FROM THE BOOK · STEP TWO: BUILD, BUY, BOLT-ON OR BORROW

Build-vs-Buy Decider

Take one line from your cost audit and run it through the four questions, in order. The first question that gets a yes is your answer. You don't carry on hunting for a better one. First yes wins, and the order is not negotiable: it runs from safest to boldest.

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The line item you're deciding on

Question one: is it the system of record for the dangerous stuff?

Does this keep the official, authoritative record for money, compliance, tax, legal, health data or your core transactions? The ledger your accounts run from, the system that takes the card payment, the place HMRC would look. Or is it genuinely enormous, the kind of thing a company spent ten years getting right?

It's an assessment, not a category

None of the four is a permanent label on a type of software. Same category, different business, different answer. Run the questions on how you actually use the thing, and run them again when something changes.