CHAPTER 3:
Should I Build Or Buy My Billing Solution?
When it comes to replacing a revenue management system, or choosing a new system to support SaaS products, one of the difficult questions faced is whether to buy or build your billing solution. Both approaches have their advantages, however, they are oriented towards different end goals. There are a variety of factors you should consider in making the build vs. buy decision.
The benefits of building your billing solution in-house
One of the biggest advantages of building a billing solution in-house is that you can design your solution to do exactly what you want it to do.
Your team has complete control over every element of your billing system’s functionality, from invoicing to integration. Going this route enables you to customize the billing experience to address the specific needs of your customer base, therefore enhancing their connection to your products or services.
With an in-house build, you maintain oversight over your solution’s testing, development, and deployment. You can be confident it will integrate well with existing applications and systems. You can also ensure that billing operations meet the necessary regulatory requirements for your specific industry.
This path only makes sense for:
- Companies with large teams of dedicated and talented developers and IT operations personnel with revenue management system expertise.
- Smaller organizations that only need a simple billing system to execute relatively basic requirements.
On the downside, developing an in-house billing solution takes a significant amount of time to develop and support – a clear disadvantage in today’s fast-paced world. If requirements are not clearly thought-out, or the business changes course during development you will likely encounter scope creep.
Additionally, systems built in-house require in-house expertise to maintain. IT teams may need to shift focus to the billing solution for lifecycle changes, upgrades, changes to pricing models, or any problems that arise. Any changes to billing operations become a tax on your IT team, and may slow the business’s ability to react to market needs. Additionally, as with any homegrown product, your business run the real risk of overlooking important considerations and requirements that an experienced commercial vendor would have already vetted and validated.
The benefits of buying your billing solution
Purchasing a commercial, off-the-shelf billing system can save your organization a lot of development time and money. Rather than allocating resources and expertise towards an in-house build, you can rely instead on the experience of a third-party vendor.
When you buy a billing solution, you are purchasing a pre-built, pre-tested, purpose-driven system. Some billing solutions on the market are plug-and-play systems which don’t require major changes to existing IT infrastructure. They can integrate with internal applications without causing any issues in billing operations or the customer experience.
