the doctor does not attend many events, but hen he does one thing he regularly hears is Company B saying that there is no platform that meets there needs so they are buying Solution S from Company X and customizing it through the vendor or a third party.
Before one more organization does this, the doctor needs to scream DON’T! In this day of age there is no return on enterprise software customization … no matter what the vendor or 3rd party may tell you.
Why?
1) Time to Delivery
If the functionality is truly valuable, by the time it is delivered, another vendor is sure to have equivalent functionality on the market ready and waiting for your implementation.
2) Up Front Cost
Custom development is a huge cost — which may never be realized given the average IT project failure rate and the average return.
3) Maintenance Cost
Out of the box functionality is covered under standard warranty and standard maintenance agreements — custom modifications usually require high hourly rates to contract scarce development talent for as long as is needed to fix any bugs or do any required upgrades.
4) Delayed Upgrades
While everyone else gets upgrades and new, free, features on the provider’s schedule, you get to wait and wait and wait until the talent has the time to address, and complete, the necessary upgrades to the custom modifications you made to allow the base system to be upgraded — this can be months (or years) and efficiency losses will add up on a daily basis!
When you put it all together, the costs will typically outweigh the benefits. So put the effort in to finding the right vendor with the right system and when it comes to customization, just do NOT do it! The only company that profits off of customizations is the vendor doing the customizations, because they are the company at the bottom of the money pit while their clients keep shovelling the money in.