THE SMARTER ROUTE TO A DATA LAYER: BUILD OR BUY?
- Justin Lord
- 53 minutes ago
- 4 min read
You’ve decided your retail business needs a data layer. The big question is do you Build or Buy?
If you're thinking about building your own data layer, discover why buying a managed data service is often faster, cheaper, and far less risky.
As a leading, award-winning, vendor of a managed data service for omnichannel, you would expect us to say “Buy”! But vested interest aside, it’s remarkable how many conversations we have with retailers because they have regretted building their own data layer solution.
Common Challenges of Building a Data Layer In-house
Typical comments we hear:
“The build ended up taking longer and costing more than anticipated…we got one year in and had very little to show for it.”
“Omnichannel data is tricky, there are nuances and ‘gotchas’ we didn't anticipate at the outset…the project was harder than expected.”
“The build became a massive distraction for our teams…the day-to-day running of the business suffered as a result.”
“The people involved in the build have moved on elsewhere, and documentation is sketchy…we’re not sure why things were done the way they were, and we’re not sure now how to remedy issues.”
“Once implemented, we didn’t develop and improve the solution, so now it’s clunky and the underlying tech is no longer supported.”
“The time involved in on-going monitoring and support is greater than anticipated.”
“Retaining the experts needed to operate our data layer is expensive, and the frequent need to replace people who leave is a massive drain on time and budget.”
To Build: Retailers' Perception vs Reality
When asked why they had chosen to Build not Buy a data layer, recurring themes were:
a belief that building in-house gave them more control, instead of being beholden to a supplier,
the solution would better meet business objectives, and;
building and operating a solution in-house would be cheaper over the long-term.
In reality their experience turned out to be the opposite:
the build project diverged from business needs instead of agreeing requirements up-front with a vendor and holding them to account for delivery, and;
the cost of building and supporting an in-house data layer solution was greater than buying a service from a third-party with all the economies of scale of a multi-tenanted platform.
To Buy:
Top 10 Advantages of a Buying a Data Layer
Here are our top ten advantages of buying rather than building a data layer:
TIMESCALES: The Datitude architecture means the focus is on rapid configuration, not lengthy customisation. The multi-deployment experience of our team means we can deliver the solution in 1 to 3 months. Your business benefits from the data layer more quickly.
BUSINESS FOCUS: Your teams can focus on what adds value to the business and getting the most from the data – business efficiencies, better customer service, faster return on marketing investment, more informed decision-making - with none of the distraction of a complex software build.
COSTS: Datitude's platform already exists, the infrastructure is already in place, so our implementations are a fraction of the cost to re-invent the wheel with an in-house build. As a multi-tenanted platform running in the cloud on AWS, we can extend the storage and compute capacity for a new client for less than the cost of that client hosting their own stand-alone instance. We also achieve economies of scale in the monitoring and support of the solution.
The pricing structure is transparent and predictable - being almost entirely a fixed cost, with only a very small element of variable pricing depending on the number of licensed users. No hidden surprises.
CLIENT SERVICE: The frameworks, protocols and teams for integration, monitoring, support and data validation are already in place. We are on the hook for delivering agreed outcomes. This means our clients can focus on what they want, and how best to use what they want, whilst we focus on the necessary infrastructure and people.
HEADCOUNT: Clients need no additional headcount to build or support, nor do they have the headache of needing to retain, or replace, in the future. We act as a seamless extension of your in-house team.
DATA GOVERNANCE: Data governance can be a minefield; it’s one we navigate with the appropriate protections and protocols born of years of experience.
FUNCTIONAL MATURITY: The Platform was built from the outset to accommodate the complexity of omnichannel, and benefits from years of being real world “Tried and Tested”.
FUNCTIONAL ENHANCEMENTS: We invest on-going in the platform and service, so clients do not need to invest additionally. In short, the service improves over time, with no cost increase for our clients.
AGNOSTIC SERVICE: Our clients can integrate whatever source systems they want, indeed one of the benefits of the data layer is the ease with which third-party applications and services can be added or exchanged. Clients can plug in their chosen BI solution (e.g. Power BI, Tableau), in addition to the tools, reports and dashboards in the Datitude Application.
NOT A “BLACK BOX”: You always have complete visibility of, and access to, your data. If you want your team to write your own SQL queries, we provide datashares. We take care of providing complete, consistent and curated datasources in the lakehouse so you can focus on interrogating the data how you wish, with no risk to the integrity of the underlying data.
In summary, building a data layer in-house is no guarantee of lower costs or more business control. Indeed many in-house builds result in the opposite, and take longer to implement.
Buying an established managed data service from Datitude reduces risk, reduces cost, reduces implementation timescales. It means your teams can remain focused on the business, and gain the benefits of a unified data solution in the quickest possible timeframe.
If you’re weighing up whether to build or buy a data layer, our data experts are always happy to chat to help you explore both sides - an open, honest opinion, not just the vendor view, and definitely no hard sell.
About Datitude: We do data!
Datitude’s award-winning, managed data platform transforms how retailers and brands connect, integrate and unify their data, creating a single, trusted source of truth. No silos. Just data where it needs to be – on time and in the right format – powering better insights, faster decisions and smarter growth.
Built for omnichannel. Proven to deliver. Trusted by mighty retailers and fast-scaling brands.