The $30K Custom Tool That Replaced $15K/Year SaaS
Real case study of custom development economics. Initial investment, ongoing maintenance costs, feature evolution, and 5-year comparison showing custom pays for itself in 24 months.
20 articles tagged with "Case Studies"
Real case study of custom development economics. Initial investment, ongoing maintenance costs, feature evolution, and 5-year comparison showing custom pays for itself in 24 months.
Growing e-commerce business outgrowing Shopify limitations. When migration made sense, custom platform architecture, maintaining sales during transition, and 3.2x revenue growth enabled. $340K investment, 14-month timeline, transformational results.
Regional investment firm replacing legacy trading systems with modern platform. Regulatory compliance, real-time data requirements, security architecture, and business continuity during 22-month migration. $420K investment for mission-critical upgrade.
Multi-location medical practice implementing compliant practice management system. Regulatory requirements, security implementation, EHR integration, and 40% operational efficiency improvement. $285K investment, 18-month timeline.
Investing $145K in AI capabilities that never provided business value. Misaligned expectations, poor problem selection, inadequate data, and lessons about AI readiness vs. AI hype.
Failed outsourced development project that burned $180K and delivered nothing usable. Warning signs missed, communication breakdowns, technical debt accumulated, and the expensive do-over.
Honest analysis of a failed ERP migration. What we got wrong in planning, where vendor promises didn\t match reality, the decision to cut losses, and lessons that saved future projects.'
Side-by-side comparison of two similar companies: one built custom, one bought SaaS. Real costs, capabilities, and total investment over 36 months. The numbers tell the real story.
Real cloud cost reduction project for a SaaS company. Identified and eliminated $168K annual waste through rightsizing, reserved instances, and architectural changes. Complete breakdown of what worked.
Complete financial analysis of a SaaS audit and consolidation project for a 75-person company. Eliminated 23 tools, renegotiated 12 contracts, saved $67K annually with 8-month payback period.
Complete technical architecture of microservices implementation for 100-person SaaS company. Real service boundaries, inter-service communication patterns, data management strategies, $310K build cost, operational overhead, and when monoliths are actually better.
Complete zero-trust architecture for 80-person SaaS company. Identity-based access, network segmentation, continuous verification. $128K implementation, SOC 2 compliance achieved, and why perimeter security failed them.
25-person family manufacturing company transitions from paper to digital systems. Real change management with family dynamics, $42K investment, 8-month timeline, and 35% productivity improvement despite generational resistance.
8-person consulting firm implements AI for proposal development. Real process redesign, $12K investment, 3-month timeline, 65% time savings on proposals, 22% higher win rate, and quality improvements clients noticed.
From Excel hell to unified analytics: a 300-person company's 14-month journey implementing a modern data warehouse. Real costs, migration challenges, and $520K annual value from actually understanding their data.
50-location specialty retailer deploys real-time inventory system across stores and warehouses. Complete architecture, vendor selection, $240K investment, 12-month timeline, and $890K annual benefit from reduced stockouts and transfers.
How a creative agency ditched 23 Excel files for integrated project management. Real tool selection, $18K investment, 4-month timeline, 40% improvement in on-time delivery, and actual profit margin gains.
How a mid-market company deployed enterprise-grade unified communications across 200 remote employees in 14 countries. Real architecture, actual costs ($127K), 8-month timeline, and measurable productivity gains.
Follow a 30-person manufacturing company through their 18-month migration from Access to a proper web-based system. What worked, what didn\t, how they kept business running, and total real costs including hidden ones.'
Real story of a 60-person company that spent 18 months and $200K breaking apart a working system into microservices, only to reassemble it. What went wrong, warning signs to watch for, and when the complexity is actually worth it.