Every company worries about competition. When I ran a large enterprise solutions organization, I took steps every day to ensure we were outpacing the competition. Frequently this involved making “build” vs “buy” decisions for the various product parts or services we needed to drive our business. In each discussion, I would ask my staff: “What is going to help us move faster or be more efficient? What will help us beat our competition?”
In today’s business world, IT is a significant driver of competitive advantage and the same considerations of “build” vs “buy” apply to IT, just as they do to other parts of the business.
Imagine the following exchange between a Line of Business executive and CIO of a company: