Build, buy or integrate? How to tell which you really need

Almost every growing business will reach a point where they realise that their systems are no longer suitable for their business. Commonly, businesses come to us because real-life processes outgrow the software, the complexity of their data overwhelms the spreadsheet used to record it, or a job that used to take an hour at the end of the week now takes a full day. Most people who come to us ask for new software, but sometimes, this isn’t the best answer.

Recently, we’ve talked a lot about where time is lost, the signs business owners miss, and the cost of good systems not communicating well with each other. But what is the next step when you know you have a problem with your software? This post talks you through the three main solutions.

The three solutions

When a business needs to fix an operational problem with software, there are really only three moves. Put plainly, these are:

• Buy something off the shelf
• Integrate the tools you already have so they talk to each other effectively
• Build something custom

Each solution has its own benefits and drawbacks, so how can you tell which is best for you?

Buying off the shelf

The honest starting position: if a good off-the-shelf product solves your problem, buy it. We build custom software for a living and we’ll still tell you this. Reinventing a solved problem is rarely worth it.

Off-the-shelf software can be a great solution when the thing you need is common and doesn’t deviate from the standard way of doing things. Accounting, email, payroll – these are all problems that thousands of businesses share in almost identical form – exactly why a well-supported product will do the job just as well as anything bespoke, and more cheaply.

The difficulty with off-the-shelf software comes when the problem you are trying to solve is unique to the way your business operates. You may think that the way the software works is close enough to how you need it to work — but this usually results either in errors, or in spending the next two years trying to bend your business to the software before finally giving up.

A quick test: could you describe your need to a stranger in your industry and have them nod, “yes, everyone needs that”? If so, someone has almost certainly built it. Buy it.

Integrating what you already have

Many people don’t realise this is even an option.

If your tools each do their intended job well, and are simple and straightforward to use, then the answer may be to find a way to integrate them properly. This often shows up in needing to re-enter the same data in two places, checking that the numbers in two different spreadsheets tally up, or scrambling to put reports together at the end of the month.

The ROI for a good integration tends to be high -because you aren’t replacing things that actually work, you are only removing the manual labour between them. If you can’t pinpoint which piece of software is letting the side down, there is a good chance that working on the way your tools communicate is the best route.

Building something custom

Custom is the right answer when your process is genuinely unusual, central to how you make money, and is either badly served by anything you can buy or would require a ridiculous number of pieces of off-the-shelf software to cover all bases.

Perhaps your business operates in a small niche, or you just want to be able to manage every single aspect of your admin from one central location, in a way that perfectly fits how you work. Custom software is the answer if the workflow is the business – particular to it and central to what you do.

If you have tried numerous pieces of software and found sticking points in all of them when trying to make them fit into your business, investing in tailor-made software is likely the best option for you.

Understanding which is for you

Asking these three questions can narrow it down:

• Is this a problem most businesses in my sector have? If yes, lean towards buy. If it’s specific to how I work, lean towards build.
• Do my tools each work well individually? If yes and the trouble comes up between them, the answer is almost certainly integrate.
• Am I already paying for software that’s supposed to do this but falls short, so I end up doing it by hand anyway? If this is the case, the likelihood is that it’s time to build.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is treating ‘buy’ as the default and thinking of the other two as exotic or unattainable. In practice, despite its lower up-front cost, unless the buy option is exactly right for you, it’ll cost more than integrating or building in the long term.

If you need a fresh set of eyes to see where your problems lie, you can get a free operational audit to help you understand what is holding you back, and what could make the biggest difference. No commitment, and no assumption that the answer will be ‘build something’.