On paper, buying each layer from the cheapest specialist looks efficient. In practice, the savings on the invoice are often erased by the cost of making everything work together — and keeping it that way.
The hidden line items
Integration work between systems that were never designed to talk. Time lost to finger-pointing when something breaks and no one owns the whole. Duplicated licences and overlapping tools. And the slow tax of context-switching between four support desks with four different SLAs.
What one accountable partner changes
When one house owns ERP, infrastructure, security, backup and cloud, the integration is done once and owned forever. There's a single contract, a single number to call, and a single team whose job is the outcome — not just their slice of it. The cheapest stack to buy and the cheapest stack to run are rarely the same thing.