Insights · Custom Software
Custom Software vs Off-the-Shelf: How to Decide
“Build or buy” is rarely a question of quality. Off-the-shelf software is often excellent. The real question is whether your processes are standard enough to fit it, and what it costs you when they are not.
Start with the process, not the product
Write down how the work actually moves: who does what, in what order, with which information. Then compare that to what a packaged product assumes. If the fit is close, buy. Changing a mature product to match a clear, common process is cheaper and safer than building one.
When off-the-shelf is the better choice
- Your process is standard for your industry, such as accounting, payroll or general email.
- You want the supplier to carry the burden of updates, compliance and security patches.
- You need to start quickly and your needs are not unusual.
- The product’s limits would not hurt your operation.
When custom software starts to pay off
- Your workflow is a source of advantage or simply unusual, such as tracking a physical item through many stations with different rules for billing and rework.
- You are stitching together several tools with spreadsheets and re-keying between them.
- Different roles need very different views of the same data.
- You need to integrate with unusual local systems or run offline where connectivity is unreliable.
- The cost of the workarounds, in time and mistakes, is high and recurring.
The costs people forget
Off-the-shelf products carry licence fees that grow with users, configuration and consulting, and often a long tail of add-ons. Custom software carries build cost, hosting, maintenance and the need for someone to own it. Neither is cheap; they are cheap in different places.
Count the hidden cost of a poor fit too: time spent working around the tool and the mistakes that come with it. That is the cost custom software can remove, and it is the number worth estimating before you decide.
A middle path
You do not have to choose entirely. Many businesses keep standard tools for standard needs, such as accounting, and build custom software for the part that is theirs, connecting the two through an integration. The boundary between them is the design decision that matters.
Questions to ask before you decide
- Which three problems would we most like to remove, and what do they cost today?
- Could a configured product solve them without awkward workarounds?
- Who will own the system after launch, and what will running it cost?
- What happens to our data if we change supplier or developer?
- How will we know it worked?
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If this is relevant to something you are planning, we are happy to talk it through, with no obligation.
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