The benefits of best of breed vs. black box ARE BEST-OF-BREED OPTIONS universally the best choice for marketers? Trade-offs can include implementation time, flexibility of the system’s capabilities and cost. A fully integrated solution purchased from a single stop can offer a faster implementation schedule, while start-up time for a best-of-breed system can be harder to predict than that of a fully integrated one.
For some companies, the components within an integrated system, while not necessarily top of the line in each category, can provide a broader range of functionality. A system that uses a lighter level of campaign management or less-detailed analytics can support a broader range of activities, allowing a marketer to jump in with a wider range of functions without the process of a gradual ramping up.
A one-stop vendor’s decision to go light on functionality is made with the purpose of optimizing query-processing time. A company that wants to generate results off of large amounts of input may feel the need for speedy results outweighs the option of depth-plumbing.
Finally, a harried project manager with a client firm may find it easier to coordinate activities when dealing with one vendor, as opposed to trying to manage four or five different component suppliers.
Often the drawbacks of such systems are that they are so-called “black boxes.” The amount of modification internal IT departments are able to do with the coding is limited-and often any such changes violate the vendor agreement. If radically new technology comes along and a company wants to take advantage of it, it may be faced with a full system upgrade, or at least the need to graft the new program onto the existing system, as opposed to swapping components out.
A company using an integrated system may save money on the initial build – industry estimates range from 10% to 50% savings in up-front costs – but these gains can be offset by long-term costs resulting from an increased reliance on maintenance from the outside vendor.
The cost savings can also be eaten up by expenditures on data formatting. As one-stop systems are set up to optimize processing, data usually needs to be entered into them in a very structured format. If legacy data aren’t already configured for the format, the cost to convert can be quite significant.
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