Not Invented Here Syndrome

"Jack of all trades, master of none". We have all heard the expression a thousand times and I can't imagine it is an expression many of us have aspired to live up to. Most of will recognise the path to success as being the best we can be at a defined number of core skills.

So why do so many technology providers invest so heavily in developing sub optimal functionality where their users would be better served with best in class solutions? There are many, many examples of this, but some of my least favourites are;

• Are VMS and ATS users best served by limited on-boarding functionality when best in class tools like Silkroad Red Carpet provide a much richer experience.
• Does deploying any technology solution with integrations that are hand built for every implementation when richer, speedier and more robust results can be achieved with one of the excellent iPaaS solutions such as Dell Boomi, Cyclr, Mulesoft etc.
• The many excellent Analytics solutions available will give users so much more flexibility than proprietary in application report builders.

I fully understand that much of the proprietary functionality like this pre-dates the wider availability of SaaS solutions that can deliver these enhanced capabilities. I also understand that commercial considerations are a significant factor in such development decisions.

I'm not arguing that there is no room for proprietary solutions in some of these areas, but some of the arguments I've heard for not offering integrations with third party best in class solutions seem very one dimensional. Surely the stickiness of delivering the very best solutions is the ultimate commercial justification.

Again a legacy reason for not following this path would have been the complexity of integrations and the user experience of working through multiple applications. However in this day and age I would argue that this is no longer a good reason.

I realise that not everyone will share my point of view, but I believe that providers taking an open minded approach to well thought out collaborations is a win, win, win for collaborators and clients alike.