hardScenarioCase StudyExecutiveStaffLead
Your team wants to replace an expensive integration vendor with an in-house build. Do you approve it?
Not as first proposed. Approve a short discovery and a renegotiation, then a phased migration only if the full cost of owning every integration, including an on-call rota, connector upkeep and dual running, beats the renegotiated fee, or a non-cost reason such as roadmap control justifies paying more.
4 min readUpdated 2026-10-10
Answer
Short answer
Not as first proposed. Replacing an integration vendor with an in-house build is usually pitched on the cost of building the first few connectors, while the real cost is owning every integration for years. Approve a time-boxed discovery and a renegotiation, then a phased migration if the full owned cost beats the renegotiated fee, or if a non-cost reason such as roadmap control is worth paying for.
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Likely follow-ups
- The vendor contract has a minimum annual commitment for two more years. How does that change your sequencing?
- Half the integrations belong to partners who will not retest on your timetable. What do you do with them?
- How do you keep the team motivated if the answer is that they should only build five of sixty?
- What would you require in the in-house design so that you could go back to a vendor later?
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