As businesses evolve, there’s a growing need for support with core tools and for travel technology that will help in scaling the business and supporting future growth. We too have asked ourselves several times when we saw a need for additional software, “Can we build this solution internally? Or should we invest in third-party software?“
In-house travel technology: expensive, complex and slow
More and more businesses avoid building their own custom solution. From our point of view, there are several main reasons why not to build the core software solution on your own.
- Budget – Building and then maintaining your own solution comes at a high price. It generates higher upfront costs and a much longer ROI.
- Technical expertise – Companies often lack technical expertise when it comes to building software solutions. This means you’ll have to hire the talent and focus a lot of your financial and human resources on building the software rather than on your core business as a tour operator or DMC.
- Time – It takes time to build a core software solution. Even when you apply agile methodologies, the time until you have a full product developed is substantial. Companies need to ask themselves whether they really have the time to build in-house travel technology tools themselves.
Keep the focus on your core business and let software experts help you improve it
Companies need to ask themselves whether they really have the time to build it themselves. Building software in-house can steal precious internal resources from high-profit opportunities.
Let’s say you’re in the business of selling excursions, how many more excursions could you sell with the resources you’re dedicating to building software? And how much market share could your competitors gain if you divert your attention to a non-profitable activity?
We’ve spoken to many customers on this topic. A lot of them decided to move away from an in-house solution to a third-party vendor. The main reason being to get a solution that is regularly updated, build by professionals.
Trust the experts
Here are some of the advantages of buying an off-the-shelf solution:
- Lower cost than a custom implementation.
- Easier to stay up to date with industry trends. Quality vendors make sure they always improve their products. Having a customer base of businesses similar to yours allows the vendor to test, ask for feedback, and implement new features that bring value to their customers. Additionally, through their user base, vendors are usually up to date with different industry trends. They will bring that expertise to their product.
- Faster implementation than when you build it yourself. Along with the budget, this is probably the biggest advantage of buying an off-the-shelf product.
- Vendors usually have support teams to help you onboard and to support your team during your usage of the product. Such support efforts sometimes come at an additional cost. However, they are undeniably very important as they assure smooth usage of the product.
- Better integrations as vendor systems will usually be easier to integrate with other systems, such as accounting systems, third-party products, payment gateways, etc.
Building a complex software solution on your own can last for a couple of years. After seeing the benefits of the off-the-shelf version, can you afford to wait that long?
Investing in a core software solution is a cost and time-effective approach. It will ensure your growth, development, and scaling of your business.
We created a free ebook to help you prepare for the search for a perfect solution for your travel business. Great preparation can turn your search into a fulfilling project that will kickstart the growth of your company, so download the ebook now!
