Buy or Build: What do others do?

According to Forrester Research, almost 60 % of all software purchased in the U.S. in 2005 was commercial software. Custom built contracted software was less than 10 %, and custom software built by internal IT staff a little more than 30 %.

Most importantly, investment in custom built software, by contract or internally, has been steadily declining year over year as commercial software has become more capable and customizable, and has been developed to support more business processes and adapted for different vertical industries.

Strictly from a software quality and cost perspective, this trend is understandable. A system from an established vendor has incorporated the practical experience of potentially thousands of professionals in the field, while distributing development costs over many clients and many years. A "home grown" database can call on the experience of only a handful of local managers over a much shorter development time.

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.