You decided to deploy a best-in-class mobile maintenance management solution that connects with your back-end cloud system. Should you build the solution in-house or buy it? Every business decision-maker faces this dilemma. While most think building the solution in-house would be a wise decision. While this could be true for many other digital initiatives, building a mobile maintenance solution in-house is challenging in reality.
Here are five reasons why you should not consider building a mobile management solution in-house:
- Lack of expertise: You need a mobile maintenance management solution. Because you are an asset-intensive company in a non-IT sector. First things first, you should have the required software development expertise to build a mobile solution. The development lifecycle includes phases such as architecture design, UI/UX design, development, integration, deployment, and support. Maintenance management solutions are complex. Failing to meet any standard will result in a buggy product that has no value. As you wish to create a single source of truth, glitches in a maintenance solution can disrupt your entire operations.
- Building a Team: Developing an in-house mobile maintenance management system also requires assembling a team with the right skills and expertise. This may involve hiring new employees or assigning existing employees to the project. Hiring IT talent is highly expensive and time-consuming, given the demand for developers. Additionally, building and managing an in-house team can pose challenges such as turnover, training, and ongoing support. On the other hand, purchasing a solution from a trusted vendor eliminates the need to build and manage a dedicated team, as the vendor takes care of all the development, support, and maintenance activities, freeing up internal resources to focus on core business operations.
- Time to value: Building a mobile maintenance management system from scratch can be a time-consuming process. It requires defining requirements, designing the user interface, coding, testing, and deploying the solution. Organizations may face delays due to unexpected challenges, such as technical issues or resource constraints. In contrast, buying a trusted solution from a vendor can significantly reduce the time to deploy. Vendors typically offer ready-to-use solutions that can be quickly customized to meet the unique needs of the organization, allowing for faster implementation and a faster return on investment.
- Support and maintenance: Any mobile solution requires regular updates, bug fixes, and ongoing support to ensure optimal performance and scalability. When building an in-house solution, organizations are responsible for providing lifetime support for the system, which can be complex and time-consuming. It may involve continuous monitoring, troubleshooting, and addressing user feedback. Trusted solution vendors offer comprehensive support and maintenance services, including regular updates and bug fixes, to ensure the smooth operation of the system throughout its lifetime. This allows organizations to offload the burden of ongoing support and focus on their core business activities.
- The total cost of ownership (TCO): Building and maintaining an in-house mobile solution is expensive. It requires significant upfront investment in development resources, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance costs. Organizations need to consider the costs of hiring and training a team, software development tools and technologies, hardware infrastructure, and ongoing support and maintenance. Buying a solution from a vendor typically involves a predictable cost structure, with upfront and ongoing costs that are well-defined. Vendors often offer pricing models that are scalable and can be tailored to your needs.
Looking for a trusted mobile maintenance management solution provider?
PropelApps has built a best-in-class mobile maintenance management solution that connects with back-end systems such as Oracle EAM Cloud and SAP S/4HANA. Our intuitive solution breaks data silos in your organization and creates a single source of truth. Your maintenance managers can have real-time visibility of the health of your assets and create proactive maintenance strategies to boost asset reliability.
Want to see how our mobile maintenance solution works for your business? Get in touch with us.