Do you make or buy?

In customer-oriented product development, ‘make’ never completely disappeared.

But when it came to digitising internal processes, ‘buy’ prevailed for years – for good reasons: too expensive, too complex, too few developers.

But now the cards are being reshuffled:

GenAI + tools such as Figma Make, Lovable, V0 or Cursor make it possible to develop software for internal processes faster and more cheaply in-house – by the specialist departments, not just by IT.

Relief instead of replacement:

MAIke before Buy is also a response to the shortage of skilled workers in IT.

By giving small, overburdened development departments new roles as quality assurance and enablers. Start-ups such as DeVibe are already demonstrating this development.

‘Maike’ does not mean building everything yourself.

Rather, it means fast, focused, exactly right – with a lean multi-vendor approach that intelligently replaces expensive software products instead of endlessly extending them.

What we did ourselves at DAYONE:

→ A document entry and management app with Figma Make.

→ Starting in October: Replacement of our team planning software (35 seats) with an in-house development.

This saves costs. Creates ownership. And replaces licence models with flexible, maintainable solutions.

Make or buy becomes an open question again.

And in many cases, the answer will be:

MAIke – but better.