Is ‘Out The Box’ or ‘Off The Shelf’ really the right fit for your business?
Frequently ‘industry standard solutions’ are the front-runners for consideration as they are seen as ‘safe’ options. But how many businesses would admit to being ‘standard’ themselves?
Vision System
- No Developers required on your payroll
- Full support available to meet your business demands
- Dedicated Account Manager
- API Integration to anything you need for your business
- Automatic upgrades to new features as they become available
Other Systems
- Developers required to customise system or add-ons
- Limited support in areas
- General Helpdesk with no continuity
- Limited to the existing integrations available
- Periodic updates requiring manual install or approval
Whilst nearly all of us use the same standard applications such as Microsoft Word for writing a letter, or Excel for performing calculations – do all businesses handle orders, fulfilment and customer service in the same standard way too? Thankfully not…
Off-the-shelf packages definitely serve a purpose to some extent, perhaps for smaller websites or companies with a handful of products. Some of these systems promise a marketplace full of add-ons, but support for these add-ons can be limited and still require developers to configure them. Commonly, the platform itself won’t extend support to these add-ons, which can be business-critical to you.
Whilst an ‘out of the box’ or ‘off the shelf’ solution might come from a big-name brand – will it actually be flexible enough to work with all of the intricacies of your business? Many companies rely on ‘Frankenstein’ systems, which started off as something industry standard, but as business needs grew, new applications were badly bolted on or various middleware was introduced so that System A could talk to System C via System B. Maintaining so many moving parts on a daily basis is a very high-risk approach. Before long, time has passed, and the whole infrastructure is now legacy code, full of technical debt that no employee dared touch.
Some systems promise that you will be up and running in minutes, but is ‘speed’ more important than ‘the right fit’?
The Sapio difference – with added Vision!
Other platforms make it sound so easy. But the reality is that YOU still need to set those systems up. YOU still need to hire developers to develop or improve various visual ‘themes’ or configure your system with additional plug-ins. It’s all designed to sound quick, easy and low cost, but there can be so many additional costs in addition to the monthly system fee.
If you don’t write code yourself, how do you know a good developer from a bad one? How do you know all of the add-on modules will work together effectively? What do you do when an add-on is no longer supported but has become business critical to you? Suddenly, a ‘quick, cheap and easy’ off-the-shelf advertised solution is costly and turns out to not even be what you wanted in the first place.
This is where Sapio Systems are different. We’re not just a software supplier – we’re far more than that. First, our Vision platform puts you in control of your Business. Create a product, promotion or even a new webpage in just a few minutes. Second, you don’t need a room full of expensive IT development staff; that’s where we step in. Our winning attitude to business success means we are constantly evolving our platform, and you constantly receive new system features as soon as they are tested and released.
We also offer bespoke integration into anything you require – however unusual. At Sapio, we have accommodated many business types. Our system has driven hundreds of drop-ship Marketplace websites to a TV Shopping Channel and Live Streaming sales, we’re ready for anything your business can throw at us, even where ‘normal’ isn’t a requirement.
We approach technology with a business-first mindset, not just as an IT team. We do things differently, bringing fresh, innovative solutions without the usual corporate fluff.
All of our modules are already connected, work together, & put you in control of your Business
Are you stuck with legacy systems?
Endless businesses are stuck with legacy systems that bottleneck them. Developers are too scared to touch old code just because the employee who wrote it has long left.
Many consider upgrading to newer technologies ‘risky’, but is continuing to run your business-critical components on out-of-date and unsupported platforms not even more of a risk to your revenue?
You will never have to ask us to upgrade.
The Sapio System is constantly maintained. We use industry-standard and reliable frameworks such as Microsoft .NET and SQL Server and always keep the platform up to date. We also continue to monitor existing third-party integrations and automatically update them.
We know it happens all too often – we’ve seen it ourselves. Businesses put a band-aid over an IT situation. For example, we’ve seen organisations running legacy systems that do not talk to each other. Rather than find a way to make this work, more staff are hired and continuously copy and paste data back and forth between one screen and another. Does an outdated infrastructure and increasing overhead futureproof your business?
