What do packaged products do well?
Accounting, invoicing, filings and statutory reporting. What these have in common is that the rules are set by the state rather than by you — e-invoicing and tax legislation change every year, and following those changes is a job in itself.
That is where the real value of a package sits. When regulation changes the update arrives from the vendor, your accountant already knows the screen, and staff who can run it are easy to find. Commissioning custom software for this side is money badly spent.
Where does customisation debt start?
In operations. Where your production flow, warehouse layout, dealer pricing or field service arrangement departs from the standard, the package has to be bent to fit — through extra modules, custom development or a consultant.
The cost is invisible on day one. Every version upgrade means retesting and often rewriting those changes. That is customisation debt, and the interest is paid annually.
How should cost be compared?
The licence fee alone misleads. Compare across five lines and over several years: licences or per-user subscription, annual maintenance and upgrades, customisation and consultancy, training, and integration.
Of those five, the third is what surprises people. Licensing is transparent and predictable; customisation and consultancy vary from project to project and often exceed the licence itself.
Can you run both?
That is the common answer. Accounting and statutory reporting stay in the package; production, warehouse, a dealer portal or field work — the flows particular to the company — are built separately, and the two talk through integration.
It works on one condition: the integration is designed at the start. If which record is born where and which way it flows is unclear, the two systems produce two truths, and at that point neither can be trusted.
What question settles it?
One is enough: at how many points will we have to change this package? If the answer is “a few screens”, the package is right and the discussion ends there.
If the answer is “the order flow, pricing and production planning”, you are buying custom software anyway — only inside a package, through a consultant, and for more money.