By Mark Steffen, Senior IT Consultant for Winning Solutions, Inc.
During the May 2023 Tesla shareholder meeting controversial Tesla founder Elon Musk proclaimed that Tesla runs exclusively on custom computer application software developed in-house. He stated that Tesla wrote its own software for its insurance business and the financial software the company runs on. They also wrote their own supply chain and logistics software. This doesn’t include all the software they wrote that runs in their cars or that handles their vehicle charging network. He stated that most companies will not do this because they lack the necessary software engineers, which requires them to rely on third-party ERP (enterprise resource planning) programs. Elon believes that custom software is one of Tesla’s hidden strengths. Watch him talk about this here: 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting.
If you do not want to field your own team of software engineers, you can utilize WSI’s on an as-needed basis. We have helped many Tesla-like companies reduce their dependency on off-the-shelf solutions while using software to improve and streamline their operations.
WSI understands that not all companies have more than 122,000 employees as Tesla does. In fact, we work primarily with customers that have less than 250 employees while serving several large Fortune 500 companies. One strategy we employ is to build around an organization’s existing accounting software. This means we don’t have to recreate all the common functionality found in any accounting software. We tailor the data input forms, reports, and dashboards that users interact with to do their jobs to each of our clients’ specific business environments.
All of our work becomes your property, including the source code, when you pay WSI at an agreed-upon rate or fixed project price. There are no subscriptions, complex software licenses, or unwanted new versions when the version you have works the way you want it to work.
On the other hand, if your business changes you can contract with WSI to modify the software we created to match your new business environment. You only pay money to WSI when we do actual work for you. It is common for our clients to go one or more years without paying WSI a dime, while they have dozens or hundreds of people using the software we created every day. Because you get the source code if you are not happy with WSI’s cost, responsiveness, skill level or anything else you can hire your own programmer or another programming firm to replace us. This keeps WSI on its toes. We must compete for your business every day and every time.
Contact WSI today to find out how to start the process of making your business more competitive via custom software.