Are you perchance sat there thinking about the pros and cons of building your own software for your business needs vs buying a "ready-made" product? It's a perennial business dilemma that all businesses will at some point teeter on the edge with, and the right choice will come down to your own particular set of circumstances, risk-appetite or uniqueness of product/service that you're selling.Frankly, it is something we get asked to provide advice on all of the time and the subject of "Build or Buy" could be a whole book or a series of books.This blog post will give you some of the critical questions if you're considering having your own funky new software system built for your business rather than buying one off the shelf - getting comprehensive answers to these questions should make your software gestation a little easier. Not to put you off! But building software is a serious business and worth serious thought if you want to avoid wasting money and time and ensure that you do end up with a useful software tool.Building my own will be easier and cheaper in the long run, surely?!Possibly.But PLEASE allow a good amount of time to describe the functionality required in great depth, and repeatedly, in business terminology, and if you can find help, also in technical/coding terminology to ensure that the developer(s) REALLY know the scope - and be aware of potentially spiralling costs meaning you end up being held to ransom to finish because you're in deep. Non-functional requirements also often get left out of the scoping, such critical areas as performance expectations, security, scalability, usability, compliance, browser compatibility, internationalisation, recovery and resilience etc.Also be prepared to spend considerable management time on managing the scope throughout the development project. Regrettably, it would not be unusual to end up with a product that meets every word of the requirements, but is totally unusable for the purposes you intended them for, close management and the right partner should help with that.Finally be prepared to spend your own or your staff's time fully acceptance testing the software before it goes into live use to preserve your business from any catastrophic or critical failure.I just want a wall. It's just a wall right? What do you mean there are different kinds of walls!?!A builder might ask you whilst building your extension if he should use Wall board, 4-in-1 Plasterboard, Gyproc, Vapour barrier, or I hear a lot about Asbestos.... But most likely he'd just know what to use that best fits the purpose. Software developments languages are a little like that. So it's well worth making sure you know what type of language you want to use, or at least the benefits and pitfalls. Choose a popular 'standard' and scalable development language to assist maintenance going forward, also watch the licence issues around this, for example if it is Microsoft .net or similar you will need to pay licences for the third party software to run it on an ongoing basis. Additionally you will need to ensure that they don't add in code that is designed to kick in under a certain set of circumstances (known in the industry as Easter Eggs. No, really). Also be careful to ensure the agreement guards against any open source software being embedded, which can cause ownership issues.Once I've built it, it will live forever.... Will it live forever?Strongly consider your future position, especially if your shiny new system becomes business critical for you. Have your system independently certified for performance and security to ensure no-one can get at your business data or steal the code without authority. This should be considered to be an ongoing overhead for you as security-protection aspects in particular is a constantly shifting landscape. This is where choosing a popular enterprise development language also helps, so that you can get others to maintain it for you should the need arise.It's all mine!! Mwah ha ha ha!Be extremely certain that legally everything is yours probably from the point you pay for it all and be careful in the interim before you have paid for it (be legally aware I mean, and remember that the onus of proving any future breach of IP ownership will be at your own risk and cost). This is well worth getting contracts drawn up and reviewed clearly showing your ownership, the worst case is that someone could actually prevent you from using what you paid for.Get the source code and the copyright from the earliest outset and then regularly after that, consider Escrow of the code if it is used or delivered in stages.Okay, You've given me a headache. Is there a middle ground? If you can't find a proprietary solution that does exactly what you want, then it is worthwhile choosing a system that is well-proven but is also flexible to enable it to be tailored to your exact needs. JunariCRM+ is one of those systems. We chose that model due to 60 years of combined director experience of both building from scratch and implementing proprietary systems into small and large organisations. It's fair to say therefore that we have the t-shirts from both ends of the spectrum and have got the scars to prove it.Play to your strengthsI want to end with this simple homily that it is always better to play to ones strengths - in this context meaning to focus on the core things that you do that adds value to your business. For instance, I decided to write this blog myself rather than employ a copy writer because I am the one with the previously mentioned experience which I hope I have imparted with clarity to help you. I decided to "build" this blog rather than "buy" it thereforeOn the other hand I decided I would "buy" the chair that I sat on, the PC that I used to type it rather than attempt to "build" them.Horses for courses I think they say and build or buy it only after careful consideration of your own particular, finely balanced business requirements.Drop me an email if you want to chat a bit more about the sensibilities of building vs buying. It'd be fun to chat.You can email me on steve.austin@junari.com or call me on 01206 625225
