Personalized vs. Configurable Options: Which to Select?

As we evolve right into a society that more and more depends on software program to handle every little thing from private communications to banking wants, the talk over the professionals and cons of configurable vs. custom-made options is part of each software program analysis.

Whereas configurable options and customised options are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important variations that you must perceive earlier than you make a brand new software program funding.

What’s the Distinction Between Personalized and Configured Software program?

Let’s begin by defining every sort of answer, respectively, within the context of grants administration software program.

A configurable system is an out-of-the-box answer that permits the proprietor to simply personalize sure features of the system themselves, with out the assistance of skilled software program builders. You’ll be able to rename fields to align with the phrases you employ or take away fields that don’t apply to your group. You’ll be able to pull in numerous report metrics and filters to get the data you have to make selections. Configurable software program is versatile, scalable and could be regularly formed to satisfy a company’s industry-specific and organization-specific wants.

A custom-made system is developed particularly and just for one buyer. It’s tailored for that group and does every little thing the client wants it to do in the way in which that works greatest for that crew at that time limit. It locks that group right into a static workflow that may solely be modified by hiring cost-prohibitive engineers to make updates to the system’s code.

The query on many individuals’s minds is: which one is the only option for my group? I’ve a powerful opinion on the matter: configurable options are simpler to scale with you, have a decrease lifetime price, and are the choice that you must lean in the direction of when deciding on a software program system. Beneath I’ll break down my reasoning for you.

The Advantages of Configurable Options

Listed below are the the explanation why I feel a configured software program answer is best for grantmakers:

• Implementation time is enormously lowered. Since you’re buying a system whose underlying construction is similar for all customers, implementation can take lower than a month. And that usually contains an implementation specialist working with you to configure the system the way in which you need it from the beginning.
• Quantity of utilization retains the answer on the chopping fringe of know-how. With hundreds of organizations utilizing the identical core system, the software program supplier receives fixed suggestions and is ready to establish and incorporate the updates that can profit probably the most customers doable.
• Updates to the system are usually free. Whereas a custom-made answer requires you to rent a software program developer to make any modifications or updates, suppliers of configurable techniques always set up updates to your system for you, with out the necessity for any work or assets spent in your finish. Plus, these updates are usually included in your subscription price—so no extra hits to your stability sheet.
• A big peer group is true at your fingertips. Most respected suppliers of configurable options supply on-line communities of friends with whom you possibly can alternate greatest practices and examine new and progressive methods others are utilizing or configuring their system.
• Configurable options carry a a lot decrease whole price of possession. You don’t pay for updates. Your supplier doubtless makes free assets accessible to you comparable to person guides and coaching as a result of they’re related to all their hundreds of consumers. As a result of custom-made options are one-offs, these varieties of assets and free updates merely should not accessible in the identical manner.
• You keep away from a bloated know-how stack. With a configurable system, it is going to develop with you. Performance you didn’t want while you have been smaller could be simply turned on or built-in into the system . No have to duct tape on a separate piece of software program to handle your exterior reviewers or get extra in-depth reporting.

The Drawback with Personalized Options

Listed below are my issues with a custom-made answer for grantmaking organizations:

• Implementation is drawn-out and costly. You’re having one thing constructed from scratch that solely you will use. That takes much more time to finish, that means you’ll be left in limbo whereas it’s being created—or utilizing a system that you just’ve already outgrown—and can doubtless pay vastly extra because of the improvement hours concerned.
• Your system is static and doesn’t evolve together with your {industry}. As tendencies inevitably change the face of the giving group, you’re left caught with the workflow you applied years in the past, together with options that may very well be out of date by now.
• Once you do replace, it’s time consuming and expensive. You pay a developer to make your updates, the necessity and nature of which you typically decide your self. With a configurable system, updates are primarily based on extensively accepted {industry} greatest practices and are put in for you remotely, shortly, and at no extra price.
• To place off updating, you tack on further software program. Avoiding the large price of updating your custom-made software program, you add on a small $10 per 30 days software program subscription right here, and a $25 per 30 days subscription right here. The prices add up and you find yourself with a bloated know-how stack.
• You’re a peer group of 1. Nobody else is utilizing the identical software program as you, that means you don’t have any friends with whom to debate system-related questions or concepts.
• A lot greater whole price of possession. Whereas it sounds alluring to have one thing tailor-built only for you, doing so incurs continuous and sudden prices, most of that are talked about above. On the finish of the day, you spend rather more on a system that’s holding you again from embracing the most recent {industry} tendencies and greatest practices.

Understanding What Really Issues to Your Group

Having a software program answer that’s tailor-made precisely to the way in which you’re employed is sweet—till that’s not how you’re employed anymore. Earlier than you determine on any know-how answer—configurable or customizable—you have to determine what’s vital to your group.

You’ll be able to work with a designer to create a cell app that can rely what number of instances you leap rope. But when what you in the end have to know is your coronary heart price and what number of energy you burn, you should use a typical app that does these issues, does them properly, and doesn’t price you further when the app breaks.

Understanding what actually issues helps you keep mission-focused, as an alternative of centered on particular person processes. If you’re able to discover a grant administration system that grows with you, take a look at our Grant Administration System Purchaser’s Information and Performance Guidelines.