“Homegrown technology is like homemade pizza.”
That's the kind of question I might have returned to a few years ago if someone had asked me, "Should we build our own martech software or buy a packaged application from a martech vendor?"
It's not that you can't make your own pizza at home. Anyone can. I have. But making great pizza at home? Open. You need a combination of skills, ingredients, the right pizza dough, perfect tossing and stretching, and the right equipment – specifically, a wood- or charcoal-burning oven the size of a pizza. for which you can get enough heat and a long wooden paddle. You can mix the pizza together to cook evenly.
And then there's a bunch of practice.
Hey, some people do that. If you're one of those home pizza chefs who regularly dazzles family and friends with gorgeous, original pies, then you'll be hating off. I admit that you can create something unique, tailored to your preferences.
But for the vast majority of us, it's not worth it. Pick up the phone, call your local pizzeria, where they've built an entire business perfecting the art of pizza making at speed and scale. In less than 30 minutes, you have a delicious mushroom and pepperoni pizza on your kitchen counter, in a festive red and white box, with an attractive, pleasant aroma wafting through the air. air. Just picture pulling that first piece of thin, perfectly shaped pie crust onto your plate, with a few golden strands of molten cheese drawn from their heavenly motherhood… ahhhh…
I digress.
There is still truth to that metaphor today. But it's more complicated.
You probably shouldn't build your own CRM platform from scratch. And certainly not your own web server or email delivery tool. There are plenty of standardized capabilities that you can buy in reasonable quantities, document, debug, optimize, maintain – don't underestimate the importance of who maintains a large piece of software.
But “don't build your own web server” is a good example to dig into. Because while you shouldn't waste time and money creating your own HTTPS protocols or cached file systems, you absolutely should build your own website on top of the platform. that goods.
Your website’s information architecture, content, functional web application logic, etc., are all unique to your business. You have to build it – and continually evolve it to keep up with the ever-evolving nature of your business, customer needs, and competitive market dynamics. It’s what makes you, you.
Obvious, right?
But it's more than just your website now. As companies go through digital transformation – to clarify what that means beyond an overrated buzzword, I'll define it as your entire business being agilely coordinated with software – it's not just your website that has to be custom-tuned.
The entire way your later-stage business and earlier-stage customer experiences are designed and optimized – and cannot be entangled – also becomes unique to your business. , across every channel and touchpoint. (This is the context Big Ops is becoming a big problem.)
Just as with web servers for websites, you should take full advantage of the available platforms and applications that give you the basic, immediate ability to deploy business-specific processes and experiences. there. Don't reinvent the wheel.
But that “implementation” almost certainly now includes unique software logic.
Granted, a lot of that logic can be done with no-code features. Superpowers Now Available to Marketers to create workflows, applications, bots, dashboards, etc. without “coding” anything is quite remarkable.
Yet for all the wonders of no-code, many digital products and services still need to be built in code, by professional software engineers. Or, increasingly, critical components are built in code, and then leveraged in no-code tools that allow you to flexibly re-arrange business logic around them. (Definition reminder: with digital transformation, business logic = software logic.)
So let's take the code vs. no-code distinction for now.
The point is, in a way, you are building custom “software” to build your business.
But you want to be strategic about it. You don't want to build things that you can buy off-the-shelf. Ideally, you really want to buy open platforms that give you a ton of standardized functionality, but also expose data and services through APIs that allow you to accelerate development and integration of components. The only part of your business that you have to build.
This shift from “build vs. buy” to “custom applications and operations on a common core” is part of The second golden era of Martech which I described before. (This is a follow-up post about how platform dynamics enable this.)
“Okay, Scott. Nice concept. But do you have data that this is actually happening? ”
Why there. One recent report from the MarTech Alliance revisited the age-old question of the best set versus breed. (Note that almost all stacks “best of breed” is now all about platforms.)
It's no surprise that “best breed” is three times more popular than “set.”
But the most interesting finding is that the most popular choice is “hybrid” – a mix between vendor-owned and in-house/custom developed solution(s).
To my knowledge, this is one of the first times this question has been asked with a hybrid option. Kudos to the team for asking it, as it reveals a major trend that is clearly building.
To end with an overblown metaphor. Martech is not like pizza. It's like a trip to the grocery store, where you buy a mix of processed foods and raw ingredients. But you combine them well to enjoy the best meals possible, in a way that balances your time, talent, comparative advantage and the experiences and outcomes that make you happy.
Learn more at: https://chiefmartec.com/2021/07/build-buy-martech/
