Hard Lessons, Part I - Risk Reduction

In this installment of our series on 'build vs buy', I'm going to examine one important factor in favor of buying a product versus building your own solution: Risk Reduction

One thing that I've noticed when FieldPro is being compared against an in-house solution is that Risk Reduction and/or Implementation Risk is often given little weight or is undervalued. Internal IT teams usually have great levels of competence with internal process and make confident scheduling and resource predictions. We'll probably do a separate blog post later on why these assumptions are sometimes mistaken and some of the common pitfalls we've seen these teams run into, but for now let's only examine the factor of Risk from the decision-makers perspective.

In the situation where FieldPro is being compared against a proposal from IT to build (or extend) an existing solution, the risk of project failure from a budget and capability standpoint is often minimized or not considered. I want to be very careful and not insult internal IT teams. In my career as a consultant and business owner, often working in close conjunction with internal staff on projects, I've seen many of them do excellent and highly professional work.  Nevertheless, we've all heard the statistics regarding the probability of project success. IT departments are already overwhelmed with existing internal IT projects as well as the management of complex and mission critical infrastructure.

One of the most important assets that you're buying with the purchase of a solution like FieldPro is the elimination of a large portion of the risk associated with delivering a complex, large project. Is there still risk involved? Yes, of course, there is still risk around integration and adoption, but the risk around core capabilities, technology, budget and timeline is essentially eliminated. FieldPro capabilities can be evaluated today; the availability (timeline) is essentially immediate (sans integration); and the procurement cost is a known quantity. Compare this with the unknowns of a proposed project to build a similar system and you can see a compelling reason to buy versus build due to the risk reduction.

The dangers of this risk even go beyond the failure to keep up with competition or the wasted money and time. We often see where project failure has soured upper management on the potential effectiveness of an electronic solution. Potential customers will tell us that they've tried unsuccessfully to build their own solution, have failed, and now cannot get management to consider ANY solution.

As a last note, let me say that evaluation of this same risk impacts us at LiquidFrameworks directly as well. I am a 'true believer' in using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions where appropriate. We both partner with other software vendors and use COTS products in-house in many situations to provide infrastructure or as building-blocks in customer solutions. We carefully evaluate product capabilities as part of the architectural process for any project, and Risk is a prime factor considered.