The hidden cost of building your own in-house quality function

Building an in-house quality function can seem straightforward, but the hidden costs, skill gaps and capability challenges often tell a different story.

Many organisations reach a point where they begin asking whether building an internal Quality Engineering (QE) capability will give them greater control, lower costs, and faster delivery. On the surface, insourcing seems like a logical step, especially when budgets are tight and expectations around autonomy and accountability continue to rise.

But as with any major capability shift, the real question isn’t “can we do this internally?” It’s “can we do it well, sustainably, and at the pace the business demands?”

When you look beyond the initial intent, a more complex reality comes into view.

Why businesses choose to build their own capability

The move toward in-house quality is often driven by a combination of factors:

A belief that internal teams will ultimately cost less
A desire to protect IP and retain organisational knowledge
Concerns about vendor lock-in or limited flexibility
A long-term vision to grow capability from within
Cultural alignment and direct control over delivery

These drivers make sense, but they also assume that internal capability is easier, cheaper, and more scalable than it truly is.

Where the model starts to strain

1. The true cost can be higher than it appears

Building a modern QE function requires far more than hiring a handful of testers. Salaries, training, licences, turnover, specialist skills, tooling and ongoing uplift efforts add up quickly.

Many organisations discover that the costs they expected to reduce are the ones that steadily grow.

2. Skill gaps can become operational risks

Quality Engineering is now a broad, multi-disciplinary capability spanning automation, performance, security, AI, DevOps alignment, and strategic quality leadership.

Finding and retaining people who can operate across this spectrum is difficult, and losing even one or two key individuals can create a significant gap.

3. Delays can occur as demands increase

In agile and DevOps environments, quality must be fast, repeatable, and deeply embedded.

Internal teams without accelerators, frameworks, or specialist support often struggle to maintain momentum, causing delays that affect the broader delivery roadmap.

4. Quality maturity can stagnate

Teams focused on meeting delivery deadlines rarely have the capacity to modernise processes, adopt new toolsets, or introduce advancements like AI-enabled testing.

Over time, this leads to capability that works, but doesn’t evolve.

5. Internal teams can become overextended

It’s common for small in-house quality teams to be stretched across multiple projects, domains, and responsibilities. As priorities shift, quality effort becomes thinly spread, creating inconsistent outcomes and increasing the likelihood of issues slipping through.

A smarter way to building quality

Partnering with quality providers like Planit cam help organisations strengthen their in-house capability without placing unrealistic expectations on internal teams or introducing unnecessary cost and risk.

Planit provides:

Specialist talent on demand

From automation engineers and performance specialists to security and AI-driven quality experts, Planit gives organisations rapid access to skills that are difficult and expensive to build internally. Our consultants bring modern practices, structured training, and deep domain experience that accelerate uplift from day one.

Accelerators, frameworks and IP that amplify capability

The combination of skills and IP is powerful, and Planit has invested heavily in both.

Over decades, we’ve developed a suite of proprietary platforms and frameworks, including Amplify, DoT, and Voltage, along with a wide range of accelerators tailored by industry and by technology platform.

These assets allow our consultants to reduce setup time, improve consistency, and increase delivery speed across projects. Because they’ve been created from hundreds of engagements, they deliver value quickly, and would be extremely difficult for any organisation to replicate in-house.

Knowledge transfer, coaching, and co-innovation

We work alongside internal teams, not instead of them. Through structured uplift, coaching, Communities of Practice, and hands-on knowledge transfer, we ensure capability grows inside your organisation and continues to evolve long after the engagement ends.

Flexible engagement models that adapt to your organisation

Our ways of working are designed to align with each client’s structure, delivery model, and maturity. Our engagement models can scale up and down as required, without the rigidity or lock-in of traditional service models.

Seamless access to broader transformation capability through the NRI Group
As part of NRI, Planit also gives organisations the ability to extend beyond quality into end-to-end digital transformation when needed. With deep expertise across platforms such as Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce, NRI ANZ can support broader technology change programs.

This integrated model ensures clients get both the depth of dedicated QE and the breadth of transformation capability, without managing multiple disconnected providers.

Conclusion: Capability is an asset… but only when it’s built right

Building quality in-house can work, but it requires significant investment, ongoing uplift, and a broad mix of skills that are increasingly hard to maintain internally. For many organisations, the perceived advantages of insourcing don’t align with the operational realities they face.

With proven delivery patterns, AI-enabled practices, and mature automation frameworks, Planit helps organisations accelerate quality outcomes while reducing risk and effort. The result is a capability that delivers sooner, more consistently, and with greater confidence.

The goal isn’t to replace internal capability. It’s to strengthen it, so your teams can focus on what they do best.

Deliver Quality Quicker

In today’s competitive landscape, organisations expect to deliver more ambitious technical outcomes at improved efficiency. We can help you achieve these goals by embedding quality throughout the lifecycle, optimising your delivery to improve outcomes, accelerate speed, and decrease cost.

Find out how we can help you mature your quality engineering practices to consistently achieve better results with greater efficiency.

Find out More

Get Updates

Get the latest articles, reports, and job alerts.