5 Things to Consider Before Investing In Your Own Scheduling Solution

In this day and age, every successful business needs a reliable online scheduler to expand their client-base and stay on top of appointments. Online scheduling makes it easier for prospective customers to view your staff’s availability and make adjustments to their appointments as needed without the risk of human error. The question is, should you invest time, money, and resources into building your own online appointment scheduler, or should you pay for a third-party booking API like OnSched?

Factors to consider are the cost, time, and aptitude of your in-house website developers. In this post, we will go over all of these considerations so that you have all the tools you need to make the right choice for your business.

Questions to Ask Before Building Your Own Appointment Booking Solution

Is it financially advantageous?

The most attractive thing about building your own appointment scheduling solution is the prospect of saving money. Unfortunately, planning and developing your own technology can be incredibly complex and may result in a series of unexpected costs along the way. In order to achieve a working online solution, you will need to designate a team of developers to build and maintain it, which means years of financial compensation with an uncertain amount of labor. This can cost up to $2 million per year, and exact expenses can be difficult to quantify before embarking on this considerable task. The financial advantage of opting for a third-party solution is that business owners can plan for the cost of a yearly subscription and keep their team relatively small, therefore avoiding the cost of additional labor.

Is your team proficient in website development?

Depending on the type of business you own, you may already have a team of professional software engineers who have the expertise to build a well-thought-out appointment scheduling system. However, building technology of this kind takes more than just experience in backend logic. Your developers must consider a user-friendly interface, appointment types, time blocking, multiple time zones, and locations if necessary, integrations, calendar syncing, as well as adding and removing members of staff to the system. Additionally, websites must comply with certain web guidelines, which means your team should be well-versed in these restrictions before building an online solution.

Could you tailor a third-party solution to your needs?

Aside from the cost, another benefit of building your own appointment scheduler is customizing it to the specific needs of your business. Perhaps you offer a range of services that only certain members of staff can perform. Maybe collecting customer data is essential to bettering your business practices. Whatever requirements your business has, it is important to explore third-party options and see if there is a white label solution that may be able to customize your user experience to your website requirements. This will save you and your team a lot of time and money creating a complex booking solution from scratch.

How will you adapt to changes in the market?

When it comes to the internet, the market fluctuates almost on a daily basis, and businesses are expected to adapt and update their online presence accordingly. When we compare the restaurant experience from five years ago to now for example, customers were expected to call ahead and speak to a member of staff in order to book a reservation. Now, customers expect to be able to view dining availability online and schedule, change, or cancel reservations in just a few clicks. This modernization of the dining experience also allows restaurants to follow up on dining experiences by collecting contact information on their website. Another recent shift in the market has of course been, COVID-19. Businesses of all kinds are optimizing their websites to allow for online consultations, video conferencing, and appointment booking. For an in-house team that does not have experience building an appointment scheduling solution, it will be difficult to anticipate potential changes and build a system that allows for drastic adaptations. Conversely, implementing an established third-party solution gives businesses the advantage of a team of experts who are constantly adapting to meet the needs of all kinds of businesses.

Do you have the resources to train your employees on this system?

Training employees to use a brand new online system can be a difficult task. Before building a new scheduling solution, it is important to consider the time and resources that you will need to allocate to educating your staff. Additionally, your in-house website developers will need to consider user-friendliness to support the needs of your staff as they build the system. Running a training program can be costly and time-consuming, whereas a third-party solution will have a protocol in place for successful integration. Not only does this make it easier to train your existing staff in online scheduling, but it will also be easy to train new employees as you hire staff in the future.

Will you have troubleshooting resources for employees and customers to turn to?

Whenever an online solution is built from the ground up, problems will inevitably arise. In order to maintain a professional appearance for your clientele, it is important to have a reliable customer support team that can troubleshoot any issues that arise while attempting to book appointments online. For this reason, you will likely need to hire additional members of staff who are able to fix bugs as they come up. This in-house support team should not only be available to support customers but employees as well. Choosing a reliable third-party company to implement appointment scheduling technology into your website will guarantee fewer technical problems and immediate support resources as needed.

To Build or to Buy?

Online appointment scheduling is quickly becoming a non-negotiable aspect of any successful business’s website. Whether you operate a dental practice, a salon, or a law firm, online scheduling makes it possible for business owners to reach new clientele, and create a more convenient experience for both customers and staff.

Now that you have explored the questions listed above, you should be able to make a decision that is suited to your business; that is, whether you should build your own appointment scheduling solution, or whether you should opt for a third-party company.

OnSched makes it possible to customize your scheduling system to the unique needs of your business and seamlessly integrate into your website with 100% white labeling guaranteed. Our booking API offers a variety of unique capabilities such as calendar synchronization, Zapier integration, no-show appointment tracking, worldwide timezone support, chatbox integration, and much more.

Consumer demand for online scheduling is rampant, and businesses may struggle to keep up with the competition if they do not update their booking process. While building an online booking solution using your in-house team of developers may seem like a simple, cost-effective solution, a project of this scale may take years before it is live. Additionally, there are far more expenses, training complications, and support issues to consider than that of an established, third-party solution. At OnSched, we are here to help you grow your business, and engage with your customers in an easy, modern way. With full support from our developers, OnSched is a no-brainer for businesses looking for an online booking solution. Request a free demo today and test the product in our sandbox environment before committing to a subscription.