More Than Tech

My first job was as a developer, I was involved in the development of a mainframe purchasing system, which I later helped to replace with a package. That was my first exposure to a buy rather than build decision and since then I’ve seen both scenarios, although in the vast majority of cases buy beats build hands down. Of course, if there isn’t a package in the market that does what you need, then building your own system makes sense. Also, if your company has some secret sauce that is truly unique and special, then there is an argument to build. Whilst I was at a previous company, we developed our own WMS because we didn’t see anything commercially available that could easily be enhanced to contain our proprietary intellectual property, but that company is one of the largest distributors in the world, with some intelligent systems and some unique ways of doing things. For everything except the WMS, we used packages - I think that says something. Even with the capability and expert...

Cash Friendly SAAS costs are considered as operating expenses, whereas a software license is considered an asset, with years of planned depreciation. If cash is tight SAAS is really the way to go. Typically it’s much harder to get a large capex approved than it is to take on an annual opex commitment. Support and Upgrades are Included SAAS pay as you go pricing typically includes support and upgrades. Some traditional software providers include upgrades but support is typically about 20% of the initial software cost Over Time, SAAS Can Look More Expensive But… When you look over an extended period, SAAS can appear more expensive. This can be a dangerous calculation though because it’s hard to compare apples to apples. You can include hardware costs in a total cost of ownership calculation but its harder to correctly reflect implementation costs because SAAS solutions are typically deployed at much lower cost. I am aware of traditional ERP implementation costs i...