Who hasn't ever postponed a system update? Let's admit it — they can get pretty annoying. But while software maintenance might not be the most exciting part of your business, it's an essential one. As a company, you need to be able to rely on your software to function properly and perform its tasks every single day.
In this insight, we're going to share why it makes sense to invest in software maintenance activities regularly and what types work best. We also cover how to best secure your investment — through customized software and with a dedicated team that regularly updates and maintains it for you.
Software maintenance is an important part of any organization's budget. While it's tempting to cut that regular fixed cost, in our experience, it's never a good idea to wait until your software stops working and decide whether to invest in it again.
Instead, here's what makes a great long-term strategy: prioritizing regular software maintenance activities and ensuring that your IT team has the necessary skills to keep your system running smoothly.
Why is software maintenance required in the first place? It's because if you don't regularly update your software, you risk having it become outdated and unable to keep up with current technologies that could make your business more efficient and profitable. Here are some of the important reasons why software maintenance is needed on the regular:
It enhances security standards and protects your data from malware and cyber-attacks.
It keeps your system compatible with newer technologies by updating the latest features and getting rid of outdated ones.
It makes for a seamless user experience and ensures everyone using it gets the most out of the newest technology updates.
It secures your software investment and is less expensive in the long run; because building something from scratch is incredibly time and resource intensive.
With all these benefits of regularly updating your software, let's explore how you can find the best option to secure this investment for your business.
When you consider the cost of buying new software versus keeping an existing system up-to-date, it quickly becomes clear why it makes sense to invest in software maintenance regularly. And that's before we even talk about how much time and effort goes into training the team to use new systems. You also lose time and productivity when technical incompatibility forces employees to switch between two or more of these.
Luckily, three main software maintenance activities can regularly update your company systems and keep your business up and running. Let's take a look at these and what might fit your company best.
Investing in maintenance management software is one option to keep your software running and regularly updated. This software schedules maintenance and keeps company productivity high by removing much of the click-work involved.
Since a maintenance management system runs by itself, it keeps running even without manual intervention. This helps keep work efficient as you can share data on such applications, update data even when away from the office and make it easy to coordinate tasks. Maintenance software also tends to have lesser downtime and can decrease expenses in regularly updating software.
The primary challenge — setting it up, keeping it running, and figuring out whether it's compatible with your business servers. At TRIGO, we can take care of that for you.
A dedicated IT team can ensure that many aspects of your business are running smoothly. Investing in such a team is another option to ensure you're regularly updating your software, if:
You prefer a human touch.
You want to be completely hands-off.
You always want a team of experts to reach out to.
We at TRIGO offer our clients outsourced software maintenance services with a team of experts you can always rely on and who deeply understand the software maintenance life cycle. We identify bugs and crashes and prevent them from occurring, ensure your company employees are using the latest software and keep them up to date. We're also responsible for installing system updates, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
Custom software development has become more accessible and cost-effective with time, especially with the development of no-code or low-code software. From our years of experience with the software maintenance life cycle and developing custom software for our clients, we've seen how they were able to:
Cut costs on expensive licenses for different software applications.
Scale their businesses more easily with customizable software.
Work with software adapted to their needs, not the other way around.
Make different processes automatic and keep workflows efficient.
Keep both customers andemployees happy with their smooth, UX-friendly user interfaces.
TRIGO takes care of all our clients' software maintenance activities, so they never have to worry about it becoming outdated or stopping work at a crucial moment. Our experience brings the best of both solutions: the efficiency of maintenance management applications and a dedicated IT team that doesn't just code for you but understands your business too.
But enough talk — why not see for yourself how we've helped clients succeed? Here's an example of how TRIGO developed a customizable tech stack for 3-S-IT and continues to maintain its system regularly.
3-S-IT is a central IT company and specialist for Austria's ÖGB and trade unions. Before TRIGO got on board, they were working with outdated technology, which was slow, inefficient, and had poor data protection standards. It was clear that they needed a new tech stack built on a modern platform.
Keeping these needs in mind, TRIGO developed a customizable tech stack for 3-S-IT built on Red Hat OpenShift, which offered them the latest technology meant to scale over time and centralize all their information into a single hub.
But our relationship doesn't end just there: TRIGO continues to work closely with 3-S-IT, communicating regularly over email and Slack to keep both teams updated. We also include dedicated days in the week when we update and maintain their software's new features to ensure it's always up and running. This way, both teams stay accountable for regular software maintenance activities.
For the entire case study, check out how TRIGO & 3-S-IT built the ÖGB's massive data-driven education platform. If you're looking for a team that can take care of your software needs while also helping you find ways to save money by optimizing existing systems or upgrading them without spending, get in touch with us.
Want to talk more about software maintenance and why it's needed? Book a call with our CEO, Christian, here or drop him an email at hello@trigodev.com.