About The Playbook
Korio is a group of professionals who came together to help companies re-platform and become agile and fast. We prefer to work with established companies in the mid-market who might be struggling with the transformation to digital. Collectively, we have gone through dozens of transformations. We have witnessed successes and failures.
Based on what we have learned, we have become quite opinionated on what works and what doesn't. This short post is part of a larger Playbook that we have assembled based on what we have learned.
For tactics that should guide how you think about your digital platform, explore the links below.
As we learn more from our clients and if we think that the learning is: A) actionable, B) validated and C) doesn't state the obvious, then we will add it to our Playbook.
Remember, everything we propose can be done incrementally and with very little lead-time. If you want to adopt the plays in a more gradual manner, go ahead but consider setting each up as an experiment: have a hypothesis, measure the impact and act on what you learn.
The Play: Build When You Can, Buy When You Have To
Despite what off-the-shelf software or SaaS vendors will tell you, integrating their products into the core of your platform is rarely a good idea. Here's why: unless the vendor's system contains some "magic" that you simply can't reproduce, building it yourself will be far easier - particularly if you want to achieve competitive advantage.
We hear this often: "why build when you can buy?". To us, this is the proverbial kiss of death for achieving advantage through digital channels. First off, if the software you are about to buy or rent is simply a bunch of forms on top of a database, why not just build it yourself? With modern low-code platforms, this is trivial - and it leaves you open to optimizing that piece of your platform to, potentially, make it a differentiating feature over time. On the other hand, that vendor's software will likely stall out in terms of its evolution as it tries to satisfy the low-bar of its customer requirements.
Having said that, there are times when building makes no sense. This tends to fall into 2 categories:
- software or features that will never be differentiating and can easily be integrated from third party offerings. Accounting and HR systems are examples.
- a vendor who has managed to surface some form of "magic" in its offering. By this we mean software that is critical to your success, but where the vendor has a lock on how they create value that you couldn't hope to build or replicate. An example is Google's advertising network. Don't try to build your own. Google spent billions doing it. This is an example of what we call "magic".
How
- Commit to building your platform. Differentiating in digital channels is a must in most industries, even if it isn't immediately obvious. You must have full control of all key platform modules to be successful.
- Build all customer-facing aspects of your platform at the very least.
- Only buy or license 3rd party software that plays a non-differentiating role in your platform or in situations where you couldn't possibly replicate what the vendor has to offer. These situations should be rare.
Why Bother
- If your industry is threatened by digitally savvy new entrants or large incumbents with deep enough pockets to invest in their digital platforms, they will be successful because they will be building custom soutions that they will actively optimize. Think of any leading digital-first player in any industry. The likelihood that they leverage 3rd party software at the core of their platform is almost zero.
- Despite what vendors may tell you, integrating their software can be very, very difficult. What might seem easy at first can become a battle over time as you fight things like data-mapping mismatches or user experiences that evolve to become terribly off-brand.
What To Avoid
- Feeling ok about adopting 3rd party software at the core of your platform - particularly if it is customer facing. This approach might bide time, but not for long. Your competitors are building, not buying, and it isn't that hard.
The Fallback
If you start with (or are burdened with) a 3rd party system, think actively about how you might replace it, incrementally and feature by feature. Keep an eye on your competitors and new entrants or digital leaders in adjacent industries.