1: Functional fit
If you can find a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution that meets 80% or more of your company’s exact needs and has some flexibility to adapt to future situations, that might be a good option. It’s important to analyse how much the solution applies to your use case to avoid paying for additional functionalities your company won’t use or having to customise heavily to get what you want. Be aware that systems produced for a mass market might inadvertently add to the complexity of your business processes rather than simplify them.
Generally, opting for a custom software solution is advisable if you need to customise a COTS system by more than 20 percent.
Custom software solutions offer a perfect functional fit for your business needs. Each solution is built with a focus on your company’s specific requirements, challenges, and goals from the start.
2: Customisation considerations
While the appeal of extending an existing core system is strong, the practical implications often reveal hidden complexities. COTS customisations can inflate costs, both upfront and over time. Creating, scaling, modifying, and maintaining these customisations usually requires significant resources, and the work involved can lead to technical debt—especially as the system evolves and needs updates. Some promises made by COTS solutions can be misleading, as significant manual coding and development work might still be necessary to achieve desired outcomes.
Moreover, these customisations can introduce challenges in maintaining system integrity and performance. The more you customise, the more difficult it can become to apply vendor-provided updates or patches, leading to potential security risks or system instability.
The issues extend to user experience and integrations as well. Creating a seamless experience across systems often requires intricate development work, and integrations between the COTS solution and other systems can be complex and costly to implement and maintain.