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Build vs. Buy: Is it worth it to develop your own mobile asset management system?

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Build vs. Buy: Is it worth it to develop your own mobile asset management system?

In this blog, we’ll look at:

  • The many pitfalls of building an in-house mobile asset management solution.
  • Why it’s a good idea to invest in a professionally developed mobile enterprise asset management solution.
  • How Innovapptive's solutions offer a practical, cost-efficient choice for effective digital transformation.

“Should I buy a mobile enterprise asset management solution or just build one myself? After all, how hard can it be?”

Many CEOs and top-rung executives ask themselves these questions and struggle with the answers. As a senior-level executive, balancing your company's immediate needs with your long-term growth strategy can be a daunting task. Should you invest aggressively in long-term initiatives, or tread cautiously with minimal investment and resources? Let’s take a critical approach and weigh both sides of the ‘build vs. buy’ equation. 

Digital transformation is spreading its wings across the business world. Enterprises are slowly realizing digital’s and mobility’s enormous potential to transform how businesses solve problems, become more agile and deliver greater value to customers. Digitalization and mobility are spearheading the drives for operational excellence and to enhance ROI. CEOs see their competition’s digital transformation success and not only want to replicate it at their own companies but surpass it.  

Does it make sense to do it yourself? 

Building your own mobile asset management solution has its appeal. If it didn’t, no one would try it. Here are a few advantages companies have given for doing it themselves:

  • They don’t have to pay a third party for the service, so costs will be less.
  • They will have total control over the application, including access to it and security.
  • No one knows their business better than they do, so no out-of-the-box product will ever be sufficient for their specific needs. 

However, as with a lot of all do it yourself projects - from repairing your car’s transmission to installing a new roof on the house - few seem to go as expected.  

Pitfalls of in-house development

If you want to build a mobile solution on your own, you’ll be starting with an empty slate. You’ll have to evaluate your business requirements, execute coding and perform testing to ensure everything is in place. Have you ever thought about how much time and how many resources you’ll need to invest in this exercise? Consider these key factors:

Time: To develop all the major components of your mobile solution, you’ll need to invest a significant amount of time to get your do it yourself solution up and running. How realistic is your timeframe? Are you prepared for delays, reworks and changes in direction? Loss of time will minimize your company’s ROI. Remember, time lost is money lost. 

Staff: You’ll also be pulling your IT staff away from their regular duties. Do you have enough skilled programmers and coders to not only develop a mobile solution to take care of your everyday IT needs as well? Will you need to temporarily hire new staff for one or both tasks? If so, that increases costs and that needs to be factored into your budget. In addition, building on your own solution could require collaboration between various departments of your organization. Can you spare staff members from maintenance, the warehouse, production, etc. to help where needed for development? The key skills, which you need stretches beyond the conventional SAP skillsets and warrants collaboration between various teams of your organization. What happens to their departments while they are pulled in another direction?

Support: A deployed solution needs proper support and maintenance at regular intervals. The upgrade life cycle for custom-built mobile digital solutions differs greatly from out-of-the-box products. This means either a part of your IT crew will have to be converted into support staff, or you will have to hire more people to create a staff. 

Mission: Most importantly, what type of company are you? What is your area of expertise? Manufacturing your product and servicing your customers? Or building mobile digital asset management solutions?   

Stick with what you know and leave development to the pros

You’re an expert in your business. That’s why you’re good at it. Innovapptive. a mobile-first digital transformation provider, is an expert in developing asset management solutions. It’s all we do. We don’t refine oil, we don’t process chemicals, we don’t generate electricity, we don’t mine iron ore. But we do help companies in those industries to better manage their fixed assets, conduct inventories and maintain equipment. Our solutions cut costs, increase revenues and improve user experiences.

Innovapptive has put in years of research (research you’d have to do yourself), so we understand the unique needs and pain points of industrial companies like yours. Our solutions are customizable, easy to use and proven in the field. Why spend the time, effort and money simply to duplicate something that’s already available and ready to use right now? 

Rather than going it alone, enjoy these benefits with Innovapptive:
  • Works right out of the box
  • Quick deployment time
  • Near universal adoption rate
  • No need for a large support staff
  • Integrates with legacy systems (SAP certified)
  • Easy scalability to grow as you grow.

To learn more, schedule a free demo today by calling 844-464-6668 or by clicking here

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