I'd pay to buy a bad house and then spend money to improve it, rather than paying a full rent for the same bad house and hoping that the landlord uses that money to improve it.
I don't get the comparison. are you comparing a SaaS that is doing 70% of the job and a shitty streamlit POC that no more than 3 people can use in parallel ??
They’re saying that they would rather pay a consultant because they would have control over fixing things that don’t work the way they want. Compared to the alternative of buying a SaaS product that is “rough around the edges” where you’re not able to directly control whether and how the product is improved over time.
To be clear: It usually makes no sense to develop an internal solution when there is an estabilished offering on the market. If there isn't, embracing an rough and incomplete Saas solution from a startup may work, but:
- You have no control on how the solution will evolve
- You don't own the solution (an internal solution can became a product on itself)
- You don't have any competitive advange (the money you pay are used to develop a product that benefit your competitors as well as you).