To own or not to own your platform

We often debate in the office whether owning our own platform (as we do at EGS) is the right strategy or not. Surely we would be better off outsourcing it all or using third party software so that we could focus on the sales side of things. Backers of the "third party opinion" were silenced by the events of the last week. Never have we been more grateful to be the owners of all of our code and intellectual property.

With a hastily announced and implemented 2.5% reduction in standard rate VAT, businesses are facing a £300 million bill as they have to change pricing and accountancy systems, not once but twice in just over a year. Offers of help (at a price) are not hard to find from the ever-opportunistic consultancy industry. Those businesses that rely on COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf) software are also at the mercy of their overworked suppliers who may, or may not, view a short-term change to VAT on a small island off-the-coast of Europe as important.

Fortunately at EGS we do not use other vendors products to guarantee HMRC compliance of our eProcurement platform. With only one week to respond to Mr Darling’s announcement, the benefits of having purpose built applications supported by a fully staffed in-house software development team became quickly apparent. Sure we had some late nights and a team worked through the weekend - but at least we had the opportunity to do so. Were pleased that the changes were in place for business-as-usual at EGS on Monday morning, 1 December 2009. Unfortunately some of those relying on third-parties face several more weeks of disruption. Luckily we all have plenty of notice for the next VAT change in 13-months’ time.