Bespoke technology development is complex and requires extensive investment of time and other resources. Nevertheless, this may be the only way to get exactly what your business needs in a particular area of your data driven enterprise. It is important to know exactly what your requirements to then carefully contract and manage your development partner or your own technology teams. We most frequently recommend an Agile technology development methodology, because it divides these large effort into short iterations that are much easier to measure and course-correct as necessary. We are experienced teaching organizations this lightweight approach to technology development, so that any of our clients can reap the benefits of this approach.
Certainly there can be a strong time to market advantage to a "buy" option for required technologies either through M&A or licensing arrangements. There is also, typically, a reduction in overall risk over custom development especially for enterprises that are just beginning to "build". We do work with our clients to avoid integration or optimization problems that might occur downstream as siloed systems that were not always designed to work as a component within a complex technology ecosystem are asked to become more and more central to your evolving, data-driven enterprise.
Regardless of how the various pieces of technology were created or procured, there will always be a need to integrate them into the overal fabric of your data-driven enterprise and configure them optimally for your unique needs. Then, of course, these integrations and optimizations must be adapted over time as your business and market needs change. Flexibility is as important as seamless integration and the ability to perform at scale. We must always strike the best balance possible between these three critical needs at each point where they develop competing requirements.