AI Vocabulary

Bespoke or configurable: what exactly are you buying?

Configurable means you choose among options that were provided for. Parameterised means you set values inside existing rules. Bespoke means code is written for you. The three words describe three very different levels of commitment, in lead time as in dependency.

Configurable

The system provides options, you switch some on. Choosing which practice areas are covered, deciding who accesses what, enabling an additional verification step.

It is immediate, reversible, and it creates no dependency: you stay inside the standard product, the one the provider develops for all its clients.

Parameterised

You set values inside existing mechanisms. Defining a threshold, writing your own control rules, describing your usual positions so that they are carried through.

That is more powerful and it creates an asset: the parameterisation you build belongs to you, and it is worth asking what becomes of it if you change provider. The answer is rarely that you take it with you.

Bespoke

Code is written for you. A specific integration with your practice management system, a treatment that exists for nobody else.

This is where real commitments are made. Development has a cost and a lead time, and above all it must be maintained: every change to the standard product may break it, and you will be the only client affected.

A note on the order in which these three arise in practice: one almost always starts by configuring, parameterises after a few months once usage settles, and bespoke work comes later, to close a gap identified in use. A provider proposing bespoke development before any deployment is describing a product that does not meet the need.

The question that separates the three

It fits in one sentence: if the provider ships a new version tomorrow, what keeps working without intervention?

Configuration always survives. Parameterisation usually does. Bespoke work must be tested, sometimes rebuilt, and you pay for the rebuild.

What it does not solve

None of the three compensates for a product that does not fit your need. Bespoke work is often proposed to close the gap between what the product does and what you are looking for; when that gap is wide, it is not customisation, it is a full development billed as an option.

Parameterisation has a hidden cost: it must be maintained. Rules written two years ago and never revisited keep applying while the organisation's practice has moved on.

A fourth term muddies the three: personalised. It has no technical content and may describe any of the levels, or none — a logo on the interface. Its presence in a proposal justifies asking which of the three is actually involved.

Why it matters to a lawyer

Because these three words appear interchangeably in commercial proposals, and the quoted price does not always distinguish them. A quotation announcing an adaptation to your processes may cover an afternoon of configuration or six weeks of development.

Ask which of the three is in play, what becomes of the result at each update, and who owns it if you leave.