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Copyright
The greatest protection that software benefits from is copyright. Copyright laws exist to prevent others from taking unfair advantage of the result of creative effort. It provides a mechanism for managing risks and deriving revenue from the creative efforts that brought it about.
Copyright in "traditional" software is in the source code underlying the software. The person who writes the source code owns the copyright. Ownership of the copyright is automatic and does not, in the UK and many other countries, require any form of registration or formal asserting of ownership. As an employer, you will own copyright in works produced by an employee produced during the course of employment.
As the owner you have the right to exploit the copyright and derive commercial benefit from it, and you can do this relatively freely, without statutory constraints.
Copyright does not transfer without a written agreement or assignment. This means that contracts with subcontractors must provide for copyright in the work that they carry out to be assigned to you if you intend to use their work to either license or sell to your customers.
As copyright owner, there are many ways to derive revenue from the software, which are discussed below in Exploiting Software, but the fundamental point for all companies owning and licensing software is that you must always ensure that your contracts retain ownership of the copyright in the software. If you inadvertently sell or otherwise permanently part with the copyright to your customer, you will no longer have the legal right to exploit it and derive revenue from it.
Further general Copyright advice is available in IP Legal Basics.