Has AI Changed The Buy vs Build Equation?
The Atamai Perspective
Anne McGuire · Founder, Atamai Advisory · August 2026
For the last two decades, there has been a fairly simple rule when selecting business software.
If a mature product already exists, buy it, became a mantra “best of breed”.
Building custom software was expensive, slow and risky. Unless the capability was genuinely unique to your business, the economics usually favoured buying an off-the-shelf solution and adapting your processes around it.
That thinking shaped an entire generation of digital transformation, the default advice was almost always the same.
Adopt best practice. Configure where you need to. Avoid customisation.
It was great advice, I myself have given it to customers many times over the years! Today, I'm not convinced the decision is quite so straightforward.
One of the most interesting conversations I have had over the last few weeks isn’t about large language models or AI agents, it’s been about software.
Several business leaders were questioning whether AI had fundamentally changed the economics of building business applications. One conversation in particular stuck with me: a business was frustrated with its CRM. The software wasn't necessarily broken. It simply no longer reflected the way the organisation wanted to work. The discussion wasn't about replacing it with another platform. It was about whether AI had lowered the barrier enough that they could build something tailored to their own business instead.
A year ago, that conversation would have been unusual. Today, I think we'll hear it more and more.
AI is making software development faster, low-code platforms are becoming more capable and developers are more productive. Business users are increasingly able to prototype solutions themselves. And so it appears the cost of creating software is falling.
But that doesn't automatically mean organisations should build everything.
In many cases, the opposite is still true. Financial systems of record are mature business capabilities supported by decades of product development, regulatory knowledge and industry best practice. Recreating them rarely creates competitive advantage.
Where I think AI changes the equation is somewhere else. It makes building highly targeted capabilities economically viable.
Instead of asking whether you should replace your CRM, perhaps the better question is:
What is the 20% of work our CRM doesn't do well?
Could AI solve that problem?
Instead of replacing your ERP, could you build an AI-powered layer that automates order processing, surfaces operational insights or orchestrates work across multiple systems? Rather than replacing enterprise software, AI may increasingly become the connective tissue between it.
Perhaps that’s the more interesting outlook. It also shifts the role of leadership.
The question is no longer simply "buy or build?"
It’s becoming:
What genuinely differentiates our business?
Which capabilities create competitive advantage?
Which processes are unique enough that we should own them?
Where should we leverage proven software?
Where can AI help us fill the gaps?
These aren't technology decisions they're operating model decisions. Because every application you build becomes another capability you need to maintain. And every workflow you automate becomes part of how your organisation operates, with every AI agent eventually becomes another member of your digital workforce.
That's why I don't think AI has ended the buy versus build debate.
I think it's made it far more interesting as the organisations that succeed won't build everything and nor will they buy everything. They'll become much more deliberate about where they invest. They'll buy commodity capabilities and they'll build where it creates genuine competitive advantage.
And increasingly, they'll use AI to connect the two.
That's a very different conversation to the one we were having only a few years ago.
I suspect it's one we'll be having a lot more over the coming months and years.
About Anne McGuire
Anne McGuire is Founder of Atamai Advisory, an executive advisory practice helping organisations navigate growth, transformation and AI through better operating models, organisational capability and practical execution.
Anne writes The Atamai Perspective, sharing observations from more than two decades leading operations, transformation and technology across global enterprises and high-growth businesses.
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