Build or Buy? In-house MMM solution vs Sellforte

“Build or buy” is always a hot topic, especially in today’s data-driven world. To keep things transparent, we’re diving into a comparison between an MMM SaaS solution like Sellforte and building your own in-house. We’ll look at key factors to consider when deciding whether to go DIY or go with a vendor like Sellforte. Should you build your own? Or team up with a provider? In this article, we’ll break down the pros and cons of each option to help you make the best choice. Let’s jump in!

Data Ownership

First up, let’s talk data ownership—something that’s top of mind for a lot of companies. In today’s business world, data is like currency, and we totally get the importance of keeping control over it, even when a third party is handling the modeling.

With an in-house solution, you naturally own all your data, especially if it’s stored on your own servers. You’re building your own MMM and using your own data—both fully under your control. But even if you choose a SaaS solution like Sellforte, your data still remains yours. Sellforte doesn’t own or share your data, even internally. We store client data separately and assign different teams to clients in the same industry to ensure data security.

It’s also important to address competition access. With an in-house MMM, your competitors don’t have access to your data since it’s all kept internally. But with Sellforte, rest assured that competitors can’t access your data either. We separate teams working with clients from the same industry, store data in isolated environments, and include legal clauses in our contracts to protect your data. Sellforte’s ownership is limited to the MMM methodology—specifically, the intellectual property of the algorithm itself. We’re committed to transparency, answering any questions clients have about our methods and data handling.

In the end, we believe there’s no difference when it comes to data ownership—you keep full ownership of your data either way.

Results Quality

The quality of your MMM results is likely one of the most important factors. If the tool doesn’t deliver solid results, then all your efforts go to waste. With an in-house solution, the quality depends entirely on your team’s capabilities. Do they have enough MMM experience to get the results you need? Do they have the vision to keep improving the tool so you can stay ahead of fast-changing laws and marketing trends?

When you buy an MMM solution from a SaaS vendor, you get a clear idea of the quality of results before the project even starts. Sellforte can walk you through all the features of our MMM model and set clear expectations right from the get-go. With years of experience and a dedicated focus on MMM, we’re all about delivering top results—no distractions, no side projects. After working with 30, 50, even 100+ companies, you build up serious expertise. It’s just like anything else: the more you do it, the better you get.

We believe an in-house solution just can’t match the quality of results that a SaaS solution provides. Building your own MMM means relying solely on your team’s skills, with no guarantee you’ll find the right experts to see the project through successfully. This can make the quality of the project unpredictable. Are you willing to risk the reliability and usability of your MMM results, especially if you’re making a long-term investment?

With a SaaS solution, these uncertainties disappear. We work to customize the MMM to fit your specific needs so you get the dependable results you’re looking for.

Risks

The risk of uncertain results is already significant, but we believe there are several others when building an in-house MMM solution. Here are a few of the biggest ones:

Risk of low-quality results. As we mentioned earlier, low-quality results are a real possibility, entirely dependent on your team’s skills. Once issues arise, fixing them can be both costly and time-consuming.

Risk of GDPR / CCPA compliance issues. Depending on the data you use to build your solution and where it’s stored, you could face GDPR or CCPA data compliance risks. Sellforte’s MMM solution doesn’t use GDPR/CCPA-sensitive data, so there’s no risk of running into these regulatory issues.

• Risk of timeline delays. Delays can be a nightmare. Building in-house, like any major project, can run over schedule for countless reasons, including:
• Insufficient resources. It’s easy to underestimate the scope of work, leading to unexpected needs for additional resources.
• Holidays, job transitions, sick days, etc. These gaps in availability can quickly add up.
• Unexpected obstacles. As we said before, progress depends entirely on your team’s capabilities. Some challenges could take longer to solve than anticipated.

In short, there are endless potential sources of delay, and it’s impossible to account for them all. Even if we were to rebuild our solution from scratch, we couldn’t foresee every delay—but we can confidently say that some are bound to happen.

With a SaaS vendor like Sellforte, you control the timeline—you decide when and what happens.

Lastly, there’s the risk of going over budget. Cost is a crucial factor when choosing between an in-house and a SaaS solution, especially when balancing pricing with value and time. An in-house solution has a high likelihood of going over budget due to unforeseen variables that can’t all be accounted for in the planning stage. With a SaaS solution, this risk disappears. The subscription price is agreed upon from the start and contractually fixed—no unexpected costs, not a cent over.

Cost

Let’s dive deeper into cost, as we believe it’s a key factor when deciding between building or buying. Some might argue it’s cheaper to build in-house, others say it’s more costly but worth it for the value, or that even if it’s more expensive, at least they’ll own the solution outright.

But is it truly cheaper or better? We’d argue it’s actually more expensive and falls short on value compared to SaaS. Here’s why:

An in-house solution involves multiple cost layers. First, you’ll need to cover development costs. Then, there are maintenance costs, which can easily match the price of a SaaS subscription. After that, there are configuration costs, as your data must be tailored to MMM and the model customized to your needs. Finally, if you want your model to keep up with industry standards, you’ll face ongoing development costs.

There are no cost dimensions with SaaS. The agreed subscription price stays without additional maintenance costs for you. However, there is a secondary cost advantage with SaaS:

• the cost of committed resources. An in-house solution will require committed resources to develop, maintain & update the solution. Moreover, you might want to consider employing someone to help you interpret the results.

With Sellforte MMM, you don’t need to worry about resource costs. Plus, you’ll have a dedicated team to help integrate your data smoothly. On top of that, Sellforte provides a Customer Success Manager, offering regular meetings to ensure you’re getting the most out of your results.

Time

We believe time and cost go hand-in-hand. The longer it takes to get your solution up and running, the more money you lose. At Sellforte, we even conduct a business value assessment with prospects to show the cost of delaying MMM implementation.

Building an MMM in-house can be a lengthy process, especially depending on your company’s size and the complexity of the model you want. You could be looking at over a year before reaching a functional solution, and there’s no guarantee on timing, as unforeseen issues or technical challenges could pop up at any point. With a SaaS solution like Sellforte, the timeline is entirely different. Once your data is onboarded, you get immediate results and daily overviews. The time needed for data onboarding mostly depends on you and the quality of your data. Want to know more? Reach out for details!

Continuous development

Ongoing development of your MMM solution is just as essential as the initial build. To stay competitive and meet industry standards, your MMM will need continuous updates. This can be time-consuming and costly, as it requires ongoing research into MMM itself, as well as factors like legislative changes, weather patterns, and other elements that affect MMM results.

At Sellforte, we’re fully dedicated to continuously improving, updating, and developing our service. This is our entire focus, so we make it our mission to do it exceptionally well. We monitor everything that can impact MMM results and functionality so you don’t have to. To quote our CEO, Juha Nuutinen: “With SaaS, you get the latest & the greatest!”

Comparing the service you get from an in-house MMM versus a SaaS solution can be tricky. With an in-house MMM, you get to decide on the level of service and support—but the downside is that you’ll need to hire an entire team. Talent acquisition is both costly and time-consuming, and if you’ve ever done hiring, you know it’s rarely quick or straightforward. So, when building in-house, you’ll need to factor in the time and cost of maintaining a skilled MMM team.

With Sellforte, that’s all taken care of. We already have a dedicated development and configuration team, so you won’t have to worry about staffing. Plus, we assign you a Customer Success Manager who regularly meets with you to help interpret your results, drawing on experience across multiple clients and industries to add valuable context. They’ll help facilitate internal discussions and make sure everyone is on the same page, all at no additional cost—it’s fully included in your subscription.

Let’s have a recap! Build or buy?

We created a checkbox table for you for an easy overview of the comparison between building your in-house MMM or using a SaaS vendor.

We hope that this article was able to offer you more clarity in your future choices! If you are curious about Sellforte, you can try out our MMM free here!

Curious to learn more? Book a demo.