Member Article

In-House IT solutions: built to fail?

Whether you work for a small charity or a FTSE 100 company, at some point you’ll face a choice: do you build a tech solution for the business in-house, or license it from a specialist vendor? You might be looking for a time management system, or a collaboration platform, or a solution to let your board of directors share information and communicate with each other. You’ll probably consider the software vendors available on the market, how well they match your needs, and the cost of licensing over a number of years, and compare that with the cost of developing the software in-house.

But building your own solution is about so much more than the initial capital outlay, which is why so many well-intentioned projects fail. If you get it wrong, you risk an expensive mistake that doesn’t get used by people in the business.

So when you’re weighing up whether to develop software in-house or license it from a specialist, there are a number of factors to consider.

First, think about the hidden costs of building your own software. For example:

1. Regular maintenance. Development doesn’t stop once the solution has been built. If you’re building an app, you might need to update it every time your teams change their phone or laptop, or to work with a new operating system. A browser update could be enough to cause your solution to become unstable. Bugs can also come up regularly, which will either slow down other development projects or get ignored.

2. Hosting. Where is your solution hosted, and who is responsible for managing it? What will this cost? What maintenance do you need to do on the hosting platform?

3. Software upgrades. Things change fast in IT, and your software will need to change with it.

If you work with a technology partner, all maintenance, upgrades and hosting will be taken care of for you.

Next, consider support:

1. Who can call your CEO at midnight when he or she can’t access the right documents for a board meeting at 8am the following morning?

2. Who is responsible for ongoing technical and hosting support? What happens when a bug appears in the system, or the system fails, or a user makes an error? Who takes responsibility for this? In-house IT teams are rarely set up to provide 24/7 support on any one solution.

If you licence software from a third party, they’ll be responsible for both technical and customer support. This both takes the headache away from internal teams and, if you choose your vendor correctly, will delight the end-users with fast, professional support.

And last, but by no means least, think about the security of your solution. Security should be at the heart of development and not something that’s bolted on as an afterthought, particularly if your technology is hosting confidential or sensitive information. You need to ensure robust encryption is in place along with 24/7 monitoring to detect any breaches that may occur, and it is best practice to run periodic 3rd party tests on any app.

All these are critical to the success of an IT project. Few in-house IT teams can have the time, expertise, knowledge, or skills required to develop a solution in-house. Relying instead on a company who specialises in solving the problem at hand can mean the difference between a successful project and a failed one.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Charlie Horrell .