If you are using IB:
IB provides API and you can automate and build your automated or semi-automated system in Excel, .Net (using activeX)or C++. This is for intermediate to advanced programmers but beginners can use it too. It is not easy because some features are not well documented and API in essence is programmer to programmer not to end user kind of design. This route is time consuming and if you hire somebody it can be costly. It is free and if you have time to experiment and search for answers then you can try it but at times it can become full time job.
Another option is to use third party off the shelf package that can be customized but then you have less flexibility and time investment might not be trivial too.
If you never programmed before than building system yourself is difficult because you have to deal with networking, sockets, input/output, graphics, data management, errors and exceptions, other programmers API and it has to work in real time.