Guest article, written by Andrew Wright, Account Director for Justice at Salesforce
In the fast-moving world of the UK Justice sector, organisations often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place: should they build custom digital tools from scratch or buy something off-the-shelf? It's a tough call, especially with shrinking budgets and the constant pressure to keep costs down without losing out on quality.
The goal is always the same: get the best value for money, improve operations quickly, and make sure everything is designed with the actual users—citizens and professionals—in mind.
The old "build or buy" choice doesn't really cut it anymore. Going fully custom often leads to long wait times, spiraling costs, and a never-ending maintenance list that pulls focus away from core public service work.
On the flip side, basic off-the-shelf products might be fast to set up, but they often lack the flexibility needed for the complex, unique needs of justice systems.
All too often the justice sector is faced with an assurance that requirements can be delivered, and that turns out to be not quite the case.
How can Justice organisations navigate this 'build vs. buy' conundrum to ensure delivery of requirements, to cost, quality and time?
At Salesforce, we think there's a smarter way: a "build and buy" approach. By using our secure, enterprise-grade platform, you can 'buy' a rock-solid foundation that's already proven to work at scale across the globe.
Our platform is highly configurable, meaning you can 'build' the specific features you need using simple low-code tools. This avoids the headache of writing complex custom code from scratch.
In addition the licenses and configuration/customisation is owned by the customer. They are free to choose whom they engage with in order to support and deliver those services, or indeed they can choose to do it themselves. This, in part, alleviates the IPR ownership concern.
An Enterprise-Grade Foundation
Salesforce provides out-of-the-box, industry-leading capabilities across citizen engagement, case management, operational workflows and data insights, specifically tailored for the public sector.
This means your organisation gains immediate access to proven capabilities, reducing the need for extensive initial development and allowing for a faster launch of essential services. Further details of our Public Sector Solutions can be found here.
Salesforce enables access to a globally distributed, highly secure infrastructure that is continuously updated. This supports compliance with stringent public sector GDS security standards, providing the resilience needed for critical justice operations, freeing your monetary and human resources from the burden of managing complex infrastructure and lengthy, costly ongoing change processes.
Finally, organisations benefit directly from Salesforce's substantial research and development investment. Regular platform releases automatically bring new (optional) features, including advanced AI and Agentic capabilities. This ensures digital capabilities remain cutting-edge and future-proof, without the need for constant, costly upgrades or replatforming initiatives.
Building Unique Business Context Through Configuration
Salesforce empowers teams with intuitive low-code/no-code tools like Flow for process automation, Lightning App Builder for rapid user interface creation, and Schema Builder for flexible data model extensions. These powerful tools allow organisations to configure solutions precisely to your unique operational needs without writing extensive code, dramatically accelerating development cycles and reducing technical debt.
For example, our implementation for use of the Victim Journey capabilities in Policing typically takes around 12 weeks with police teams quickly taking ownership of configuring and managing the capability in operational use.
This approach also enables individuals to develop software solutions outside of traditional IT roles. Business analysts and power users, who deeply understand the operational nuances, can actively participate in solution development. This not only accelerates the pace of innovation but also fosters closer IT-business alignment, ensuring that the digital solutions truly meet the needs of those on the front line.
With our suppliers embracing the need for hybrid support models, they can be on hand to assist with complex changes, should the need arise.
While configuration is prioritised, Salesforce also allows for strategic custom code when absolutely necessary. Expert developers can leverage Apex for highly complex, unique business logic or Lightning Web Components for advanced front-end development. When needed this lets skilled technical teams focus on unique, built-from-scratch features.
If the correct procedures are followed then custom code will be unaffected by software updates to our platform. All configuration and custom code is owned by the customer.
What's next for Justice?
Each choice of build or buy solutions has its place and context. At Salesforce, we believe our platform provides a third option and better choice: building and buying. Our approach leverages global investment in our platform and services at scale, whilst providing capabilities that are owned by operational users, and can be implemented to quality and quickly to provide value.
Andrew Wright, Account Director for Justice, Salesforce
Prior to working at Salesforce, Andrew spent 12 years working as Head of Judicial and Royal Courts of Justice Group IT at HMCTS
