Do you rely on your in-house IT team to handle all your software development needs? This approach may slow innovation and growth for your company. Companies have been outsourcing software development for decades as a viable complement or alternative to in-house development. Turning to an outside team to support your software needs can offer flexibility and scalability.
According to research, 64% of outsourced services are related to software application development.
Let’s look at the reasons so many successful teams outsource development tasks.
Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development
The most well-known reason for outsourcing probably comes down to the reduced costs associated with contracted work. For example, wages are substantially lower in most of the countries where outsourcers are located than they are in most Western countries. You can also take advantage of the time zone difference, allowing near 24/7 production.
These benefits, alongside infrastructure cost savings, outline some of the top reasons companies choose to outsource. But there are many other reasons to use an outside partner in your development strategies. Here are several more benefits to outsourcing that are often subtle and overlooked.
Availability of Skills
Each project will require different skill sets. Oftentimes, projects require proficiency in multiple programming languages, platforms, and technologies. For most organizations, it is not feasible to hire multiple employees to gain access to the precise skills needed for a project, especially if the company cannot ensure these employees are needed after the project is complete. Recruiting, onboarding, and training new employees also eats up company resources, being time-consuming and costly.
Outsourcing software development allows you to gain access to developers who possess the right skills for your most challenging projects. Tangential costs, such as recruiting and training, are the responsibility of the outsourcer, as well as salaries and the cost of benefits.
Flexible Staffing
The number of developers you need can change over the course of a project. At times, more developers are required to meet goals, but at other times, the project requires fewer. Outsourcers can reassign employees according to the needs of each project to ensure timelines are met and tasks are completed.
Developing a project internally might leave you scrambling to find employees with the right skills when things ramp up. When those needs are over, you must decide what to do with the extra employees. This could lead to the unpleasant duty of terminating developers with admirable performance records. Alternatively, you can find or create positions to retain your new employees, but this may not be sustainable.
Virtually no business can afford to pay employees who don’t contribute to the company’s profitability in some manner. Outsourcing software development solves these problems with truly flexible staffing so you can stay focused on your projects and other top-level company initiatives.
Changes in Technologies
Outsourcers must remain current on changing development methods and technologies. They know which trends are evolving and which solutions are true innovations. When new versions of platforms or operating systems are scheduled for release, outsourcers arrange upskilling time to ensure developers are ready to embrace the new versions.
The technological knowledge amassed by outsourcers allows them to advise internal teams on the best solutions for particular projects. They can guide you away from solutions likely lacking future support and advise whether certain hardware is sufficient for the prospective project.
Reduced Risk
When you outsource software development, you are mitigating your risks. Due to the expanded expertise and the reduced time to deployment, changes in market or business conditions are less of an issue. This way, you can react more quickly to what the competition is doing or to new government regulations. Your outsourcer’s expertise with new technologies helps ensure that your software is developed using the latest methods and platforms to provide you with a longer life for your product.
Fewer Distractions
Those who own or manage a business typically prefer to focus on certain high-level initiatives. In today’s global economy, businesses must compete to stay ahead. To do this, owners and managers need to concentrate on making their operations more efficient, marketing their products, and growing their share of the market.
Managing an in-house development project can take valuable time away from core business responsibilities. Outsourcing frees up time you need to devote to other business-critical matters. Interestingly, outsourcing typically increases management’s awareness of the overall project. Without the distractions involved with overseeing all of the details, you can gain a better perspective of how the entire project is progressing.
Detailed Planning
An in-house project leader may have less experience than a typical outsourcer and would greatly benefit from outside collaboration. Some employees feel a reluctance to ask pertinent questions or to challenge a superior over an “undoable” requirement. As a result, the project could take longer to finish or fail altogether.
Outsourcers typically work on hundreds of projects for clients in a wide variety of industries. They know how to plan a project from initial specifications to deployment, allocating resources appropriately. Outsourcers know what questions to ask to ensure that they understand the project scope, goals, and requirements thoroughly.
Global Partner
Good outsourcing providers are much more than vendors. They function as a true business partner, prioritizing your needs and best interests. Outsourced teams take time to understand a business and any special regulations or compliance issues. Outsourcers know success only occurs when their clients succeed, so they constantly work towards a positive outcome backed by established key performance indicators (KPIs).
This commitment to end goals allows outsourcers to offer assistance in a variety of ways. The outsourcer, for example, might know of additional growth opportunities that may have been overlooked. A diverse team is more likely to catch network weaknesses that hackers want to exploit to create an embarrassing and costly security breach. Outsourced software development teams can also offer guidance on securing mobile devices or initiating a bring-your-own-device policy.
Quicker Time-to-Deployment
There is an old saying that “time is money.” Whether you’re developing software for employees or customers, the longer it takes to deploy, the more money you stand to lose by continuing to use inefficient, inadequate, or vulnerable software. Outsourcing software development often leads to shorter deployment times than when developing a similar project internally.
Choosing to have a project developed using agile methodology can accelerate deployment even further. Under the agile method, individual modules can often deploy separately — and in a matter of weeks. This allows you to realize a return on investment quickly.
Seamless Integration
DevOps (development and operations) is a coined phrase used to describe a type of agile relationship between Development and IT Operations. This integration brings speed to the production side of software, just as agile methods do for the development side, enabling shorter time-to-market. The goal of DevOps is to improve communication, collaboration, and processes between the various roles in the software development cycle. This is in order to improve and speed up software delivery.
Having an operations team embedded with the development team allows developers to broaden their focus and really see and understand the ecosystem their software needs to fit. Automation tools help in creating development environments that more closely mimic production environments, giving the developers the right place to test things from the start. Processes of continuous build integration and automated migration help to automatically compile code and move it into production so nothing gets lost and the quality of what’s created stays high.
Leveling the Field
In the modern economy, small companies, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and mid-sized businesses must compete with major corporations. When these major corporations have much larger budgets and internal teams of software developers, how do other businesses excel in the same space?
Smaller companies cannot outspend the corporations, so they must find other ways to level the playing field if they want to compete. Outsourcing software development helps you to do just that. You can have a project developed that is as good as — if not better than — what a corporation could develop internally. Turn your ideas into reality faster (and at a lower cost than you probably expect).
Outsourcing Software Development With Xperity
There are several benefits of outsourcing software development beyond just cost savings. The right partner can help you maximize these benefits and your ability to grow your business.
Xperity is uniquely positioned to support you with your software development needs. We custom-fit a team of developers to become an extension of your organization. Your devoted Xperity team helps you achieve your vision on time and within budget. Make your project a success with highly skilled team members who are committed to excellence.
Contact us today to learn more about how we work and how we can help you reach your business goals.
