When setting up a company that will be selling online, the biggest decision that you will have to make is what type of software to buy to run the eCommerce site? The decision will come down to either purchasing an off the shelf package or getting a bespoke system designed.

An off the shelf solution is developed to be licensed by thousand/millions of users. With this in mind, the system may be relatively complex and contain a large amount of functionality as the development cost is spread over a large amount of users. One of the most well known off the shelf software packagers around is Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc). This sophisticated system is relatively cheap taking into account the vast amount of functionality available, however many of the features available to the users will never even be used.

In term of eCommerce software, there are many off the shelf packages available (e.g. osCommerce, Actinic etc). These systems will allow a business to start trading online within a matter of hours. All that is required is to buy the software, install onto web hosting, attach to a database and off you go adding your products. However, in the long run purchasing such a system may be detrimental to business objectives. Off the shelf software is difficult to customise and therefore in most cases, the business must fit around the software. Consequently no competitive advantage is gained over its rivals as many competitors may be using the same software as your business.

Alternatively, the other option available is to get a bespoke system created. This is a system that is designed specifically with companies or clients requirements at heart. This will enable software to fit around the business. As it’s a unique system that is created for the business, it will take a large investment of time from the web developer and the client within the development process to perfect the system design and functionality. Therefore the bespoke system will take a lot longer to create and set up compared to the off the shelf package. However, the system created will perform all required needs of the business. This type of system will set you apart from other competitors within the industry.

To begin with, the bespoke software will typically require a higher financial outlay. Nevertheless, most companies are not looking to only optimise profit over the short term. The best phrase to describe the purchase of a bespoke solution over a standard off the shelf solution is the need to “Speculate to accumulate”.