Build vs. Buy: When does a custom solution become technical debt?

In conversations with both technical and business leaders in eCommerce, one topic keeps coming up: companies running their own in-house product data management tools.

How did they end up with them? Rarely because it was the ideal approach. More often, at the time of decision-making, they wanted to avoid the cost of off-the-shelf software or the complexity of selecting an external vendor and the perceived risk of vendor lock-in. Building internally felt like the easiest starting point. Over time, though, it became clear just how demanding—and expensive—that path can be.

The problems tend to surface later. The business has ideas: new sales channels, personalization, faster reactions to market changes. Underneath it all sits software that can’t keep up. Or it can—but every change takes months of development, costs a lot, and consumes team capacity just to maintain routine operations.

The sunk cost trap

If a company has invested years of development and significant money into a custom PIM, it’s natural to hesitate before letting it go.

From a business perspective, though, that’s a risky way of thinking. What matters isn’t what you spent yesterday, but what it will cost to operate and evolve the system in the years ahead.

If your team spends most of its capacity maintaining the application instead of building features that support business strategy and enable quick responses to new needs, your custom solution is no longer a competitive advantage—it’s a bottleneck.

Maintenance vs. innovation

Custom development makes sense when the way you handle product data is a core part of your unique competitive edge. In most companies, though, product data management is a means to an end—not the end itself. It’s a necessary part of the IT architecture, not an area where you want to reinvent the wheel.

And yet, this is often where internal development becomes most expensive. Sooner or later, the same barriers appear:

• Capacity constraints – your best developers are maintaining the PIM interface instead of working on initiatives that move the business forward.
• Knowledge silos – only a few people truly understand the system. If they leave, documentation won’t save you.
• Business dependence on IT – every change in rules, attributes, or channels goes through the development queue. If it’s not built, it doesn’t exist.

When is it time to reconsider?

It’s not about whether your system “still works.” It does. The real question is: what does it cost you?

Common warning signs we see in practice:

• The business waits weeks for a change that could be done in an hour in a commercial tool.
• A new sales channel or partner integration is estimated in months and significant budget.
• A key person who truly understood the system has left.
• Half of every sprint is spent on “keeping the lights on.”

If you recognize at least two of these, it’s probably not an implementation issue. It’s an architectural choice that no longer fits what your business needs today.

And that’s the moment to reassess—not necessarily to change, but to reassess.

How to decide without unnecessary risk

Replacing a product data management system is not a small step. In environments with ERP integrations, strict data quality requirements, and consistency across channels, you need clarity before making a move. A blind leap is not a good strategy.

This isn’t an abstract debate. It’s about concrete numbers—what your current approach really costs, and whether an alternative can respond faster to business needs.

You won’t find the answer in vendor specs. In practice, what works best is a Proof of Concept (PoC) using real data. Select one product category, define critical integrations, and test how the new solution handles them. Within a few weeks, a PoC will show:

• Where the real bottlenecks in your data are—issues your current code may only be masking.
• How complex integration into your existing ecosystem would actually be.
• Whether the tool truly empowers the business—or whether your setup is so specific that custom development still makes sense.

In the worst case, you learn that the alternative isn’t the right path. Even then, you gain valuable insight into your real requirements.

WisePorter – product stability, flexible logic

Most of our clients come to us at a point when they no longer want to reinvent the wheel, but still worry that an off-the-shelf solution will limit them. That’s why we built WisePorter as a configurable engine: you get stability and ready-made functionality, while keeping control over rules and logic.

Business users can manage parameters, pricing, and sales strategies on their own—without relying on IT.

It’s a way to eliminate technical debt and operational overhead without losing control over how your business works with data.