Should a small business buy off the shelf software or build its own?
Start with an off the shelf tool, because using it is how you find out what you actually need. At United Meat Co we ran Fishbowl first, then built our own CRM once we knew exactly where it fell short. Building earlier would have meant guessing at the brief.
I've been thinking about the first time I had to choose new software for a business.
At United Meat Co we implemented Fishbowl. It did plenty well, but the longer we used it the more we kept running into things it couldn't do the way we actually worked.
In the end I built our own CRM instead. Not because custom is always better, but because by then we knew exactly what we needed. We'd learnt it by living with something that didn't quite fit.
That's what I'd tell anyone adopting new tech, AI included. You don't really know what you need until you've used something for a while. Starting with an off the shelf tool wasn't a mistake. It was how we worked out the brief.
I'm GM and IT Manager there, and I bring the same thinking to product work at LIFEConnected AI.
Has anyone else outgrown a system and been glad they started with it anyway?
Co-Founder, Head of Product & AI at LIFEConnected AI. More about me