Buy or Build: What do others do?

According to Forrester Research, almost 60 % of all software purchased in the U.S. is commercial software. Custom built contracted software represents less than 10 %, and custom software built by internal IT staff a little more than 30 %.

Most importantly, investment in custom built software, whether through contract or by internal IT staff, has been steadily declining year over year. This is in part due to the higher development and maintenance costs of custom software, and because commercial software has become more capable and customizable, and has been developed to support more business processes and adapted for different vertical industries.

For more details on the critical factors in making the buy vs. build decision, please see the article To Buy Or To Build.

NOTE: We are not without a bias in the Buy vs. Build decision. However, we urge you to become informed on this issue by reviewing the objective references in the article To Buy or To Build.

For anyone considering building a case management system, or modifying an existing system that was built from scratch, we strongly recommend you read the article in detail and review the references provided here.