What is software capability and why it is important

Building software capabilities is a complex maze businesses must inevitably navigate as digitalization transforms every company into a software business. The market evolves fast and companies need to stay up to speed to remain competitive. That’s why your software capability matters: it’s the lifeline of a profitable and competitive business.

In this article, we’ll help you understand the complex layers and specialized terminology of software capability, as well as why it is important to own this capability.

Software capability Author: WItted Megacorp 15.06.2022 Software capability: the lifeline of profitable, competitive business

To succeed in building software capability, you first need to understand the related terminology.

Digital transformation roadmap

When organizations plan new digital products to offer their services, their business’ foundation will need to be digitally supported throughout. This means that strategic goals must be taken into account in order to plan your digital transformation roadmap, prioritize business objectives, and plan what to build as well as how to build it (for example, using either in-house or outsourced talent).

Transformation capability

Digitalization shapes business’ needs. This means companies have to evolve and adapt to changing markets. Transformation capability – e.g. how much time, money and resources companies have for their digital transformation – is strongly linked to how you’d go about planning your digital roadmap and building your software capabilities.

Digital maturity

Traditional software consultancies sell end-to-end solutions to customers with low digital maturity, meaning the customer does not have or need internal software capability. In other words, this means the software vendor evaluates the client’s need and builds a solution for it. In these situations the customer’s business is in the vendor’s hands; essentially the vendor is in the driver’s seat and the customer is merely riding shotgun.

Nowadays customers’ digital maturity has increased – you’ll want to keep the core competence in your own hands as much as possible, to manage and drive your own software development. That’s why the market needs vendors – like Witted – that provide the missing resources and competence while letting the customer take the wheel.

We have written a great article about digital maturity and how it can turbocharge your growth, you can read it here.

Your software capability is closely linked to your business, and your business continuity is only secured when you have the capability to build your own software solutions. Incidentally, this is also what keeps your organization competitive in a crowded market.

Why does software capability matter to your business?

Business and business development should be in your hands

Inevitably, every business will eventually become a software business. When software development is fully outsourced, developing your business is not in your own hands. This is like driving a car blindfolded, one that might have a broken axle or a leaky tank. You can offer up thoughts and prayers that your business will evolve and grow with your vendor, so that they don’t go bankrupt as your business relies on their knowledge and skills… but when you’re driving blindfolded, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll crash and burn.

Vendor lock-ins

Outsourcing personifies the work you need done. Usually, you’d have a team building your product or solution. If the entire team was to quit all at once, you’d lose knowledge, and be stuck in a jam. Onboarding a completely new team from another vendor would be difficult since the team who knew your project inside and out is gone, and there’s a fat chance you’ve got the resources to make heads or tails of it without them. When the work is so personified, it’s also challenging to expand currency offerings and influence pricing.

Tech recruiting: super slow for such a fast industry

Companies with low software capability often lack knowledge of which technical roles to recruit and how. They might also face employer branding challenges if potential employees do not see them as interesting enough IT employers due to low digital maturity. You can read more about how employer branding can attract the best talent in your organization here.

Moreover, it’s difficult to attract the best and brightest talent if your development practices are behind the times, for example if you’re not running quality assurance, or using modern development environments and technology choices. With high software competency, you can blaze through these bumps in the road without taking an expensive detour, saving you time and money.

Low software capability is one of the gravest threats endangering your business. When you don’t have internal capability, you’re forced to rely on vendors. And if you don’t know what to ask, or what to keep an eye on, or even what to require from your vendors, you’ll be trying to launch projects only to watch them fail. That’s why it’s important to scale up your software competence: so you can feel secure in your business continuity’s security.

High software capability equals competitive business

Lead your business digitalization

You need your business roadmaps within your control, which means it’s crucial for you to own the knowledge and ability to manage and drive your own software development. You should be telling your partners what to do and how, with you in the driver’s seat with your digitalization partner riding shotgun, ready to step up to the plate and account for competency gaps in your team.

Numbers never lie

When you’re steering, your ability to calculate time to market and ROI goes from zero to 100 in record time. You can rest assured that every euro invested in your project will get better ROI when you’re in the driver’s seat, rather than some vendor with no skin in the game.

Fail fast, grow better

When you drive your own software development, it’s easier to spot when a newly-built solution is going to crash and burn rather than take off and fly. It’s much cheaper too to halt a project after a month than it is to build something for two years under a vendor’s control – only to eventually realize it’s a non-starter.

Your vendor might succeed in convincing you that everything is going to be just fine despite a few hiccups. But this means when you finally wake up and realize that your product can’t go to market or generate profit - and that it may never do so - you’ll have wasted tons of money and time, leaving you in your competitors’ dust.

Owning software capability internally lets you fail fast, so you charge toward digital maturity faster.

Recruit faster, scale better

Owning your internal software capability from the jump gives you the freedom to scale your internal processes and build successful development teams. Recruiting for technical roles becomes easier, faster, and cheaper, because you know what you’re looking for and how to attract the best talent.

Freedom to drive change

Having internal capability to develop software solutions gives you the freedom and possibility to choose whether to outsource or drive the development yourself. When your software capability is high, your business becomes the dog that wags the tail, rather than the tail that wags the dog.

Witted builds software capabilities and teams

Witted helps you build your software capabilities to better navigate this complex labyrinth. We help you win the competition for the best software talent, securing your business continuity.

Software development consulting

Witted provides you with the software competency you need while helping you achieve your business objectives. We have a diverse pool of over 2500 senior software consultants. Whether you need a single talent or cross-skilled team, generalists or specialists, we’ve got you covered.

Business and digital transformation

Secure your competitive advantage – let us lead the change in your digital business. Our experts combine management and subject matter expertise with practical hands-on experience from enterprise transformations.

Attract, recruit, and retain the best talent

Witted helps you succeed across the entire employee lifecycle. Whether you need support in role-specific recruitment, or want to develop your talent acquisition practices and employer branding to better attract, recruit, and retain the experts that you need, we’ve got you.

Working with Witted ensures you’ll be able to stay competitive and build new digital services and products, so you can go to market faster and keep ahead of your competitors every step of the way - to level up your software capability.

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