As businesses look for innovative ways to engage with their customers. collaboration and video conferencing facilities through web portals has virtually become a hygiene factor. Be it Healthcare or Hospitality, Retail or Financial Services, businesses are increasingly relying on collaboration to grow customer engagement. However, it’s never easy to decide whether one should build their own technology or rely on a third-party service for integrating collaboration into their core business platforms.

Certain businesses have highly specialized requirements that cannot be met by generic third party services. Healthcare industry, for example, needs to handle sensitive data that is subject to strict regulatory requirements such as HIPAA. Often there are specialized integration needs with electronic health records (EHR) systems, lab information systems, or wearable devices. There is little choice but to build your own collaboration solution. Custom development also helps in creating experiences that align perfectly with your brand identity. You have full control over the features you offer, and data security is entirely in your hands.

Certain other businesses may have fairly generic needs and integrating an existing third-party service can quickly get them off the ground. An e-commerce business, for example, may integrate collaboration tools with their website so that agents can virtually guide customers with setting up complex products. Use of a proven service that provides infrastructure, APIs, and ready-to-use solutions can catapult their customer engagement into the modern age without reinventing the wheel.

However, the decision is not as straightforward as it may appear. Building robust collaboration solution is not just time consuming, but requires an extensive team of developers, designers, and testers with relevant experience to build a flawless custom solution. On the other hand, with a third-party service, growing usage over the period can significantly elevate the subscription costs. Sharing customer data with a third party raises trust issues in any case.

How about licensing a Ready-to-Integrate solution?

Interestingly, a third possibility has emerged, with some companies deciding to offer their robust, highly scalable, custom developed platforms with code licensing arrangements. This arrangement has the potential of offering the best of both worlds by retaining the pros of building your own platform while leveraging the benefits of using a proven third-party service!

With a licensed ready-to-integrate solution, you gain the power to customize the experience without starting from scratch. You don't need an extensive team of developers to build the core functionality. You just need to add the finishing touches. Maintenance hustle is reduced as the licensed code provider takes care of updates, bug fixes, and improvements. And the data security is entirely in your control.

So how do you decide between building, buying, or licensing?

The answer lies in your business's unique needs, resources, priorities, and long-term goals. My recommendation is to

Build a complete solution from scratch, if your business requires absolute control and confidence about utilizing emerging technologies as and when new possibilities emerge.

Buy a third-party service, if speed and upfront cost-efficiency are your priorities. You can certainly decide to build or license at a later time.

License a Ready-to-Integrate solution, if you need customization or control over data along with ease of implementation and reduced cost.

Whichever path you choose, SpringCT can help you in achieving the best results with optimal cost using our vast experience and expertise in building collaboration and video conferencing solutions.