HR tech applications vendors. Build HR tech applications.
I admit, I’m spending too much time doom-scrolling in twitter, but between the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I found a gem.
Every software company (to their customers):
— Nick Mehta (@nrmehta) October 28, 2020
"Why would you build it yourself instead of using our product out-of-the-box? We're the experts."
Also, every software company (internally):
"Can we custom build something ourselves instead of using all of these outside vendors?"
Nick is the CEO at Gainsight (check out their product, especially if you are seriously scaling).
He is so right here. Before you write a line of code, check to see if there isn’t a tool from someone else that is fit for purpose to use. For example, building your own analytics charting front end when you have 5 engineers, while Tableau, SiSense, PowerBI etc have armies is not a good use of your team. The world has enough dashboards. There are some great open source workflow engines like camunda, so what is so different about your approval workflow that you need to build your own? Remind me why are you building a proprietary log file analysis tool?
Also pretty please don’t build your own tools for running your business: CRM, HR, SaaS accounting, roadmap, customer support, billing etc. Hubspot or Salesforce work for 1000’s of companies just like yours, so manage pipeline there, not in some favourite spreadsheet. Remember that excel is not a system of record (see UK COVID example). Please don’t manage your roadmap in ppt either, get some product management tooling, you will thank me later.
When you buy stuff make sure you use it, and be ruthless about cancelling subscriptions to tools that you don’t use. Shelfware is not good use of your money. Focus your R&D on those things that make your product special.
