The Technical Leader's Guide to Document Management: When to Build, Buy, or Choose a Hybrid Approach

As the CTO of FormKiQ, I'm not usually part of the initial conversations around "build vs. buy"; if an organization brought FormKiQ into the process, that generally means they are leaning towards enhancing their internal building with our cloud-native functionality.

There may be a few questions about how FormKiQ brings value, but it's not hard to explain the benefits of our flexible platform.

But when it come to building vs. buying a solution, I definitely have experience with the question, as do most technical leaders in the software world.

The classic "build vs buy" dilemma is a decision that affects not just your immediate budget, but your team's long-term productivity, your system's scalability, and ultimately your organization's success.

As your document management can have such a large and lasting impact on your organization's processes, compliance, and operating costs, it's important to give the decision some serious consideration.

In this post, I want to offer a framework for making this decision that acknowledges both the real strengths and limitations of each approach. I'll also explore how solutions like FormKiQ may not be full-on build or buy, but can offer a "third way" that combines the best aspects of both approaches.

While our website's 'Why' section specifically compares FormKiQ to both build and buy options, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive framework for technical leaders, regardless of which solution they ultimately choose.

The True Costs of Building

When engineering teams consider building a document management system in-house, they often focus on the direct development costs. But experienced technical leaders who have seen this decision play out more than once before know the true costs extend much further:

1. Development Time and Resources

Building a robust document management system requires expertise in:

• Secure storage architectures
• Metadata management and search optimization
• Version control systems
• Access control and permissions
• Integration capabilities with existing systems
• Compliance with relevant regulations

Even with a skilled team, development could take many months or even a year or more of concentrated effort—resources that could be directed toward your core business objectives.

2. Ongoing Maintenance

The commitment doesn't end once your system is built. You'll need dedicated resources to:

• Fix bugs and security vulnerabilities
• Add new features as requirements evolve
• Update integrations as third-party systems change
• Scale infrastructure as document volumes grow
• Keep pace with changing regulatory requirements

3. Opportunity Cost

Perhaps the most significant cost is what you're not building while your team focuses on document management:

• Features that directly impact your customers
• Innovations that differentiate your product in the market
• Technical debt reduction in your core systems

The Limitations of Buying

While buying a solution avoids many of the costs above, it introduces its own challenges:

1. Inflexibility

Off-the-shelf solutions make design decisions that might not align with your specific needs:

• Predetermined workflows that may not match your processes
• Limited customization options for user interfaces
• Fixed metadata structures that don't accommodate your unique document attributes
• Integration constraints with your existing tech stack
• Infrastructure that does not meet your compliance and security requirements, such as data residency or sovereignty

2. Cost Scaling Issues

Many commercial document management systems use pricing models that:

• Increase dramatically as your user count grows
• Charge significant premiums for "enterprise" features you may need
• Create unpredictable costs based on storage or API usage
• Lock you into long-term contracts that limit flexibility

3. Vendor Lock-in

Dependence on a commercial vendor creates several risks:

• Difficulty migrating your data if you need to switch vendors, often due to a lack of control over the data, but also caused by inadequate or inflexible migration tools
• Limited control over the product roadmap, especially when you are a smaller customer in a sea of larger enterprise customers
• Potential for the vendor to be acquired or change direction
• Update and upgrades on the vendor's timeline, not yours

A Decision Framework for Technical Leaders

When evaluating your options, consider these key questions:

1. Is document management a core differentiator for your business?

If documents are central to your value proposition (e.g., you're building a contract management platform), building critical components may make sense. If documents simply support your main operations, buying likely offers better ROI, especially as limitations of a vendor offering may be less of a blocker within secondary feature sets.

2. What's your team's bandwidth and expertise?

Be honest about whether your team has both the capacity and specialized knowledge to both build and maintain a robust solution without compromising other priorities. Consider scaling and AI enablement challenges, and if those can be easily met by a team that might be focused on product engineering within your specific industry.

3. What are your integration requirements?

If you need deep integration with custom internal systems, a build or hybrid approach may be necessary. If you're using common enterprise systems with standard APIs, commercial solutions may offer sufficient integration.

4. What's your growth trajectory?

Consider not just your current needs but where you'll be in 3-5 years. Will a commercial solution's pricing model remain viable as you scale? Will a custom-built solution handle increased document volumes and user loads, and be able to keep up with evolving technologies?

5. What are your compliance and security requirements?

Evaluate whether building or buying better addresses your specific regulatory needs and security posture. In addition, determine if your team will be able to address ongoing regulatory evolution and meet pressing security challenges.

The Hybrid Approach: A Third Way

At FormKiQ, we see a growing number of organizations adopting a hybrid approach that combines the flexibility of building with the efficiency of buying. This typically takes one of two forms:

1. Customizable Platforms

Solutions like FormKiQ provide core document management capabilities as a platform that you can build upon:

• Core storage, security, and retrieval functionality is handled by the platform
• APIs and extension points allow you to build custom workflows and integrations
• Open-source components give you visibility into and control over critical functionality
• Cloud-native architecture ensures scalability without managing infrastructure

2. Modular Adoption

Rather than an all-or-nothing approach, some organizations:

• Buy solutions for standard document management needs
• Build custom components for unique or differentiating requirements
• Integrate these systems through APIs and middleware

Case Study: A Hybrid Success Story

One of our clients in the online entertainment sector faced strict regulatory requirements for document retention while needing additional functionality specific to their industry.

Instead of building everything from scratch or compromising with an inflexible commercial solution that would not integrate with their custom features, they:

1. Adopted FormKiQ's core platform for secure document storage, anti-malware scanning, versioning, and basic retrieval
2. Built custom services that integrated with FormKiQ's APIs
3. Created a tailored user interface for their specific use cases
4. Leveraged FormKiQ's custom metadata to assist in their integrations

The result was a 50% faster implementation than their initial build estimates, with greater flexibility than off-the-shelf alternatives could provide, and the knowledge that future security and technology updates for their document storage and processing would be handled by the FormKiQ team.

Conclusion: Make an Informed Choice

There's no universal right answer to the build vs buy question for document management. The best decision depends on your specific context, resources, and requirements.

As you evaluate your options, look beyond the initial price tag to consider the total cost of ownership, the strategic value of your team's time, and the long-term implications of your choice.

And don't overlook the middle path—customizable platforms and hybrid approaches can often deliver the best of both worlds: the speed and reliability of buying with the flexibility and control of building.

Interested in exploring how a hybrid approach might work for your organization? Let's talk about your specific document management challenges and how FormKiQ might fit into your strategy. Please set up a consultation call to kick off the discussion.