Selecting an ERP – Is Custom Always Better?
Building a custom ERP for the aviation aftermarket can feel like the perfect solution. A bespoke platform can match your exact workflows for parts sales, MRO operations, trace, and compliance. However, custom development often brings higher costs, longer timelines, and ongoing maintenance demands that many aviation businesses underestimate.
Today, a modern aviation aftermarket ERP can deliver the best of both worlds: proven, off-the-shelf functionality designed for aviation, plus configuration options that adapt to how your team works. With platforms like AvSight, the case for building from scratch is not always as strong as it once was, especially when you factor in upgrades, security, support, and the need to scale.
Our team has worked through both the wins and the setbacks of custom software projects in the aviation industry. Before you commit to building your own system, it helps to understand the real costs, risks, and long-term effort involved.
In this guide, we break down the most common challenges of custom development and explain how to evaluate your options with a clear process. First, we’ll walk through the key steps for selecting the right aviation aftermarket ERP—so you can choose a platform that supports parts sales, MRO operations, compliance, and growth without unnecessary complexity.
Understand Your “Why”
Beginning a software project without understanding your goals is a lot like heading on a journey without a destination. Save yourself the headaches and expenses of directionless work by acquiring a thorough understanding of your business needs. A good way to do this is by doing a simple gap analysis.
Start off by documenting the departments or major functional areas within your organization and identify individuals with a deep understanding of their department’s workflows and processes. Often these are managers, but they may also simply be tenured individuals who really know their stuff. These individuals will be your subject matter experts (SMEs).
Work with each SME in your organization to document their business processes, KPIs, and long-term goals in detail. Your goal should be to identify the current state of each department and understand what the ideal state of that department would look like.
Questions to Consider
- How is each key process currently being executed?
- What areas do they feel have room for improvement?
- What are the root causes of these weak areas?
- Do the processes simply include unnecessary steps?
- Is the department missing resources?
Adding technology can have a huge impact on your workflows and efficiency, but it alone won’t fix fundamental business process and strategy problems. Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to really understand what you want your technology to accomplish and what changes need to be addressed independently. This knowledge will be critical to any tech project – whether you’re starting from scratch or using an existing solution.
Document the “How”
Once you understand your end goals, work with your team to create a checklist of what exactly you need your software to do. Don’t just think about the end goal – think about the “how?” and “why?” of each process. Be as specific as possible – this will be a critical tool as you continue your tech project.
We Know What We're Talking About - Trust Us
You may be wondering how, as a provider of tech solutions, AvSight can provide unbiased guidance on software selection. The truth is, we do think that our platform is the best system available and is a great choice for most companies.
But we won’t attempt to claim that a custom system is always the wrong option. Regardless of your decision, a clear understanding of your project and the challenges ahead will improve your chances of success.
The goal of this article is to share our insights and experiences to help you make an informed decision.
Our team encompasses a huge amount of aviation experience.
We’ve worked in parts sales and at MRO facilities and been software users. We’ve also worked for legacy software companies as technology providers. So we have a clear understanding of company needs and the available options.
We know what it’s like to be frustrated with available options.
Prior to starting AvSight, our founders went through the process of conceptualizing, designing, and executing custom software systems for major aftermarket companies that they worked for. We have a true understanding of the expense and work that goes into a software development project.
We’re a software company.
We know what is involved in feature development and keeping pace with technology. We’ve also seen the carnage of DIY systems gone wrong that we’ve been called in to replace.
Assess Your Options
Once you finish your requirements checklist, start evaluating existing software options. Even if you plan to build a custom system, this step helps you compare real capabilities against your needs.
When you review an aviation aftermarket ERP, you can see how well each platform supports parts sales, MRO workflows, inventory, trace, quoting, and compliance. As you compare tools, note which requirements they meet out of the box and which ones would need configuration or development. This clarity helps you separate perceived benefits of a custom build from the benefits you can actually achieve.
In many cases, a modern aviation aftermarket ERP offers flexible configuration that matches your processes without the cost and risk of building from scratch. Either way, assessing current solutions helps you define the best system design for your business and creates a stronger plan for implementation.
Weigh the Challenges and Benefits
Cost
It’s no secret that tech talent is in high demand, and strong teams come with a high price tag. When you buy an established ERP, you share that cost across the vendor’s customer base. However, when you build custom software, you carry the full cost yourself.
In addition, if you want a better product than what’s available, you can’t hire a bottom-tier team. That means you will compete with software companies for developers, project managers, and analysts. For many businesses, first-year labor costs alone can exceed $500k.
Meanwhile, aviation expertise adds another challenge. Most top-tier tech talent won’t also understand aviation aftermarket workflows. So you will need key employees to provide requirements, test features, and validate results. Over time, that workload can stretch for months, or even years, while the business still has to run day to day.
Questions to Consider
- Are you ready to invest in top tier tech talent? If not, will your budget really allow you to create a solution that’s better than currently available options?
- Does your internal team have the skills and bandwidth to provide technical requirements to a dev team?
- Are you ready for the time investment of prolonged functionality testing and managing the systems migration process?
- How much will the total cost of the custom system be, including labor, hardware, and software costs?
- Have you included the cost of the maintenance team required to provide support and tweaks needed as you operate on your custom system?
Expertise
Embracing your strengths is the surest way to run a profitable business. If you’re in aviation, the chances are good that those strengths lie in, well, aviation. By putting resources into developing a software system, you are essentially starting a tech company on the side, and distracting yourself and key employees from more profitable areas of the business.
Take a look at any highly successful company and you’ll see a company that capitalizes on their strengths. Think, for example, of the engine on a 737 – the chances are good that it was designed and manufactured, not by Boeing, but by CFM. With their immense resources, why doesn’t Boeing just make their own engines? They don’t have to – excellent options are available. And by choosing outside options, they’re able to be more successful in their core business.
Questions to Consider
- What strengths does your company currently have, and can you leverage them to create a better custom system than what is available on the market?
- Who on your team will be responsible for overseeing the custom system project, and what impact will this have on their other responsibilities?
- What impact will this have on the profitability of your core business?
- Will the ROI of a custom system really offset that loss?
Training
To get your new system up and running, you’ll need to spend some time training your team on it. This is true of any software transition, but with a custom system, there will be no outside resources to rely on, all documentation will need to be created by a member of your team who has a strong grasp on your business and on the software. You will also need to budget additional time to get new hires up and running. As, in contrast to systems widely used in the industry, they will not have any prior experience with your bespoke system.
Questions to Consider
- Who will be responsible for training current employees and new hires?
- What resources will be needed for effective training? A knowledge base? Self guided training courses? Training videos?
- Who will be responsible for documentation and resource creation?
- Are you ready to budget additional time for training new hires? What impact will this have on onboarding costs?
Obsolescence
Technology is constantly evolving. As operating systems, hardware, and software advance, compatibility and security issues will impact your system’s safety and efficiency. If you’re working with a forward thinking provider, the chances are good that they’ll be regularly updating their solution to keep pace with technological advances and ever-changing industry requirements. At AvSight, for example, we have full time development, product, and support teams who are working non-stop on the next two to three future versions of our platform. Software development and management is not a one-time process.
If you have a home-grown system, the responsibility to keep abreast of technology, the process of managing the development and rollout, and the daily support and deployment of upgrades of the system falls 100% to you.
Questions to Consider
- Are you ready to invest resources in ongoing system management, development, and support?
- How will you ensure that the system stays up to date with the latest technological advances?
- What is your plan for handling compatibility and security issues that may arise with the system?
Inheritability
We often find ourselves being brought in to companies to replace custom systems in a hurry. The number one reason is that the individual who championed the project is no longer with the company. Often this means that no one knows how to do basic configuration, upgrades, or fix bugs in the system. Additionally, bringing in an outsider to consult on these issues is incredibly complicated. Because the system is unique, no one outside of your company will have any experience with it, requiring resources to be invested in training your consultant before they can even get started on your project. The process of doing anything with it will be, at best, a long and arduous process and, at worst, impossible.
Questions to Consider
- You may have a systems admin you like and trust now, but what happens if they leave, retire, or are abducted by aliens? Do you have a succession plan in place?
- What is your plan for handling configuration, upgrades, and bug fixes if the individual who championed the project is no longer with the company?
In Conclusion
Choosing the right aviation aftermarket ERP takes more than comparing feature lists. Instead, you need to weigh the full picture; cost, internal expertise, training effort, long-term maintenance, and the risk that a custom system becomes outdated or hard to support over time. By first defining your goals, then documenting your workflows, and finally comparing real options side by side, you can decide whether building from scratch truly delivers more value than configuring an established platform.
Ultimately, the best ERP supports long-term efficiency and profitability, not just today’s requirements. So if your current software limits growth, visibility, or speed, it may be time to explore a modern aviation aftermarket ERP that adapts to your processes without adding unnecessary complexity.
If so, we invite you to speak with the AvSight team about a highly configurable, customizable, and professionally supported platform, so you can get the flexibility of “custom” with the stability of a proven solution.
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