DECAREvery off-the-shelf tool is built for the average version of your problem. That's fine, right up until your process has a wrinkle the tool doesn't bend to — and then you're either bending your business to fit the software, or bolting on a spreadsheet to cover the gap.
The tell is usually a workaround that's become permanent: a manual export-and-reimport step, a shared spreadsheet nobody trusts, a person whose job is quietly patching what the system doesn't do. Once that workaround is costing more in time and errors than a build would cost to remove it, the math has already flipped.
Custom software isn't the default answer — most businesses are well served by buying. But when the constraint is specific to how you operate, only something built around that constraint actually removes it. The question isn't 'can we afford to build this,' it's 'what is the workaround actually costing us every month it stays in place.'