The Best of Both Worlds: Pros and Cons of Hybrid Build–Buy
What if “build vs. buy” wasn’t an either–or proposition? Is there another path that realizes the benefits of each approach while minimizing the risks of both?
Indeed, there is. We call it the hybrid approach. There are two main ways to implement it:
- Buy a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution and customize it.
- If it can’t be customized, build a custom companion application that covers the missing functionality.
The first is the preferred method because it offers a seamless user experience and sometimes doesn’t rely on fragile integration points with the COTS software.
Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of the hybrid approach–specifically, customizing the COTS application.
Advantages of the Hybrid Approach
The hybrid approach enables you to capture many advantages of building and buying software solutions. Many prominent business systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, are designed for customization and have sophisticated tools to manage those customizations. To the extent your chosen COTS solution enables customization, you can fill the capability gaps with custom code on top of a ready-made, market-tested, and industry-specific solution.
Because the custom-code footprint is smaller, you assume less risk and incur lower customization and support costs. The deployment cycle may be longer than that for an out-of-the-box COTS implementation, but not as long as building a solution from scratch.
The hybrid approach lets you build tools to support those unique business processes you can’t live without while supporting industry best practices for everything else. Furthermore, a customizable COTS solution often provides easier integration with other software systems.
Disadvantages of the Hybrid Approach
A hybrid approach reduces your risk but does not eliminate it. Here are some potential drawbacks of the hybrid approach:
- Not every COTS application can be customized, and some of those that can don’t make it easy for developers. A well-designed application makes it straightforward for developers to design, develop, test, and implement customizations. When shopping for a COTS solution, ease of customization should be a must-have requirement.
- Even accessible customization applications have a learning curve for developers. If your development team (either in-house or outsourced) does not have experience customizing that specific application, prepare to add some time and budget to the project to get them up to speed.
- Customizing a COTS application requires the same time, resources, and planning commitment as building from scratch, albeit on a smaller scale.
- Even with customizations, your application may not meet 100% of your needs. Some business problems are so thorny that the cost of building a digital solution is more than you will ever gain.
However, the most significant risk to customization is that the COTS software vendor will insist that you keep your base software updated to the latest version for new capabilities and more robust security. A significant version change can “break” your customizations. Thus, every update requires you to test all your customizations to ensure they still work—and fix them if they don’t. This represents an additional and unpredictable cost over the life of the solution.
So, what’s the best approach for your situation?
Next: Build/Buy/Hybrid Decision Criteria
How Solution Machine Can Help
For over 10 years, Solution Machine teams have been developing and delivering software solutions for businesses that operate across various industries, including manufacturing, retail, distribution, non-profits, media and entertainment, plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors, and many others.
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