Strategic Sourcing Decision
A build-versus-buy decision framed around competitive differentiation and organisational capacity rather than a comparison of visible costs.
The engineering framing is cost and capability. The business framing is what the organisation intends to be good at, and it produces better decisions because it survives the arithmetic being wrong.
The governing question: does this capability differentiate us? Build core — what customers choose you for. Buy context — necessary, undifferentiated, and where the market's product is better than anything you would build.
The considerations the business adds beyond the engineering comparison:
Capacity and opportunity cost. Every build consumes engineering capacity that is finite, and the relevant comparison is against the next-best use of it rather than against zero.
Speed to market, where buying may deliver in weeks what building delivers in quarters — sometimes decisive on its own.
Risk transfer. A vendor carries availability, security and compliance obligations, which for a regulated capability has real value.
Strategic dependency. A capability central to the business, sourced from a single vendor, is a commercial exposure that will be used at renewal.
The middle option is frequently correct and frequently overlooked: buy the platform, build the differentiated layer on top. And where the decision is to buy, the work that remains is managing exit cost — knowing what leaving would take, rather than pretending it will never happen.