Build or buy: when a custom internal tool beats off-the-shelf software

Questions that settle most decisions

• —Is this process the same in every company like ours? If yes, lean towards buying.
• —How many workarounds would the software need: exports, side spreadsheets, manual steps?
• —Who will own it in two years, and what happens if the vendor changes its pricing or shuts down?
• —Does it need to share data with three or more of our systems?
• —Would a better version of this process win us customers or margin?

The hidden costs of buying

• —Per-seat licences that grow with the team, for features most people never use.
• —Workarounds that quietly become their own unofficial system.
• —Integration work that is still needed, because the software has to talk to your others.
• —Changing your process to fit the tool, sometimes for the worse.

The hidden costs of building

• —Ownership: someone must host, update and support it.
• —Scope creep if the first version tries to do everything.
• —Key-person risk if only one developer understands it, which is solved by documentation and a team rather than a person.

The hybrid that often wins

Keep the standard systems (accounting, CRM, ERP) and build the thin layer your business is actually different in: the order desk, the approval flow, the dashboard that combines them. You get the reliability of bought software and the fit of custom software, with far less to build.