Each option has a real yearly cost. An admin hire runs $104,000 to $111,000 a year once super, tax and overheads are in. A stack of per-seat tools can pass $50,000 before anyone connects them. Software you own costs once to build and little to run. The guides below work through the five decisions we see most, with the numbers for each.
Should we hire, buy or build? Another hire, another subscription, or software that does the job. Most businesses ask this after a busy quarter, when the next admin role is already half written and the SaaS bill has crept up again.
When to hire, buy or build
Hire when the work needs a person's judgement every day. Buy when a product already fits the way you work and the licence stays cheaper than the hours it saves. Build when your team spends more each year working around the tools than the software would cost to own.
The answer is rarely all one thing. A good hire is wasted on rekeying, and a new tool is wasted if staff go back to the spreadsheet. Below are the five decisions we help Australian businesses make most often, each with its own guide.
Which decision are you facing?
Pick the one that sounds like this week.
Hire an admin or automate the admin?
What a new role costs a year, and which tasks software takes off it.
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Has the spreadsheet stopped working?
The signs a shared spreadsheet now runs the business, and what replaces it.
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Licence creep
Which SaaS tools earn their cost, and which to cut or merge.
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Should customers serve themselves?
When a portal answers the calls and emails your team fields all day.
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Stop chasing audit evidence
Certificates, records and sign-offs collected as the work happens.
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How do you choose between staff and software?
Start with the work, not the fix. List the tasks behind the hire you are planning, then mark each one: judgement, rekeying, chasing or answering the same question. Judgement stays with people. The rest is where a product or a build pays for itself, and the split usually shows which.
A Rapid Insight Workshop does this with your team in two sessions and around three weeks, for $9,000 + GST. You get a costed roadmap that says what to hire, what to buy and what to build, before you commit to any of them.
Already leaning towards software?
Two guides for the next question.
Hire, buy or build: questions we get asked
Sometimes, and only for the right tasks. Software is cheaper for repeatable work like rekeying, chasing and answering the same question. A person is cheaper for work that changes every day. The yearly figures are in the section below.
Usually, yes. If a product fits how you work, buy it and save the build. Build when you are paying for seats nobody uses, or bending three tools and a spreadsheet to fit. Our build or buy web app guide walks through the test.
Not in most of the businesses we work with. The usual result is that the next hire is not needed, and current staff move from data entry to the work you hired them for. Growth gets absorbed without adding headcount.
With a Rapid Insight Workshop, $9,000 + GST over around three weeks. It maps the work and tells you which parts to hire for, buy or build. Any build after that is priced from the written scope, not a rate card.