Make vs Buy: Why Not Have the Best of Both?
Blog: The Data Center
When it comes to leveraging software to gain a competitive advantage for your organization, one of the most important decisions is whether to “Make” or to “Buy” that software. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Buying software off the shelf can often be a less expensive, quick and dirty solution, however it might not exactly fit your organization’s needs. Making your own software, will allow you to build exactly what you need and it will likely provide you with a competitive advantage, however this option can take much longer and cost up to 10x the cost of buying an out of the box solution. Wouldn’t it be better if there was an option that leveraged the best of both worlds? Well, you’re in luck! If you’re reading this, you have found a platform that does exactly that. The Decisions platform is a toolset that leverages graphical, no code, designers that can be used to configure or “build” exactly the software application that your organization requires. The benefits of the “build” option are clear and we will talk about them in more detail now.
Quick Start
Similar to the make option, Decisions allows you to get up and running with your application in a very short time. In fact, our average project time is only 6-8 weeks, which is often faster than typical buy options. It’s not uncommon for companies to buy a large out of the box solution that covers 80% of their company’s requirements. Implementations for these solutions can sometimes take as long as “make” options, when you consider the time to customize the program. The Decisions platform not only allows you to quickly build your own custom solution without code, but it can also be used as an add on to large monolithic applications such SAP, Salesforce or MS Dynamics.
Customization & Agility
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of using a platform like Decisions is your ability to quickly customize. We have done implementations for customers to manage all kinds of custom workflow and rule applications. Our enterprise class rules engine has been used to build programs that process 10’s of thousands of files daily in areas like medical claims processing, insurance quote to cash and mortgage processing. Decisions also gets involved in a lot of typical workflow applications where there is no packaged software solution that exactly fits what our clients need. In these situations, Decisions is used to build custom Employee Onboarding applications, custom IT Ticketing applications, custom Self Service portals, and more. Furthermore, with many out of the box integrations, we can leverage your existing IT architecture to connect your organization without forcing everyone to work in a new system. Finally, with built in testing and monitoring, you’re able to quickly identify opportunities for improvement in your application and make changes overtime. Decisions’ agile building blocks provide your organization with a system that can evolve with your business and provide a competitive advantage for years.
Cost
Typical out of the box “buy” solutions appear to be cost effective when you look at them in the short term. However, more often than not, these applications don’t fit your needs 100% and they don’t evolve with your business over time. As your day to day business needs change, you find your organization continuing to develop inefficient manual processes that cost your organization money. When you look at the man hours to develop your own customized solutions, the cost quickly creeps into the millions. Decisions is the ideal solution that balances the trade offs between agility and costs. We’ve done all the heavy development work and built a toolset that is powerful enough to be used by software developers and/or business users to build out entire applications. Our designers are like building blocks that can be used over and over again to build applications that meet your needs.
In conclusion, don’t limit yourself to a Make or Buy decision. In today’s fast paced environment, the only way to remain competitive is to adopt a solution that leverages the benefits of both Make and Buy. The Decisions platform provides that third option that allows you to quickly build an agile application that adjusts to your businesses needs over time at an affordable cost.
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