01
Is this capability core to your competitive advantage?
If yes, lean build. If no, lean buy or partner.
Framework 03
Build vs. Buy vs. Partner
The decision framework most AI projects skip, then regret.
The wrong decision compounds
Build when you should buy and you spend months reinventing a vendor capability. Buy when you should build and you ship a generic feature into a market that demands differentiation. Partner when you should buy and you pay a premium for capability that is now commoditized.
When each path wins
| Decision | Build | Buy | Partner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic role | Core differentiation | Commoditized capability | High-value, novel accelerator |
| Time to value | 6 to 18 months | Weeks to months | 8 to 16 weeks |
| Internal expertise required | Strong AI/ML team | Vendor management | Technical sponsor plus clear scope |
| When it fails | Underestimated scope | Vendor lock-in or generic fit | Unclear handoff to the internal team |
The 5-question scoring rubric
02
Is there a credible vendor solution within 80% of the requirement?
If yes, buy beats build almost every time. The last 20% is rarely worth a custom system.
03
Do you have the internal AI talent to maintain it for 3+ years?
If no, the build path quietly fails later.
04
Is the workflow specific to your operating model?
If yes, partner often beats buy. Generic SaaS will not fit.
05
What is the cost of being wrong?
High-stakes workflows favor partner. Specialists carry institutional pattern-matching that vendors and internal teams lack.
There is a fourth path most rubrics miss: build with managed stewardship. You own the system. RSUA keeps it healthy.
What managed stewardship covers
01
Continuous evaluation
Recurring eval runs against a maintained test set so accuracy drift is visible before customers feel it.
02
Drift and incident monitoring
Production telemetry watched against baseline, with alerts on anomalies, regressions, and edge-case clusters.
03
Threshold and prompt tuning
When data shifts or a model upgrade ships, RSUA retunes confidence thresholds and prompts, then revalidates.
04
Quarterly performance review
A named owner walks your team through what the system did, where it improved, and where to expand or pull back autonomy.
