Build, Buy, or Partner: Why Focus Beats Jack-of-All-Trades
One age-old question haunts every CEO, COO, Head of Product: should we build it ourselves, buy it, or partner with someone who’s already mastered it?
In the workforce solutions space, which spans MSPs, staffing firms, EOR providers, direct sourcing platforms, VMS technology, and more, we’re seeing companies stretch themselves dangerously thin trying to do it all. The truth is, it’s nearly impossible to excel at everything.
The Jack-of-All-Trades Trap
Walking through the workforce solutions landscape today, I continue to see a troubling pattern. MSPs offer staffing services and employer of record (EOR) solutions. Direct sourcing curators are bolting on EOR capabilities. VMS providers are trying to be both technology companies and service providers simultaneously (and if you’ve been in the industry long enough, you know how this story ends).
The intent is understandable. They want to capture more revenue, control the full value chain, and become a one-stop shop. For organizations, it’s easier to deal with one partner, one contract, one negotiation, and one throat to choke. The execution is, unfortunately, for their customers, and the talent themselves where things fall apart.
Building enterprise-grade EOR capabilities requires navigating the employment laws of dozens of countries, maintaining relationships with in-country legal experts, staying current with ever-changing tax regulations, and managing the operational complexity of payroll in multiple currencies and jurisdictions. That’s a full-time business in itself. Yet companies are treating it like a feature they can add on, and organizations are putting themselves at risk.
The same goes for staffing operations. A great MSP understands program design, market benchmarking, and supplier management. A great staffing firm understands
talent attraction, candidate relationship management, and placement optimization. These are fundamentally different skill sets, different cultures, and different success metrics. Trying to excel at both means you’ll likely be mediocre at best.
What the Data Tells Us
Companies are increasingly choosing to partner with experts in their field rather than opting for a one-size-fits-all model.
Take IT organizations. One study reported spending 45% more on outsourcing in 2023 compared to 2022, with outsourcing now representing over 8% of IT operational budgets. More telling, 80% of executives planned to maintain or increase their investment in third-party outsourcing last year.
The functions being outsourced reveal something important about strategic focus. Application development leads at 64%, followed by cloud infrastructure management at 62%, and data center operations at 54%. These aren’t peripheral activities; they’re core IT functions. While it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to human capital management, even tech-savvy companies recognize that partnering with specialists often beats building in-house.
The shift is even more dramatic when you look at the motivations. In 2020, 70% of businesses cited cost savings as their primary outsourcing driver. By 2024, only 34% cited cost as the primary reason. Companies are now outsourcing access to expertise, speed to market, and the ability to focus on what differentiates them.
The Case for Strategic Partnerships
For business leaders, the partnership decision comes down to choosing partners based on having all the information in an industry you may not (and probably shouldn’t) understand where that expertise lies.
Partner when:
- Speed to market matters
- Compliance is critical to your reputation
- Depth indicators show what separates specialized knowledge from surface-level capability
- Proven investments are obvious (showing outcome-based use cases, adding to their executive team, and showing –R&D)
- See tangible evidence of expertise
- Demonstrate why the experts are clear about boundaries
Consider the VMS/MSP space. Some providers realized they were trying to be software companies and service companies simultaneously; two entirely different businesses with different economics, different talent requirements, and different success factors. The smart ones chose to focus on the technology and partner with service experts or focus on service delivery and partner with technology providers.
The same lesson applies to direct sourcing curators trying to add EOR. Building world-class Employer of Record capabilities requires years of investment, specialized expertise, and operational infrastructure that has nothing to do with direct sourcing excellence. Why not partner with an EOR specialist and focus your energy on what you do best?
The Path Forward
The workforce solutions industry is maturing. The days of being able to credibly claim expertise in everything are over. Customers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between deep capability and a thin veneer.
The winners in the next decade will be the companies brave enough to say, “We’re exceptional at this, and we partner with the best in the business for that.” They’ll be the ones who invest relentlessly in their core differentiators and form strategic partnerships for everything else.
The choice isn’t really build versus buy versus partner. It’s excellence versus mediocrity. And excellence demands focus.
