Is building your own inventory management solution really your best bet? The issues that companies face when they decide to build a solution in house are numerous: Scarce development resources, project cost overruns, delivery delays, unexpected technical issues, long-term maintenance issues. For these reasons, you should consider purchasing hosted, flexible, "out-of-the-box" vendor managed inventory (VMI) and web-based inventory solutions that can be running in five days, all at a fixed monthly price - with no delays, low risk and a lower total cost of ownership.
At Invendia we've often seen companies struggle with decision to buy a technology or to build that solution in-house. The decision criteria typically are:
•Availability of qualified development resources •Long-term maintenance staffing •Implementation time and costs •Project risk •Process understanding •3rd party objectivity
So, what are top six reasons to buy rather than build an inventory management solution?
6. Availability of qualified development resources. If you have available resources that are experienced in developing web-based, distributed solutions then you should consider building your own solution in house. In addition, your staff should ideally be knowledgeable about leveraging development standards such as J2EE or .NET. If not, you should source an off-the-shelf solution that can readily integrate with your existing applications. 5. Long term maintenance staffing. Once you have a solution, how are you going to keep it current, from both a technology and from a process point-of-view? For example, in last few years RFID, collaboration, wireless and countless other developments have forced companies to update their processes. With ever increasing innovations, you need to ensure that you are staffed to manage not only system upgrades but any errors that you may discover. If you either don't have staffing for this or don't want headache, then you should consider a "bought and maintained" solution.
4. Implementation time and cost. How quickly do you need a solution? If you have ample time to scope your project, build a project plan, free-up resources, develop and test application, then you should consider building solution.