Software development (also known as Application Development; Software Design, Designing Software, Software Engineering, Software Application Development, Enterprise Application Development, Platform Development[1]) is the development of a software product in a planned and structured process.

This software could be produced for a variety of purposes - the three most common purposes are to meet specific needs of a specific client/business, to meet a perceived need of some set of potential users or for personal use.

Following stages of Software Development:

• Market research
• Gathering requirements for the proposed business solution
• Analyzing the problem
• Devising a plan or design for the software-based solution
• Implementation (coding) of the software
• Testing the software
• Development
• Maintenance and bug fixing

Although the possibility of absolute elimination of human inputs and supervision in business functions seems remote, what business software dies have to its credit is the immense increase in productivity and efficiency.

1) Reduced Time requirements : the ease of data creation and modification/editing/sharing/storage is phenomenally enhanced with the use of business software. Manual operations in comparison are time guzzlers.

2) Enhanced efficiency : The use of software is always preferred over manual work when it comes to commercial needs. This is simply because of the above mentioned time advantage and the numerous options that such software provide which make manual labor cumbersome in comparison.

3) Ease of Inter-departmental communication : many software meant for large scale business operations simplify inter-departmental communication and database management. This is a major advantage in large, complex corporate entities.