What Is Software Development Outsourcing? Everything You Need To Know

What is Software Development Outsourcing?

Simply put, outsourcing is hiring others to do work instead of doing it ourselves. Everyday examples include using catering for an event or calling a plumber for a repair.

Why Do We Outsource Software Development?

Both individuals and companies choose to outsource to save time and money while increasing quality. You may be a great cook, but when planning a large event, you might hire someone with the expertise, equipment, and dedication to focus on dinner while you manage other tasks for the night.

When planning a large software project, companies may wish to hire an outsource software development partner with the experience, skills, and capacity to focus on the build while in-house teams manage other technology tasks. Outsourcing software development services allows us to run projects efficiently, utilize specialized technical talent, and maximize quality while you manage the rest of your business.

The Advantages of Software Development Outsourcing Services

Successful software development companies—even those like Microsoft and Apple whose core business is software development—all choose software outsourcing. Why? They understand the economies of scale (proportionate savings in costs gained by an increased level of production).

In other words, they determine how to use a combination of in-house development and outsourced teams to meet their digital transformation goals. Finding a strong software outsourcing company can help your company obtain a competitive advantage through digital transformation and innovation. You can increase efficiency and reduce costs while maximizing speed to market.

Increased Efficiency

You’ve become the expert in what you do, relying on your skills and experiences to lead you and your company to swift success. As software experts, software outsourcing companies can assist your development teams in making knowledgeable technology choices for your business needs.

They have a wide understanding of different ways to reach your software goals, how to measure development progress, how to manage project scope, and how to pivot quickly.

While your management executives focus on the mission-critical tasks for your business, your software development is the mission-critical focus of the outsource software development partner.

Specialized Software Expertise

While it is nearly impossible for companies to have in-house development teams with expertise in every skill, language, and technology, software development outsourcing companies spend considerable time and money to keep their consultants current in the latest software innovations and methodologies.

That means you can access talent with evolving and emerging technologies with a quick phone call to your preferred software outsourcing partner. They can provide you with quick access to a well-qualified candidate pool of developers with experience that you do not have in-house currently or only need temporarily.

Enhanced Software Development Team Capabilities

If you have an idea for a differentiator that can distinguish you from your competitors but are not experienced in creating software, getting started could be your challenge. Many small and medium-sized businesses have in-house IT teams with strong skills in maintaining existing software.

However, the ability to design and build software has unique challenges and demands different approaches, technical expertise, processes, and talents. Outsourcing services to a custom software development company can provide what you need to make your vision a reality without you neglecting your core business processes and services.

Reduce Time to Market

In today’s fast-paced business environments, innovating quickly is essential for business growth. Being the first company to market can make an enormous difference in your success.

Even if you have an excellent in-house team, managing too many projects can lead to capacity and priority challenges resulting in late product releases. Let your business needs dictate your software development pace rather than your available in-house resources.

Utilizing outsourced teams with a laser focus on specific outcomes can speed the time-to-market, often resulting in a significant competitive advantage. Where your in-house software development team will have responsibilities for your core software products and your current customers, the outsourced team will be dedicated to the management and performance of your technology product timeline.

Reduce Costs

One of the most obvious benefits of outsourcing software development projects is cost savings. Every software company understands the time and considerable HR expenses associated with recruiting, hiring, training, and managing technology teams. Additionally, there are the costs for benefits, paid time off, incentives, and infrastructure needed for full-time company hires.

The commitment of time and money needed to find and onboard a new employee coupled with the negative cultural consequences of laying off employees contributes to management delaying the approval of new positions which results in capacity struggles.

Utilizing an outsourced team can keep capacity levels in line with budget and staffing needs until the company is ready to take on the expense of a new full-time hire. You have the flexibility to scale your outsourced team size from quarter to quarter or project to project.

Staff Augmentation vs Project Software Outsourcing

Software development outsourcing can range from adding an extra development resource to fill an individual spot on your team to bringing in a dedicated team for the entire development process.

In staff augmentation, outsourcing companies will provide the talent you need right now, ready to onboard quickly and provide value from the start. This could be one person, such as a developer or project manager, or an entire software development team based entirely on your need for outsourcing services.

Depending on your preferences, the resource may work at your site or remotely. Here are some instances in which companies find the most value in utilizing staff augmentation services:

  • When you have an opening on your team and want to give HR time to find the right full-time employee but still have challenges like deadlines to meet and services to provide to your company and customers
  • You need expertise today but your company is not ready to commit to adding to your development team for the long-term
  • You have a large amount of software development work that needs to be accomplished, but it’s tricky to free up enough internal resources to tackle new projects while still maintaining existing business processes, services, and priorities

When developing custom software with an outsourced partner, you set the timeline, budget, and deliverables, and the outsource partner delivers the entire development project. By working together to set milestones and communication standards, you will have the transparency you need to be confident the software development projects will succeed.

The outsourced software partner will manage all the tasks involved, so you can focus on the final outcome. Your partner will lead the entire project life cycle, so choosing the best software outsourcing company for your business is essential.

Utilizing Outsourced Software Development

How Can Our Team Help

Partnering with Geneca allows you to leverage our collective knowledge and experience to interject valuable skills and expertise to your software products. We work with you as a professional outsourcing software development partner to understand your needs and exceed your expectations.

You can depend on us for more than just code for your custom software solutions—we provide a partnership, collaborating with you on strategy, architectural design, understanding the voice of your customer, integration among your systems, and more. As a top outsourcing company, we want to establish a long-term relationship with you by providing continual value when and how you need it.

We provide both staff augmentation and full project software development outsourcing tailored to the specific needs of our partners and their digital transformations. We can help you start overcoming your biggest software development challenges today.

CONTACT US

Why Geneca Is Right for You

We consider partnership to be our primary role in the world. We truly want to help business leaders increase revenue and realize their company goals with a successful digital transformation. Because of this, our senior leadership enjoys taking calls with other leaders to listen, brainstorm, and toss around ideas for new products. Some truly great disrupters have come from smart leaders spending time together, long before the development process ever begins.
We have developed extraordinary talent and tools to provide you with transparency and confidence during every phase of the software development processes. We develop your project using an agile development methodology and clear communication. You will always see your project at the level of detail you prefer.
Geneca has been in business for over 20 years and still works today with our very first client. We have extensive experience helping our partners increase revenue and productivity using quality software development again and again. Our partners’ successes are how we measure our own success.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between offshoring and outsourcing software development?

Often, business leaders equate software development outsourcing with offshoring to other countries. Offshoring is one option for software outsourcing but increasing numbers of companies prefer “onshoring” or “domestic sourcing” as both utilize companies within the same country for outsourcing. Use of these companies reduces loudly lamented headaches like navigating time zones, easy access to team management, language challenges, and quality control. Finding a strong domestic outsourcing or “onshoring” partner can quickly increase your company’s competitiveness in your business space.

Should I ever offshore my outsourcing?

Offshoring provides value when you can balance the rate with the expectation. In addition to considering the hourly cost per resource, you need to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of using the resources. If your need is back-end production support, using offshore software developers working while your company’s in-house team is off the clock may work perfectly. On the other hand, putting the creative work of collaborating closely with your business leaders to design the first release of your new software product is typically not a good use of the offshore resources.  Instead, consider outsourcing these challenging projects to a software development outsourcing partner with experience with your customer base and a proven track record in your country.

How do I get started?

We make it easy by starting with a conversation. Just send us an email or give us a call and we will listen to your company’s needs, ask you a few questions, and answer any of yours. We do not have salespeople—your conversation will be with a senior leader with experience building software, managing projects, and delighting partners. You want a partner who can listen to you and understand your specific business needs. Software development should never be built FOR you but always WITH you. Together we can outline what outsourcing success will look like for your company and start from there.

4 Simple Tips for Effective Software Development Outsourcing

Choose the Outsourcing Provider Wisely

Just as you wouldn’t choose an inexperienced contractor to build your home, you wouldn’t want anyone but the best to complete your software project. Spend the time and resources to research a great outsourced software development company that listens to your needs, is transparent about project progress, respects your time and money, and has expertise in the field.

Start Small

You don’t have to begin an outsourcing partnership by jumping in head first. Many businesses find it helpful to begin with an MVP, so they can get a feel for the software development outsourcing company’s project management methods, communication standards, and commitment follow-through. Once the smaller project has been completed, the organization can either continue working with the same outsourcing company to complete their larger project or begin their search for a new partner.

Define Goals

One of the top reasons software projects fail is because of a lack of a clear understanding of business goals and needs. Ensure your outsourcing software development team understands your business processes and how your new software solution will fit into the workflow. Establish a clear budget and timeline before the project starts, so you can be sure that all teams are on the same page.

Use Performance Monitoring Tools

Use performance monitoring tools to keep track of project progress and issues and ensure your goals and deadlines are being met. By monitoring tasks and overall completion, you can keep your team and your outsourced team accountable and make changes to your plan as needed.

PITFALLS TO AVOID WHEN SELECTING A SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT OUTSOURCING COMPANY

An effective outsourcing software development partnership can provide a wide range of benefits for companies from improving development process to extending budget spend, but it needs to be managed successfully.

Software outsourcing can become a liability instead of a benefit if you are not careful in selecting and managing your software development companies. Companies will want an experienced software development company to help craft an outsourcing strategy and avoid these pitfalls.

Communication Challenges

When outsourcing software development, companies need a partner that not only can speak the same language, but can understand the communication needs of their industry. There will be comprehension of business processes that require clarity of requirements, understanding of users, and shared deliverable feedback. Software outsourcing will require your team to feel confident communicating with your outsourced development team.

Un-defined Scope

One of the most important aspects of a successful software development outsourcing relationship is clarity in scope. Both companies need to have a shared vision of the deliverables and the timeline for the project. Experienced software development companies should have development processes and standards already in place for articulating and measuring scope as one of their services to you. They should be able to clearly build a software project plan with solid communication about the length and content for sprints.

Lack of Development Quality Standards

Software development companies should request your code quality standards prior to the start of any project. If you do not have a clearly defined set, the outsource software development company should provide you with their own standards. Management should look for clarity and maintainability. You want high quality requirements that will allow future teams easy understanding of the software. You also want the developers to create a robust application that will be scalable for the future and maintainable in the present. Software development companies in consideration for your outsourcing business should discuss how they will handle code reviews, unit testing, functional software testing, and regression testing.

Missing Subject Matter Expertise

Both your company and your software development company should establish a software matter expert (SME) or product owner for your software.  These individuals are the key stakeholders who will own the relationship ensuring quality of business processes and development teams. Your software development outsourcing company should discuss both who on their team will be your main point of contact and own your product and explain clearly how much time they will need from the person your company designates as the SME. You want a smooth transition when it is time for your outsource software development partner to hand the product over to your company at the end of the project. This will only happen if you have maintained access and involvement from the start of the project.

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