When you buy and when you build artificial intelligence – dan rose he

One of the most important questions when you start working with and implement it to your organization is also one of the most complex to answer: Should you buy products off the shelf, build yourself at home or have been customized by consultants?

There is no size that fits all the answers here, but there are some considerations that can help you understand what is best for you. I will try to go into consideration and let you finally decide what suits your business best.

Is that strategic for your business?

First of all I believe you should ask yourself: is it the development of it a strategic feature for my organization? This can be a vague question, so I will get it down to this: will they offer you the solutions and a competitive advantage that you will try to protect and continue to improve to stay on your head?

If he is just something that is intended to make an improvement that is likely that your competition will be able to copy easily, then you should definitely buy the solution out of the shelf or have made from the experts in which you hire. Building the necessary needs on how well as the organizational skills to make a one that is only here for a little tactical advantage is not necessary. This will remove your focus from the most important problems. So ask yourself the difficult question: if the business will have to make cuts, will you continue to invest in building your own as a strategic advantage? If not, you should consider not to do it in the first place.

On the other hand, if you believe that one or more solutions it can be a competitive advantage that your competition cannot easily copy, then you should try to build it inside. In this case you need to be clear what makes it difficult for your competition to copy. Do you have any access to data that doesn’t make them? Do you have a better position to build the ability of him or something else? Many sure you are actually able to be competitive here. If not, your competition will copy you by buying from an experienced seller at a lower cost than you paid to build your one.

Research the market

You will be amazed at how many solutions out of the shelf he has there that solve all kinds of problems. People tend to do my experience in my experience and end up making expensive investments they receive permanently to be made and will still not be compared to products already in the market. You really need to have stairs to do a business case for building your solution when there is already a lot available there.

I actually met someone who built an indoors that was exactly what my company was doing. We needed massive degrees to reach some good business case somewhere and yet these people tried to do it themselves. We had more than 14,000 business customers at the time and this business wanted to do the same for their business. They certainly had to close their project as it was a huge investment, but they still spent a lot of money. Once a project has been launched, it can be difficult to withdraw as a lot of ego and prestige can go to corporate projects.

In for a penny for a pound (to him)

I have a great rule that never fails me. “When an organization does something that does not do it regularly, it will execute it poorly. ” I did this rule to explain with me why very competent organizations sometimes completely rolling relatively simple efforts. I think the reason is that working in a new field for an organization is not only not supported by current processes and culture, but can require the organization to work against them. Whatever the reason I see it constantly and I also see that it is the case with him. If you do not do it regularly, you will see massive ventures and maybe you will fail. So if the frequency of your projects he is low, you probably have to look to transfer as much as possible. This is not an attempt to scare anyone of his projects, but it requires an effort to build the ability of it and this is a conscious choice you have to make here.

Size matters

He’s projects require a minimal investment that is usually larger than traditional IT projects. In him the skills from engineers, machine learning developers, data scientists and product managers are quite unique. So, as a result, your organization simply has to be a certain size for the home projects to make sense. It is also also a test and a working flow of error that does not promise income or profit immediately.

There is no fixed amount of employees or income, but when the team of it has to be 4-5 people to a minimum, then you probably don’t have to do it before you can handle a team of that size for a while not providing any income or cost savings for a good time.

Get your data toward

Data are a large part of many projects of him and I always recommend that you get your data directly before entering the current development of it. In my mind is more important (and more competitive) to obtain a smooth data operation with low cost and high quality data. I would always prefer to get home data operations and development I is the second advantage. Proper data operations is more of a competitive advantage than building it. Likes like supermarket chains that compete – the chain with the best purchase of goods and the lowest low -cost warehouse operations can provide cheaper consumption prices and are more competitive. The data is the same way. If you can get better data with better quality and lower cost, your projects it will be superior to your competitors even if their skills are superior to your business. So make the data advantage if you have to choose.

Construction of it is getting easier

One last thing I think you have to consider is that projects are becoming easier and obstacles to start is getting lower. It was once a very difficult area to work, looking for both doctorates in data science, machinery learning engineers and often thousands of coding hours to make a useful one. Today many of them can be made in a much lower purchase with techniques such as Transfer of learning AND car. It seems that the strip for the start is becoming lower and lower. As a result, it is clearly becoming more accessible and over time more business should have a movement in it.

That’s it. From here, the decision is yours.