Modernizing and digitizing your business in today’s era is necessary, almost compulsory, if you want to survive in the market full of competition. Turnkey solutions provide easy ways to conveniently enhance your company digitally.

Turnkey solutions are “off the shelf” solutions or “ready made” solutions that basically mean you buy a software ‘off the shelf’ to address a specific issue.

Depending on company type, size and the industry, different turnkey solutions offer different features. It depends on the needs of you, as the decision maker, to understand what your requirements are and choose what is the best fit.

If you want to understand what does turnkey solution mean, what are turnkey services, what are their advantages, disadvantages and alternatives of turnkey solutions, we’ve covered all of it in this blog.

What is Turnkey Solution

Turnkey solutions, or turnkey services, are ready-to-use software solutions that can be implemented by companies when needed. In terms of software, these solutions require little-to-no customization and provide solutions for software projects. 

In terms of project management, turnkey projects are those projects which are developed or subcontracted to an expert or team of experts. They develop end-to-end solutions, enabling the company and the project team to simply just turn a key in order to activate it.

When your company needs some kind of a software, there are three viable options available to you:

  • Buying a software and customizing it to company requirements 
  • Creating their own software solution 
  • Buying a solution that fit all their needs and doesn’t need customization

Turnkey solutions are helpful in the third scenario, when you do not have any major customization requirements.

In Information Technology, turnkey services offered are for content management, design, data security, customer relationship management, communication, training, and billing.

Elements of Turnkey solutions

To understand turnkey solutions better, let us look at its key elements:

  1. These are developed by a team of experts. This team designs and develops a feasible solution which is based on their experience and competence in the field. 
  2. They meet the requirements and standards set by the company that commissions it or asked for the service. 
  3. By the time of completion of the turnkey solution, it is expected to be in complete alignment to the organizational needs as well as project requirements

SEE ALSO: 9 Must-Have Features in a Cloud Business Process Management (BPM) Solution

Turnkey solution example

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is the best example of a turnkey solution. Here’s why – When you are thinking of digitizing your business, you need to incorporate all of your business functions, including finance, marketing, sales, human resources, customer service, manufacturing and cloud deployment, into one IT solution. ERPs are ready-made solutions that incorporate most of these functions in one solution.

Things to be considered before buying turnkey services

Your company’s strengths and weaknesses

Closely analyze what your company’s strengths and weaknesses are. After analyzing, see what are the challenges you are willing to overcome through the turnkey system. 

Processes the turnkey solution will affect 

See how incorporating a turnkey solution would affect your organization. Not just in the short term, make sure that the software you chose is capable of coping with your organization needs in the long run. Look for scalable turnkey solutions and services.

Who will use this solution 

Consider the employees who would be primarily using the solution. You will also need to figure out how it will affect their work and the way they work. Also, answer questions like who will train the employees on how to use the software?

The long term cost solution

Calculating the cost of the turnkey system in the long run is extremely important. Though it may not cost much up front, there might be hidden charges or additional expectations in the long run. For example, the solution might cost less at the time of buying. But you need to consider the costs involved in case you want to upgrade the plan when you plan on expanding your organization.

Advantages of Turnkey Solutions

Reliable

Tried and tested turnkey solutions explain to you exactly what you’re getting into. The best ones are those which are suitable for just about any industry.

Saves money

These solutions are a value-for-money way to find a solution for your problem. As they are designed as an all-in-one software, they’re meant to solve various issues for various types of companies at once, at a fixed price. They help you upgrade into the online, digital world in a cost-effective manner.

Saves time

It is the most obvious benefit of all. You’ll have to spend a minimum amount of time in order to deploy a turnkey solution. After integrating these solutions, your processes would be simplified, meaning tasks will take much less time than usual.

SEE ALSO: What is iPaaS, how it works & how is it different from PaaS

Disadvantages of Turnkey Solutions

No customization

While turnkey solutions are completely cost-effective, they do have a drawback of not being customizable. As these solutions are made wholesale, you will have only little-to-no features through which you’ll be able to personalize the software. In the digital era, where everyone appreciates personalization, this is the biggest drawback to turnkey solutions.

Many unused features

It happens a lot that organizations invest in ERPs and turnkey services systems fancied by the many features offered by them. However, not all of them are useful and used by the organization for real. So, you want to look for solutions that solve your exact problems after you have identified your needs.

What are your other options?

Create your own software

You know your organization the best. You also understand how the business in your industry works the best. So, if you feel that a generic, made-for-all solution won’t fit your requirements, contemplate creating your own personalized solution. There’s no better personalization than something that would come directly by your organization, for your organization.

Go for custom solutions

Making your own software from scratch might be a bit overwhelming. In this case, the best way to move forward would be to look for personalized, custom-made software. This would come with added cost, of course. They also require more time and more planning, but they address your specific problem. There’s no shot in the dark. 

Conclusion: custom solutions vs turnkey solutions

Turnkey solutions are designed to be appropriate for most types of businesses and organizations. These are best suited for those businesses who have just started their digital transformation journeys. 

It is crucial that small and medium enterprises have a clear understanding of what kind of digital tools as well as systems they need for their set of requirements so that their company strategies don’t fall short. 

While it might be appealing to integrate a turnkey solution with your organization processes to simplify an overall digital transformation, it has the ability of becoming troublesome in the future.  In the long run, it might not satisfy the specific needs for some businesses. 

These solutions can impose limitations on the digital transformation journey. It also has the potential of being counterproductive for an SMB. What might be useful now may cause trouble years down the line when you think of expansion.

SEE ALSO: 7 Best Application performance management or APM tools on the market

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