Michael Ungar breaks down when to buy software versus build it. Always buy systems of record like ERP and accounting software because they contain complex regulatory requirements. Buy specialized packages for IoT and metering too. For everything else, weigh the cost of building in-house against buying.
There are 2 kinds of things that you should buy, not build, or subscribe to from a software-as-a-service vendor without question. Thing number one would be if it's a system of record, meaning there are industry standards, there's a compliance dimension to it. In other words, the people that wrote it aren't just about making what the software does good in its own right. It's also making it compliant with a lot of arcane requirements, either from an industry or from a government. So your enterprise resource planning or accounting software, something like that, don't, don't write that yourself. High code, low code, just don't do it. Buy that or subscribe to it. The second thing is, in— if again, if it's your system of operational record, in other words, there's certain specialized packages that are dedicated not just to manufacturing in general, but specific subgroups. In other words, if it's, it's something that definitely— that is designed to do telemetry with Internet of Things or certain kinds of meters or, or regulators, like, that's specialized knowledge. It's not just specialized software. You're probably gonna buy that too. Almost everything else, you got to take a good look at what might what you might get out of building it yourself.
