Build vs buy: Deciding

One of the most significant decisions any organization can make is to build or buy reporting for their application. Why? Because reporting drives engagement, and time is money. But it’s not just about budget — the solution you choose needs to meet your custom requirements now and in the future. Once you decide that you need reporting, determining whether to build vs. buy a tool based on your needs will be the next step.  

This guide will walk you through how to make that decision confidently and assess the factors you should consider. Let’s dive in:

When to start the evaluation

Weigh the pros and cons of build vs buy during these two main development phases: 

Discovery phase

This is the time to understand what exactly you need (in terms of features) and what you want to provide or achieve with enterprise or embedded analytics. 

Start by outlining your core requirements. To do this, you must effectively define the problem you’re trying to solve. For instance, is your organization’s reporting problem data silos or poor data quality? Do you want to automate your reporting process or reduce reporting complexities? 

By identifying specific problems, you can effectively define your requirements and needs so that you understand which features will help meet your goals.

Design phase

Next comes the design phase, which involves finding appropriate solutions for the requirements outlined during the discovery phase. This is where you begin to look at the project scope to build and the available reporting tools in the market to determine if they meet your requirements. 

Opting to build a reporting tool in-house from scratch can be extremely resource-intensive. Think long development timelines, upskilling your development team, and the cost of buying software infrastructure required to build and support the platform. Just as important is the opportunity cost. Every hour your developers spend building reporting capabilities is time taken away from enhancing your core products or services. 

During this system design phase, you’re trying to see if an off-the-shelf solution can fulfill your requirements in a cost-effective way.

Key factors to consider before making your decision

While it's important to know when to make the build vs. buy decision,  understanding what to consider is even more crucial. Here are several factors to consider: 

Strategic importance of the reporting functionality

Reporting is no longer a behind-the-scenes function. In today’s business environment, organizations depend on it for multiple purposes, including decision making, driving visibility and engagement, and supporting accountability.

Given reporting’s strategic role, the most important question should be how central it is to your core or unique value proposition. If your reporting needs are deeply integrated in proprietary systems or require high-level customization, building a customized solution may offer the flexibility and control you need to maintain a competitive edge. 

However, there are still some off-the-shelf solutions that can help you achieve that kind of customization without the resource demands of custom development. Some modern solutions offer powerful capabilities out of the box, including customization options, embeddability, and integration support that meet the needs of most organizations without compromising on quality or impact.

Flexibility and customization of the solution

Despite the tag ready-made or off-the-shelf, many reporting platforms aren’t as constricting as one-size-fits-all suggests. These solutions offer some form of flexibility and extensibility. APIs are a common way that these tools let you customize them. For instance, a tool like Jaspersoft offers customization capabilities so you can tailor the reporting functionality to your unique requirements without having to build from the ground up. It does so through APIs, SDKs, and embedded analytics options. 

Additionally, outside of your immediate use case, does a reporting tool provide additional features that add value? You may find a product that not only meets your reporting needs, but is a solution to other challenges as well. 

Specificity of requirements

Sometimes, off-the-shelf solutions can and will help you achieve the level of customization you require to meet your reporting goals through APIs. This can happen even if your reporting needs are highly specific across multiple dimensions, such as functionality, design, integration, and embedding.

Say, for instance, you need pixel-perfect control over report design to meet strict branding or compliance standards. Tools like Jaspersoft provide these exact features, so in such cases, a buy approach may be your best option.

Internal expertise

Your tech team’s skills and capacity should also play a part in your decision. If the team lacks the experience and know-how for developing and maintaining a customized reporting solution, buying a ready-made tool may be a better option. Choosing to build the application internally may require extra investment into upskilling or hiring new team members, which can lengthen the development time and cost, and also increase maintenance costs.

Additionally, if your team must rely on IT to develop and deploy every report, this can create bottlenecks, which negatively impact agility. A self-service platform can help reduce this dependency by enabling non-technical users to create ad hoc reports. 

Time-to-market

The average development time for an application is 3-12 months. Every month you spend building a custom solution, you risk falling behind your competitors who may already have access to actionable insight. 

Purchasing an established solution, on the other hand, allows you to deploy and begin generating insights much faster (often in a matter of weeks). You'll realize the impact of reporting almost immediately.

Scalability

As the volume of your data increases, a reporting solution that can comfortably accommodate this growth becomes essential. For instance, can the application handle increased traffic and user base without performance issues? Can it connect to different or multiple sources simultaneously? Does it allow for custom report generation at scale, without overloading IT resources? 

Budget constraints

To evaluate this factor, analyze costs on each side. For instance, if you choose the buy option, you should consider the initial purchase fees, ongoing subscription fees, and customization costs. As for the build options, consider costs like developer time, possible outsourcing fees (if your team lacks the technical know-how), maintenance costs, and infrastructure costs.

Jaspersoft: The best off-the-shelf reporting tool

While building your reporting tool might seem like the most customizable option, expertise is essential. The ability to customize and gain access to more advanced reporting features is also nearly impossible to build. That’s why it’s best to use off-the-shelf applications, like Jaspersoft, so you can quickly provide your customers with services and products. 

Unlike many off-the-shelf reporting tools on the market, Jaspersoft provides the customization you’d hope to achieve with a custom-built reporting platform. Its API-first approach means you can customize how the software looks and feels within any application, so you can design it to match your business’s aesthetic. 

Jaspersoft’s APIs also enable deeper integrations such as embedding dashboards and reports into user interfaces at scale, managing data sources, and controlling user permissions programmatically. Further, Jaspersoft offers multiple reporting features to meet your company's needs, including pixel-perfect reports, agnostic architecture, and ad hoc self-service.

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