Buy Versus Build - What CRMAdvocate Readers Have to Say Below is a summary of responses from CRMAdvocate readers responding to the prediction that more companies will build their own CRM solutions in 2006. Read more to hear the merits of both strategies and see how they fit in your build versus buy decision. (Share your thoughts)   Build for Best of Breed Gary, I could not agree with you more that "build your own" CRM is on the rise. Why? Because finally a company has a real opportunity to take advantage of best-0f-breed solutions from different vendors to uniquely satisfy the needs of their company. Componentized computing, service oriented archetectures and on-demand everything are the real world enablers to creating a unique and differentited customer strategy and expereice.   Stick to the Knitting I am completely against the notion of building applications yourself. Everyone sees the cost of these applications, be it CRM, WFM, etc, and feels that they can do it better and cheaper, which always turns out to be false. The applications get built and then as time goes along people leave the organization, technology changes, or the system just goes and breaks and suddenly you are left with an outdated system that no-one in the organization knows how to fix or adapt. If you sell insurance, sell insurance. If you manufacture widgets, make widgets. Stick to your core business and do it better than your competitors. Once you lose focus on your core strengths, this is when you get into trouble.   Building to your processes One of the falacies of the "buy" argument is that you get all sorts of things for "free". Well, not exactly free. Perhaps "included" would be more accurate? My favorite example is the thousands of reports that come standard with the package -- only 5 of which will be used on a regular basis, and then, only after being customized by your in-house IT staff! One of the benefits of building is that, if you have the self-control to do it, is simplifying the application to meet your needs, and eliminating the clutter of unneeded, unused, and unloved features build for somebody else's organization. This pays off in processes that make sense, rather than processes you can't make sense of because they've feature-creeped their way into chaotic mazes of options.   What about on-going support and maintenance This is a fascinating. The idea that in-house development of *any* complex application can be better than a commercial system where ongoing support and maintenance forms part of the proposition simply highlights the lack of thinking that takes place in the decision making process. My company is not involved directly in the CRM market but faces the same opposition – ‘build’ versus ‘buy’ is our main competitor.   The Best of Both Worlds With all of the features in modern CRM systems it is foolish to build your own. The desire to do so comes mostly from the need to have some very specialized feature or capability that is hard to find in standard off-the-shelf systems. Having said that, the newest titles (Microsoft CRM 3.0 and the soon-to-be-released GoldMine .NET version, for example) have such strong configuration / customization / integration features that you can have the best of both worlds. Get the reliability, features and cost saving of a commercial system and the customization of a "home grown" system in the one or two key areas where you need it. This will be the next wave in CRM.   Create your own CRM I think your are right about more focus on create your own CRM solutions. The all in one vendor offerings had two major flaws: First they were often vendor-driven rather than enterprise-commitment driven which often spells disaster. When senior management is not fully engaged in the philosophy and willing to make the organizational and compensation changes to support the new behaviors, the systems have a low likihood of success. Second, the all-in-one systems are so complex to implement and involve so many decisions at once that they are overwhelming for many organizations, resulting in huge consulting fees and perhaps less than optimal long-term results. So if CRM is to succeed, it has to come from the top and it has to come in bites small enough for the organization to chew and swallow. This lends itself well to a phased approach that makes one major change at a time. Thorough consideration of exactly what that change should entail will move away from abitrary deadlines imposed by vendor implementation contracts and into thoughtful consideration of exact requirements, perhaps leader to more custom developments. All in all, a good thing in my humble opinion if it ends up leading to the desired results of greater customer service, loyalty and revenues.   In-house but out of pocket? Before attempting to build their own systems companies should consider if their IT resources are really best spent reinventing the wheel. When an application is built from the ground up the internal build and test cycles can take far longer and cost far more than expected. Statistics from the Standish Group show that typically an internal build will cost 189 percent of the original estimate and will take more than twice as long (222 percent). The best packaged solutions can be bought and rolled out in a fraction of the time it takes to design, code, document and implement a custom solution. Speed of deployment is especially important when a business is pushing for immediate results. If your IT project can improve profitability by one percent – and for a large financial services organisation one percent can equate to millions of pounds on the bottom line – why wait?   Another potential problem for businesses with a culture of building rather than buying is balancing the ongoing needs of flexibility and functional complexity. Once a custom solution is in, the developers move on to the next project and their focus changes. Responsible vendors, however, will continually update their solutions in line with market requirements. And contrary to the belief that packaged applications require lengthy customisation after the initial installation, the best shrink-wrapped solutions are designed to be easily adaptable so that they can meet the specific requirements of an organisation in the shortest possible timeframe.   There will always be businesses that prefer to keep software developers in-house. While these organisations may benefit from solutions built to their exact specification, that advantage comes at a high price and at the cost of the competitive advantage of implementing best practice solutions honed over years of commercial development, market understanding and experience.