Everything you must know about custom software design and development for your recruitment back office

by Andy Jones ,
January 4, 2021
Custom Software Developer, Software Development Company, Back Office Recruitment

In today’s digital times, everyone wants to boost their online operations and gain a competitive edge. Your back-office operations are no different. They are often the beating heart of your organisation. They help your business processes run as smoothly as possible. They enable your front-end office tasks. They can help you provide a high-quality service to your customers.

Your back-office solutions can take many different forms. But each one must streamline your business, help you achieve your objectives and provide a long-term ROI.

At Make IT Simple, we have helped a broad range of recruitment back offices realise such rewards. We also support the continued growth and changing requirements of our customers.

However, there are a few factors we’d like to clarify about custom software design and development from a back-office systems perspective – helping you to understand what it can achieve for your recruitment back office.

In this post, we examine the role of a custom software design and development solution. We reveal the many benefits this solution can bring to your recruitment back-office systems.

What is custom software development?

Custom software development is a process. It designs, develops, launches and maintains your online applications. Compared to an off-the-shelf solution, a custom application can meet your specific business requirements. As a result, it can also bring many benefits.

For your back office operations, such systems process timesheets, send invoices, run payrolls, help with accounting and reconciling banks, and a plethora of other admin work.

Let’s examine some of the essential facts you should know about such solutions for your recruitment firm’s back office.

#1 Mass optimisation = productivity boost

Bespoke software can streamline your existing back-office processes. It also uses automation to boost your productivity.

Let’s say your team uses a static Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to manage your inventory, for example. This is not an efficient way of working. Data is manually entered and only one person has access to the document at a time.

A custom software solution can provide real-time and concurrent access, and automate the data entry process, providing you with a real-time and accurate account of your accounts, timesheets and other paperwork. It can also provide additional functionality, tailored to your needs, through a user-friendly dashboard to further optimise this process.

Some software solutions include automation, to further streamline your processes and automatically update your systems.

This has significant knock-on effects for your productivity. Your bespoke application reduces human errors. It improves staff morale as your workers are not struggling to use a not-fit-for-purpose piece of software. Plus, they are not completing the same, repetitive tasks day-in-day-out.

#2 You gain a competitive value

Not every organisation uses bespoke back-office solutions. This approach can help your recruitment company optimise its operations.

A full-function, scalable accounts department, for example, can connect your payroll and other accounting systems, helping you complete everything from invoicing and credit control to your end-of-year accounts.

A custom HR system can help you reach out to staff in the right way – an important commodity in today’s increasingly remote world of work where HR is taking an increasingly digitised approach to its processes. In short, you’ll have something unique – and that provides you with a unique advantage over the competition.

This difference can help you streamline your operations and attract more clients and customers, providing productivity gains to allow your staff to focus on value-added tasks - and also helping with staff retention.

For those in highly competitive fields, custom software can make all the difference.

#3 When you change, it changes

Bespoke solutions can relieve a specific pain point for your business. This allows you to optimise your processes and achieve business-wide cost savings.

A bespoke solution is highly adaptable to your changing business. For example, you may want a new piece of functionality for your invoicing system. Now, you can just ask for that new functionality to be implemented.

If you suddenly scale, your bespoke solution automatically scales. You don’t have to pay for new license agreements as more people access your back end systems.

Without the constraints of an out-of-the-box solution, you can also respond to feedback from your team. This means you can give them the right tools to effectively do their jobs.

In short, bespoke back-end systems are adaptable. So, your software can change as your business changes.

#4 It works for businesses of all sizes

A bespoke solution isn’t just suitable for big corporates. Thanks to its highly customisable nature, it is suitable for any sized company.

At Make IT Simple, we’ve worked with startups and major businesses. We’ve worked across a broad range of budgets and project requirements.

That’s the beauty of a customisable solution. You can match it to your exact business requirements, budgets, and timescales.

#5 You don’t need to spend a fortune…

When you hear the term ‘bespoke’ do you think of a premium product that costs a small fortune? This is not the case for custom software design and development.

Today’s development landscape is very different to what’s gone before. Now, frameworks, plugins and cloud providers like AWS have streamlined our development processes. Developers don’t need to do nearly the same amount of heavy lifting as they once did.

The flexibility of a custom solution also provides your business with the ability to find a smart solution. It achieves this within your project’s time and cost constraints.

At Make IT Simple, we’ve helped dozens of recruitment companies find the best, cost-effective solution. For example, we could augment an existing back-office system to meet your changing needs. This helps you reduce costs and timescales, without migrating to a new solution.

If you need a more robust solution, we can develop a software solution to meet your exact requirements. So, you’re not paying out for functionality you will not use.

#6 … but you could save a fortune

We’ve explained the productivity gains and competitive value a bespoke solution can realise for your recruitment back office. This could also translate into massive cost-savings across your business.

How? Well, manual tasks are automated and staff are given the best tools to more effectively do their jobs. What’s more, a bespoke solution can provide you with intelligence and analytics capabilities. These tools can identify further time and cost savings across your business.

If you decide to integrate machine learning capabilities with your invoicing system, for example, you can auto-generate invoices from timesheets.

A bespoke solution is also compatible with your existing systems. It could provide you with visibility to further optimise your existing ways of working.

#7 You get peace of mind

A bespoke solution is more secure than a standard, off-the-shelf solution. This is because you can put unique protective measures in place. As cyber-attacks continue to escalate in our post-Covid world, this is an important point for your back office solutions.

With a bespoke solution, your business is now protected from the brand damage and fines associated with a data breach or lack of compliance.

That’s not all. An external software company can also do all the heavy lifting for you. From design through to project management and testing, they can give you a full and integrated service. This allows you to reap the full rewards of a bespoke back-office solution across your business.

What next?

If you’d like to find out more about custom software design and development for your recruitment back office, please contact one of our team for a no-obligation chat.

With decades of experience across multiple industries, we can advise you on the best route to take and help you understand the wonderful world of custom software - for your back office and beyond.

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Let’s Talk

If you are looking for a bespoke software development company, please get in touch by phone by calling +44 (0) 1905 700 050 or filling out the form below.

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