How to choose the best software development outsourcing company that would fit your vision exactly? Let’s go a bit in-depth into the topic and figure this out to make your choice easier.
A Bit of Statistics & Speculation
Did you know that about 59% of entrepreneurs use outsourcing services to implement projects in the most cost-efficient way? In particular, when it comes to software development, companies more often than not prefer working with outsourcing partners from Eastern Europe (one of the most popular countries for software outsourcing is Ukraine), India, and Mexico.
How reasonable is this tendency? We can’t give the ultimate answer to this question because different market players have different needs and goals. But let’s try to understand how to select your outsourcing providers most properly and who needs remote cooperation services the most.
Which Companies Find it Optimal to Go for Outsourcing?
All in all, there are 3 major factors that help define whether software development outsourcing is your best bet:
- when you have an urgent need in accelerated product launch;
- when you need to save as much budget as possible;
- when you want to involve the top niche specialists in the project from the get-go.
It doesn’t matter whether the business you manage is of a small, medium, or large scale. The question of going for software outsourcing services is individual. It is better to focus on how prepared you are for overcoming the main drawbacks of outsourcing – all the remote interaction organization and difficult-to-calculate costs.
Thus, far from all outsourcing companies are able to ensure effective interaction with a remote client at the proper level.
Then, there are also difficulties with building a clear economic model of the project. In cases where outsourcing is used once to quickly mend some business flaws and not to expand globally, increase profits, or competitiveness, the result may be expectedly unsatisfactory.
This means that you will incur certain risks if you entrust the implementation of a startup to a remote team. Nevertheless, one shouldn’t underestimate the obvious advantages of outsource software development. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Why is Outsourcing Software Development so Cost-Efficient & Convenient?
The specifics of outsourcing services depend on a particular hiring company, but the following points are usually achieved with this approach at all times:
- decreased expenses;
- boosted company performance;
- immediate access to advanced approaches, technological innovations, valuable assets, and expert work resources;
- faster time-to-market for your product;
- no need to hire full-time employees;
- an ability to keep your tax expenses at the same level by transferring certain business assets to a third-party provider.
Main Things to Consider When Choosing an Outsourcing Partner
Now, let’s see what you need to pay the most attention to in particular when picking from outsourcing software development companies.
Portfolio & specialization
Start by browsing the portfolio and list of services provided by the company you’re considering. This “first-glance analysis” is very important for narrowly-focused projects that require the approach of specialists who are well versed in a specific business niche (as a rule, this goes for fintech, insurtech, healthtech, and other niche projects).
This doesn’t mean that the universal-profile developers can’t cope with specific tasks. It’s just that the better an expert is acquainted with competitive solutions in your particular field of business, the much more likely they are to help deliver a product that can stand competitive to the top solutions in the market.
Real client feedback
Try looking for client reviews of the company’s services on third-party web resources, not just in the “reviews” category on the official website. The thing is, cunning IT companies often have such reviews made by hired copywriters.
Legal aspects
When choosing a particular outsourcing company, it is important to find out if your future partner enters into a service level agreement. This is an agreement between the outsourcing software development supplier and the client, which clearly indicates what particular services will be provided.
Service levels should be defined at the start of cooperation and used for evaluating and managing the degree of your hired provider’s performance.
For instance, it is often possible for the product owner to impose fines on the provider if certain services were overlooked or ignored. However, this is not the optimal way out of the situation, since the process of assigning a fine may be quite time-consuming. That’s why it’s best to clarify what you expect from your partners at the very beginning.
Pricing
Not all outsourcing companies are able to offer fully transparent pricing of services defined aspect-by-aspect.
Always ask to calculate the project budget as accurately as possible in advance (and, for example, choose the fixed price pricing format or ask for an hourly calculation of the entire project), highlighting the possibility of miscalculations in the cost of implementing the smallest stages of your business solution.
You can also find someone who provides fixed-price or hourly payment compensation formats. This will help you better avoid development partnership pitfalls and hidden costs.
Outsourcing & COVID-19 Pandemic
It shouldn’t be a surprise that during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the outsourcing service model that helped so many companies keep their business afloat. Indeed, at a time when absolutely all offices have switched to a remote format of interaction, there is but no choice other than to hire a remote development team.
As for future predictions, when autumn and cold weather come, we are likely to face a second wave of quarantine. So it is definitely not the time to relax and expect that everyone will return to their usual regular working mode soon.
If you are planning a software implementation of your business solution, it makes sense to start looking for a reliable outsourcing partner right now.
Summary
As you can see, outsourcing services can greatly help your business, making it more profitable and planned out according to the main goals – no costly off-top efforts involved. We hope this feature helps you choose the best software development outsourcing company.
And if you don’t want to go far looking for high-class outsourcing specialists – contact us right now. We have a full staff of seasoned experts waiting to take on your project of any scale and purpose at reasonable costs.
