
• A business expansion, merger or acquisition needs a flexible tech infrastructure

Questions you need to ask yourself – Make a Readiness Assessment:

• Do we treat software like a continuously evolving product?
• Does my organization culture support innovation and experimentation?
• Do my resources believe in long-term product thinking?
• Are our systems ready to support CI/CD?

Don’t take readiness audit as a practice. Consider it part of your product strategy for easing transition to a product-first model.

How Does Radixweb Help Enterprises Build Product-first Software?

Working in the complex enterprise environment means you need to be on your toes – moving over individual users and delivering for larger business outcomes. And that calls for empathy at scale – solving business challenges not just for one user, but for an entire ecosystem.

I have led custom software product lifecycles of multiple clients for Radixweb. And although they differed in scale and industry, I observed that success hinged because we sought deliberate understanding of the customer ecosystem. This didn’t just help us build cross-department collaborations but also helped align outcomes with core business objectives.

A quick rundown on how we do it? I’ll give it to you:

• Our more than two decades of enterprise expertise puts us in the right spot for building in alignment with USA’s CX expectations, operational requirements and market regulations. An ISO 27001, 9001 and SOC 2 compliant business we adhere to all data security regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, CCPA.
• We lean on Agile DevOps, user-first designs and iterative development processes to build solution adaptability, faster releases and better adoption.
• We extend full scale software development services with certified experts on hire and end-to-end support. We also provide you a realistic view of your solutions through rapid prototyping and MVPs.
• We lead in AI-driven software development. Basically, we make your business data work for you to support tech innovation for your processes. Every decision is data backed; every line of code is secured from the start.
• Not only do we hold crucial industry partnerships ourselves, but we also take client collaborations seriously. Each business deal is a sentiment for us, leading to long term collaborations and not one-off engagements. We thrive on co-creating solutions where you retain complete ownership of software products with source code submission.
• We hold an impressive portfolio of leading custom product transformations across 30+ industries.
• “Our engagement started in 2022. Since then, Radixweb has been transitioning, transforming our approach to software development and building the right teams to support our long-term objectives” – says Benjamin, a C level executive at a reputed FDA compliance assistance company.

Final ThoughtsWant customers to be the anchor of your decision-making process? The product approach for custom software development is undeniable for you!Software product development for enterprises demand a curious blend of strategy, foresight, stakeholder management capabilities, technical expertise, the ability to manage evolving demands and above all, deeply rooted sympathy for client processes.At Radixweb, we value sustained value over quick wins. We help you navigate lengthy sales cycles, complex stakeholder relationships, while securing IT integrations in a high-stake environment. If you want the same competencies in your product development journey, contact us today and together we’ll build the software your customers want to fall back on!