Sooner or later every growing company faces this question. Buy a ready system off the shelf or commission something written to fit. Both paths make sense, but in different situations. A bad decision costs twice, once at purchase and again when you have to undo it.

Off-the-shelf software

Ready systems, for example popular CRM, accounting or warehouse programs, win where your process does not depart from the industry standard. Someone has already solved this problem for thousands of companies and spread the cost across all of them.

Advantages:

  • Low cost to start and a predictable subscription fee.
  • Fast deployment, often in days, not months.
  • Updates, support and security on the provider’s side.
  • A large community and easy access to people who know it.

Disadvantages:

  • You have to fit the company to the program, not the other way round.
  • You pay for features you do not use.
  • Limited integration with the rest of your tools.
  • The risk of dependence on a single provider and its price list.

Custom software

A tailor-made solution is built around your specific process. It makes sense when that very process is the heart of the company and your edge over the competition.

Advantages:

  • A perfect fit to the process, with no compromises.
  • Full control over development and data.
  • A competitive edge the competition cannot buy off the shelf.
  • Integration with exactly the tools you use.

Disadvantages:

  • A higher upfront cost and a longer time to the first version.
  • Maintenance and development are on your side, though they can be outsourced.
  • It requires a good description of the process before anything is built.

The most expensive projects I have seen are ready systems forced to do things they were not built for. The company paid for workarounds, plug-ins and consultants for years. A custom solution would have been cheaper from the start. But the opposite also happens, when someone builds an ordinary CRM from scratch.

How to make the decision

Instead of asking what is better, ask yourself a few specific questions about the process.

Questions that bring order to the choice

  • Is this process standard for my industry, or genuinely unique?
  • Is the process my competitive edge, or just a supporting activity?
  • How many people will use it, and how often?
  • How much does fitting the company to a ready program hurt me?

A practical rule. For supporting processes, such as accounting, email or a basic CRM, choose off the shelf. For what forms the core of your business and sets you apart on the market, consider custom.

The third way, often the best

The choice is not binary. Very often a combination works best. Ready systems for standard tasks, tied together with integrations and automation into one efficient organism, and a custom solution only where it is truly needed.

Before you decide to build anything from scratch, it is worth checking whether integrations and automation between existing tools will not settle the matter more cheaply and quickly. It often turns out that the problem is not the lack of a system, but that the systems do not talk to each other.

Summary

There is no single right answer. Off-the-shelf software is cheaper and faster where the process is standard. Custom wins where the process is your edge. And in practice a smart combination of both approaches most often pays off.

If you are facing such a decision and do not want to guess, get in touch. We will help analyse the process and point out where custom software makes sense, and where ready building blocks well tied together are enough.