The next software decision isn't “build or buy”

For years, the biggest software decision businesses faced was whether to build a custom application or buy a SaaS product. AI has made that question less useful.

Building software is no longer the bottleneck. The real question is which parts of your business should become software in the first place. That's a subtle but important shift.

A growing number of companies are using AI to create internal tools, customer portals and workflow applications in weeks instead of months. For example, Wall Street Journal highlighted businesses building their own CRM solutions — not because they wanted to compete with Salesforce, but because they wanted software that reflected how they actually work.

At the same time, SaaS isn't going anywhere.

Finance teams will continue using accounting platforms. HR teams will continue using HR software. CRMs will remain systems of record.

What's changing is everything around them.

Instead of asking employees to work directly in five different applications, businesses are increasingly creating their own workflow layer on top. AI agents retrieve information, trigger processes, draft responses and guide employees through company-specific procedures, while existing SaaS platforms quietly handle the underlying data.

In other words, software is becoming infrastructure. The competitive advantage moves to the workflow. This also changes the build-versus-buy discussion.

Buying still makes sense for standard capabilities. Building still makes sense when a workflow differentiates your business, spans multiple systems or requires AI to be embedded into the process rather than added as another feature.

The mistake is treating these as mutually exclusive choices.

The businesses moving fastest aren't replacing their software stack, but assembling it differently. They buy commodity systems where standardisation creates value, and they build the workflows that make them unique.

Of course, faster development doesn't remove the responsibilities of ownership. Security, governance, maintenance and integration remain part of the equation. As we explored earlier, generating an application is only the first step.

The next competitive advantage will come from owning the workflows that connect them.