Custom development and Supply Chain tools

A cus­tom devel­op­ment is a tai­lor-made solu­tion, as opposed to stan­dard soft­ware, designed and pro­duced to meet spe­cif­ic needs for the cus­tomer’s soft­ware packages.

Although our rec­om­men­da­tions as inte­gra­tors are to adhere as close­ly as pos­si­ble to soft­ware stan­dards, in par­tic­u­lar to ensure longevi­ty and main­tain­abil­i­ty, there are times when this is not possible:

• essen­tial features
• spe­cif­ic busi­ness needs not cov­ered by stan­dard solutions
• spe­cial user requirements
• …

What custom developments are needed in supply chain software?

ERP and Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment solu­tions are key to the pros­per­i­ty of any com­pa­ny, using tech­no­log­i­cal tools to sup­port busi­ness performance.

To meet the var­i­ous chal­lenges of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, some com­pa­nies have opt­ed not to use stan­dard soft­ware. They use ERP sys­tems and” home-made ” or ” tai­lor-made” sup­ply chain solutions. 

Oth­er com­pa­nies com­ple­ment stan­dard appli­ca­tions with “add-ons”. These spe­cif­ic devel­op­ments or para­me­ter­i­za­tions enable us to adjust to exist­ing process­es as close­ly as pos­si­ble. These are known as mixed solu­tions. It is there­fore a ques­tion of addi­tion­al ERP devel­op­ment to com­ple­ment the stan­dard, and more rarely of “from scratch” development. 

If stan­dard solu­tions (Sup­ply Chain, ERP, etc.) require cus­tomiza­tion for your busi­ness, our teams can enhance your appli­ca­tion solu­tion by devel­op­ing addi­tion­al busi­ness rules, cus­tomiza­tions, inte­gra­tions and data migrations.

Tailor-made application solutions for your business

ALOER sup­ports you in its two areas of exper­tise: ERP and Sup­ply Chain Plan­ning (APS) or Exe­cu­tion (WMS) solutions.

Our teams are experts in stan­dard soft­ware, and can adapt cer­tain appli­ca­tions to fit to your needs. They are also able to advise you and car­ry out cus­tomized adap­ta­tions thanks to their Sup­ply Chain and ERP experience. 

This cross-dis­ci­pli­nary approach means we can pro­vide your com­pa­ny with an all-in-one ser­vice. We place par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on para­me­ter­i­za­tion and deploy­ment, to ensure that the func­tion­al and tech­ni­cal aspects are in line with the specifications.

Impacts and risks of custom developments?

Opt­ing for cus­tom devel­op­ment offers a num­ber of advan­tages, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of cus­tomiz­ing the soft­ware’s functionalities. 

How­ev­er, there are a few details to con­sid­er before choos­ing this option. In par­tic­u­lar, cus­tom devel­op­ments take longer to imple­ment and are some­times more com­plex for oper­a­tional teams to get to grips with. 

ALOER guar­an­tees trans­paren­cy from the very start of the project and through­out, so that there are no grey areas.

The addi­tion of spe­cif­ic devel­op­ments is often syn­ony­mous with a com­pli­cat­ed project requir­ing exper­tise. These devel­op­ments must be car­ried out by specialists. 

What’s more, the high life­cy­cle and main­te­nance costs of soft­ware don’t guar­an­tee the rapid return on invest­ment promised by stan­dard solu­tions. Nev­er­the­less, cus­tom devel­op­ment can be ben­e­fi­cial in oth­er ways (peo­ple, process­es, etc.) which will quick­ly com­pen­sate for this investment.

Is your project finished? 

Our TMA sup­port teams are com­mit­ted to respond­ing to your main­te­nance requests to :

• ensure that your solu­tions remain up to date to guar­an­tee the secu­ri­ty of your processes,
• guar­an­tee per­for­mance by apply­ing the lat­est soft­ware and busi­ness best practices.

How do you prepare for your project?

First of all, an inter­nal review must be car­ried out with the key play­ers. The aim is to draw up a set of spec­i­fi­ca­tions, an expres­sion of your needs that will serve as the basis for the fol­low­ing stages. This is impor­tant if we are to man­age the project prop­er­ly from the outset.

Mod­ules can be list­ed, and changes antic­i­pat­ed in line with the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy for the com­ing years. The impor­tant thing is to have a glob­al vision of your project.

For users of ERP or Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment solu­tions, the ques­tion of data recov­ery and future migra­tions needs to be addressed.

The sec­ond step is to select can­di­dates from the mar­ket, and dis­cov­er solu­tions through pre­sen­ta­tions and soft­ware demonstrations. 

This step will enable you to choose a trust­ed part­ner to accom­pa­ny you through­out your project. 

Why choose standard software over custom development?

Although there is a pletho­ra of gen­er­al-pur­pose solu­tions, some pub­lish­ers have tar­get­ed mar­kets before devel­op­ing their soft­ware solutions. 

In this way, they have ori­ent­ed the appli­ca­tions’ devel­op­ment so that they respond as close­ly as pos­si­ble to their mar­ket con­straints. Why “rein­vent the wheel” when the stan­dard solu­tion exists and you can get up and run­ning quickly?

Not to men­tion the finan­cial aspects in favour of the standard: 

• reduced cor­rec­tive and appli­ca­tion maintenance,
• reduced project and human costs, 
• faster time to market, 
• sim­pli­fied project management,
• …

How­ev­er, there will always be busi­ness speci­fici­ties with­in the same mar­ket, and the evo­lu­tion­ary main­te­nance of a tool remains essen­tial for the upkeep of spe­cif­ic or non-spe­cif­ic software. 

The case of process indus­tries, such as the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, food and chem­i­cal indus­triesis a good example. 

It’s our duty as con­sul­tants to guide CIOs and man­agers towards high-per­for­mance IT envi­ron­ments, whether for ERP devel­op­ment or spe­cif­ic Sup­ply Chain devel­op­ment. Our cus­tomers’ sat­is­fac­tion depends on the way we man­age our busi­ness, and not the oth­er way around.

The benefits of best-of-breed

A “best-of-breed” infor­ma­tion sys­tem or SCM solu­tion is all about strategy: 

• Rather than rely­ing on a sin­gle ven­dor for enter­prise soft­ware, it makes sense to find the best soft­ware for each indi­vid­ual field of appli­ca­tion, and the inter­faces between the tools are then made. 
• best-of-breed” soft­ware solu­tions are those that are tru­ly effec­tive in their spe­cif­ic field. 

The soft­ware select­ed by ALOER as an inte­gra­tor is “best of breed”, i.e. soft­ware spe­cial­ly designed to match :

• Sup­ply Chain process­es: from S&OP to pro­duc­tion scheduling,
• or a spe­cif­ic indus­try, such as the Process Batch indus­try with the ERP Blend­ing.