Buy vs. build your software, 8 things to consider

As the owner and account manager at a medical software company specializing in physician call scheduling software, I occasionally have a prospect tell us that they are "thinking about creating scheduling software in-house".  Although I highly discourage this due to the complexity, staff requirements and amount of time that would need to be invested to re-create what we have already done, I thought I would be objective and tell you when I think it’s good to build versus buy. 

After researching this topic, consensus appears to be:  Buy when you need to automate commodity business processes or to standardize; build when you’re dealing with core processes that differentiate your company or to compete.  “Everyone knows that the more standardized you are and the more you buy off-the-shelf, the more cost effective it will be for both implementation and ongoing maintenance,” says Mark Lutchen of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Here are 8 things to consider when making your decision:

1.      Upfront Scope and Requirements costs:  what do you want the software to do and how will it look and function.  What are your expectations?

2.      Upfront development cost:  You will most likely need project manager(s), lead architects, coders and testers.  Also don’t forget the technology required to develop and test.

3.      Upfront time:  Scope and requirements can take 2-3 months full time on a project that is medium in complexity.  Development can take 6-9 months and testing another 2-3 months.

4.      Plan for the “ooh, that’s what you meant” most projects have some amount of re-work required to move forward.   This is usually greater if you decide to “off-shore” your project.

5.      Ongoing maintenance:  Software becomes outdated the moment it is released, that’s why there are patches and updates.  Not to mention that every time you update or patch something, chances are that you will break something else.

6.      Software maturity:  This is the point when you have an ultra-stable system that is virtually bug-free.  This is a moving target.

7.      Staffing:  What happened when your coder or project manager gets a better job offer or you have budget cuts and have to eliminate a key position? 

8.      Intellectual property rights:  Don’t forget about the IP that will go into this project during the development.  Although most companies have policies that state that anything that is developed on company time is property of the company, that does not preclude your employees from developing “similar software” for another industry or building on a concept that was scrapped at work.  The hardest part in this scenario is finding out that someone has a covert project going on at home.

                                                    Graphic by Bruce F. Webster

I think a good argument can be made depending on your goals and objectives.  As an example, we have developed custom on-call doctor scheduling software to sell to hospitals and clinics.  We truly feel this is core to our business.  But on the flip side we have purchased via SaaS model both CRM and Accounting software where better mousetraps had already been built. 

I think the key takeaway is to know what you’re getting yourself into and why are you deciding to build vs. buy software. 

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Justin Wampach is president of Adjuvant Technologies, developer and provider of Call Scheduler. Contact him at 320-257-7134 or justinw@call-scheduler.com

Who’s planning for the worst?

What is the cost of starting over
In the world of business, especially as a Software company there has been a push since 1999 to be sure that your company has a disaster plan in place, just-in-case something happens.  A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) or disaster plan is the least expensive insurance plan a company can have, as it costs virtually nothing to produce, if you do it yourself.  Adjuvant Technologies has spent time making sure that our company can still provide a valuable on-call scheduling and management service even if our office is not accessible.

Recently I have spoken to many prospective customers who have not given much thought to the question of “what would happen if the person or Doctor who creates and manages the providers’ on-call and work schedule was gone and the information was not available in your office?” “Do you have anyone cross-trained in creating and maintaining the physician schedule?”  ‘Do you have the process documented?”  “Do you have the complex rules documented on paper?”  “Where is all of your information located?”  “When was the last back-up?”  If the answer to any or all of these questions is “I don’t know” or “no”, you need to keep reading this.

According to website WiliHow.com, there are several steps the partners can take to be sure that your most critical items have been carefully thought through and you have an accessible plan that directs the organization in a time of chaos.  Here are the first 9 things to know.

 9 Easy steps

Step 1:  Document key personnel and backups.  These are people without which your business can function.  Doctors and other key providers would be on this list.

Step 2:  Identify who can work from home.  Find people who are capable of working from a home office.

Step 3:  Document external contacts.  Critical vendors, your attorney, banker, hospital contacts, and EMR vendor.

Step 4:  Document critical equipment.  Personal computers, back-ups, fax machines, servers, software.

Step 5:  Identify critical documents.  Articles of incorporation, HR records, lease papers, physician schedule history, on-call tally reports.

Step 6:  Identify contingency equipment options.  Where would you rent computers, a phone system, fax and copy machines, and how quickly could you have all of this set-up.

Step 7:  Identify your contingency location.  Where will you conduct business, where will you be directing patients to in a disaster?

Step 8:  Make a “how to” process book.   This should include step-by-step instructions on what to do, who should do it and how.  This should be done for every “critical process” in your organization.

Step 9:  Put this information together.  This plan is useless unless it has been assembled and can be accessed in case of an emergency.  Be sure to have extra copies.

Practice what you preach

At Adjuvant we began identifying critical systems and process that we would need if our office suddenly did not exist.  Here are some of the things we did.  1)  We used to have our accounting system, QuickBooks located on a server in our office.  We transitioned to QuickBooks online to be sure that we can access the information from anywhere.  2) We also used to have our Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) software located on a server in our office.  We quickly realized that if we did not have access to the office, we would never be able to notify our clients of any problems.  We began using salesforce.com and online company to manage this information off site for us.  3)  As an Application Service Provider (ASP) servicing clinics and hospital emergency rooms, our customers rely on us to keep our equipment up and running.  We relocated all of our production servers to large national hosting facilities that offer costal redundancy.  These are 3 examples of how we used new technology as part of our Continuity Plan.

As the owner of an ASP, I try to tell prospective customers how valuable it can be to have critical information accessible from anywhere via the Internet.  In the case of scheduling physicians, where they are or are supposed to be may be important enough to your organization to make sure it is part of your larger continuity plan. 

Please don’t wait to find out if you will ever need a BCP.  I can promise you that at some point you probably will.  Is yours done?  Ours is!

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Justin Wampach is president of Adjuvant Technologies, developer and provider of Call Scheduler. Contact him at 320-257-7134 or justinw@call-scheduler.com