Introduction:

Custom bill management software sounds very tempting. A solution that comes as close to your unique process as possible is the holy grail of competitive advantage. But making the leap from high-level ideas to a working and secure and resilient system is an arduous and demanding and costly road.

Before heading down this path, it is important to realign its associated timeline and resource commitment. A pragmatic breakdown of the phases and timeline of development, this article is a must-read for businesses considering this path.

Steps involved in Custom Software Development

Custom builds are not modeled as one-step solutions, but are treated as multi-step projects. A general timeline would look something like this:

Discovery and Planning (1-3 Months)

The first phase of this involves having very extensive meetings to understand each requirement, each workflow and each integration point. Such as determining user roles, approval workflows, reporting requirements, security measures, etc. Skipping this stage always results in expensive changes and tooling ups during later phases.

UI/UX and Architectural Designing Phase of Mobile App Development (1-2 months)

User Interface: While this part of the design contains wireframes and prototypes created by designers, software architects design how the database needs to be defined and how the entire system should be built as per the architecture, This is the base everything else is built on.

Core Development and Consolidation (6–12+ Months)

The longest phase where developers write millions of lines of code. Key milestones include:

Building user authentication and security.

Building the Vendor and Invoice Database

Coding the approval workflow engine.

Accounting Integration (Big challenge)

Building the payment processing module.

Developing OCR (that's super duro to develop yourself).

Testing and QA (2 to 4 Months)

It needs to go through multiple testing phases such as unit testing, integration testing, beta testing, and so on before it is ready to be deployed on the production server. It also comprises unit testing, integration testing, and UAT (User Acceptance Testing).

Deployment and Go-Live (1 Month)

It is installed on servers, migrated data, trained, etc. To minimize risk, a phased rollout is highly advised (FIGURE 2).

How Long It Will All Take In Reality: 12 to 24 months

One to two years is a common amount of time for a strong, secure, custom bill management system with a variety of features. This timeline will often drag out even longer as requirements change, technical debt accumulates, or unexpected complexities arise.

The Hidden Long-Term Costs

And even that cost of development is just the tip of the iceberg. You must also factor in:

Maintenance: Bug fixing and keeping system running

Security Moves: Dynamic, essential item to always fix of identified potential weaknesses.

Feature Upgrades: New features along with the changing requirement of business or technology.

Staffing: requiring staff office staff to run the system

The Intersoft ERP Alternative: Configuration, not Customization

For the majority of enterprises, a more advantageous route is to go with a highly configurable, powerful, out of the box platform such as Intersoft ERP.

Capabilities: Gain instant access to powerful OCR, automation workflows, digital payments, and advanced reporting.

Customizable: Adjust approval chains, data fields and user permissions to reflect your unique processes — no code needed!

Do it in Weeks, NOT Years: With anoff-the-shelf time-tested secure and environment-ready system, you will be up running in a fraction of time.

Check out our Bill Manager Software here.

Conclusion

Custom software has the temptation of being perfect for your needs, only to require a long, expensive, risky development cycle and perpetual commitments. In almost all cases, a carefully chosen configurable platform such as Intersoft ERP will give you a more significant return on investment – fast, reliable, and on cutting edge functionality, all while allowing you to focus on what your company is meant to be doing: not writing code, but delivering your service.