Application Development Outsourcing: The Ultimate Guide!

1. You Hire a Team of Synergetic Experts

What happens when you ask a chess grandmaster to compete in a cooking competition? In the best-case scenario, they’ll be able to prepare a dish in the given time, but it is definite that their performance as a chef will be underwhelming compared to what they offer as a chess savant. We can observe a similar pattern in the software development scene as well. If you ask a PHP Developer to build an AI model, they might be able to build an app according to your requirements. However, the performance of that solution will always be underwhelming than what an AI application development outsourcing company would have delivered.

2. Time For Development is Lower

Hiring a team of experts from a niche is always easier than hiring individuals, training them, and then asking them to build a solution for your organization. Even if the newly curated team is able to match the technical knowledge necessary, the development cycle still won't be as smooth because a newly built team will have individuals with personal approaches and ideas. They lack the collaborative capability and chemistry that an outsourcing company delivers, a quality that is integral to building a solution that is meant to serve as an enhancement to your business objectives.

3. Pay for Just the Development

Everyone wants a reasonable budget for their software development project, this is especially true when it comes to small and mid-sized enterprises(SMEs). Outsourcing helps with this big time, although it won't cost you peanuts to develop an application with this method. But, it will still give you a lower overall budget compared to hiring, training, and accommodating an in-house team.

The amount you save here can be reinvested in some of the other important business objectives, for example - subscribing to white label digital marketing services to enhance your company outreach as and when your business decides to expand its offerings.

4. Reduce the Stress on Your Internal Operations

Besides just investing time and money in developing an in-house project indefinitely affects the other routine and core operations of your business, your employees might have to work for extra hours just to finish the necessary tasks. This impacts the quality of the work being done within your organization and also hinders the production of new innovative ideas for optimizing your business operations. Alternatively, if you choose to outsource app development from someone like BinaryFolks, you don’t have to stress about the development of your software solution at all. The time saved here can be reinvested in the operations you were bound to compromise in the in-house development approach.

(a) Onshore App Development

For this model, your company hires a team of software developers that belong to the same country as yours for the development of your business application. Here are the points to keep in mind while opting for this solution -

1. You get access to the local talent pool and have the opportunity to hire some of the best minds in the field from your country.
2. The development team shares a similar time-zone with your business making it easy for both parties to communicate.
3. The cost of development for your solution is the highest in this case if you belong to countries like - the US, United Kingdom, or Australia as they charge for the expertise they bring to the table and have the same purchasing power parity(PPP) as yours.

(b) Offshore App Development

In this outsourcing model, the software development service providers belong to a different country with some of the best talent pool from that nation. When choosing to go with an offshore software development company you should keep in mind that -

1. You get a team of experts who have successfully developed software solutions similar to your requirements.
2. The level of expertise in an offshore software development company is identical to that of an onshore company. However, it is cheaper to go for an offshore company as these companies typically belong to countries with a lower PPP.
3. Offshore service providers are extremely flexible, regardless of the time zone differences they make sure to align their office hours with their clients.

(c) Freelancers

The only time when it makes sense for a business to outsource their software development project via a freelancer is when they have a very generic and small business use case to take care of and the solution is somehow not already available in the market -

1. Hiring them for a small project makes sense as you would not want to hire a full-fledged team just to build software with basic functionalities.
2. However, for business solutions that control various business processes through a single software, it is not ideal to go the freelancer route as they bring limited technical knowledge to the table meaning there will be a lot of compromise during the development of your software.
3. The workaround people might think of is hiring multiple freelancers and asking them to collaborate. But in this scenario, you will be the one acting as a project manager, again, draining unnecessary effort from your workforce.
4. Freelancers also fail to provide firm agreements about the completion of a given project as they work on an hourly payment basis and do not have an image to maintain in the market like an outsourcing company.

(d) Off-The-Shelf Software

This isn’t exactly a development model, but still a common way to outsource software solutions for a business. It basically means buying a pre-built software solution for your business that streamlines generic operations and is relevant to multiple industries simultaneously -

1. It is the cheapest outsourcing option available, as you entirely skip the development phase. This also allows you to deploy the solution right away in your business environment.
2. But, you have very limited options when it comes to the flexibility and customizability of the solution.
3. In many cases, you have to buy multiple off-the-shelf solutions to fulfill your needs, as a single application might not contain all of the features necessary for your business operations.
    

1. Scope First; Quote Later

I have $15,000, can you build a performance management tool to help me draw insights about my employees?” - Believe it or not a lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of fixing a quote for their project before they even finalize the project scope entirely. Based on the exact requirements and the scalability of your business the exact budget can be over or under your given quote. In case your requirements need more than your given quote the bidding parties might start cutting on the necessary functionalities to stay within your range. 

Alternatively, if your project can be built well within the given budget some dev teams may start recommending unnecessary functionality just to secure the entire budget. Either way, it is a loss for the company's end, the wiser approach here is to keep a range for the quote in your mind and share your requirements with the team. Once they finish their due diligence and give you a quote, this is where you compare it to the budget you previously set and negotiate accordingly.

2. Select The Best Vendor For Your Project

Another important point that most entrepreneurs miss is that software development is a competitive market, meaning vendors will sometimes agree to develop your project at unreasonably low prices. All with the intent to outbid their competition. These offers are definitely tempting but the difference lies in comparing the quality of this cheap version to that of a solution built by a vendor that is focused on delivering the best product to the clients. The difference is quite literally identical to comparing a cheap off-brand pizza from the US to an authentic oakwood pizza made in Naples, Italy.

Surely you will get a software solution that “works”, but will it be software that optimizes your business operation or becomes a liability, the answer is quite obvious. Once you’re able to differentiate between the two, it becomes easy to outsource app development via genuine software developers and avoid project hoarders.

3. Keep Your Business Resources Secured

Another massive fear for businesses is the fact that providing your business’ internal data or paying a certain sum of money to an external vendor at the time of development is a risky practice. Especially when you are interacting with them for the first time, taking the right steps becomes really important to avoid this uncertainty that leads to hiccups during the development process.

The solutions are fairly easy, for the business data you can sign a non-disclosure agreement(NDA) at the very beginning of the project cycle. And for the payment aspect, we have a personalized solution. What we do is follow a milestone-based approach for developing software solutions, where we break down the project into smaller user-verifiable milestones. This means the clients can verify actual progress in the form of features at the end of every milestone and once they are satisfied with the job done only then they pay for that milestone. This approach has a slight overhead on our side as a company, but we are okay with handling this minor load as long as we build a strong relationship with our clients in return. (:

4. Establish a Seamless Communication Channel

A software solution has a lot of elements that you need to account for, this isn’t something that can be effectively absorbed and relayed by just being fluent in the language the clients speak. The point of contact assigned to your project should also be fluent in translating the client’s requirements to the development team which leads to the development of an effective and operational software solution. With a reliable point of contact in place, we can focus on the main phase of discussion where the entirety of the project scope is determined.

Overlooking this integral step can affect the entire development process. Without a consistent and detailed transfer of thoughts and updates on the progress of the project, the final product is vulnerable to having gaps and inconsistencies. 

(1) Start With Outlining Your Project Scope

The first and most important aspect of developing a software solution for your business is to be precise about what you want. Avoid using umbrella topics to describe your application needs, saying “I want to implement business optimization practices with the new software solution” to a consultant is like saying “I want to have food for dinner” to a waiter. Not enough information to work around. Instead, relay the developers with some information regarding the industry the app will serve, the platforms it will be compatible with, or the high-level features you are willing to include in the application, etc.

This information will be enough to help an experienced outsourced application development team like BinaryFolks get started. With these high-level details, we can follow through the scoping out process with necessary questions and finalize the complete BRD for your software solution.

(2) Find The Right Software Outsourcing Company

Getting hold of a good software development team is not a difficult task, as long as you are taking the right approach towards finding them. There are two most reliable sources to find the right team for your business, let’s discuss them -

This information will be enough to help an experienced outsourced application development team like BinaryFolks get started. With these high-level details, we can follow through the scoping out process with necessary questions and finalize the complete BRD for your software solution.

(a) Google Search - Yep, that’s one of the easiest and most reliable ways of finding a developer for your niche. There’s a good chance that is exactly how you ended up here on our page! Whatever your requirements might be, just type that into Google and search. When it comes to services, especially software development, almost 100% of the time the service providers will have a page posted showcasing their competence with your required technology. Once you like what you see, simply reach out by clicking on the call to action button, like the one below!

Hire Application Developers!

(b) Listing Websites - Another hotspot to find software development firms is service-based listing websites like Clutch or Goodfirms. As these are popular websites to find potential service providers for anyone who is in need of one, software developers showcase their abilities and their client testimonials here, with the hopes of cultivating new clients with common interests.

Once you find a company that fits your requirements, reach out to them for an interview, discuss your requirements, and pay attention to how they acknowledge it. If they are blindly agreeing to whatever you say without adding any value, let that be a warning sign. If they are overshooting your every requirement just to get the total budget higher, that is a sign as well. The right partner listens to your requirements, genuinely informs you where to add extra resources and where to dial down a little, and adds value at every point possible. When you find someone checking these boxes you are good to go for the next phase, the development cycle.

(3) Thin Down Your Options and Finalize You Project Scope

After using the discussed methods it is very likely for you to end up with more than one service provider to pick from. In this scenario, the most feasible option is to reach out to these businesses individually with the project outline (discussed in the first point of this section), and evaluate their approach. Some major points to consider include -

This information will be enough to help an experienced outsourced application development team like BinaryFolks get started. With these high-level details, we can follow through the scoping out process with necessary questions and finalize the complete BRD for your software solution.

1. Make sure the initial development is functionality centric and not money centric. The development firm should have the mindset to solve the issues you business is facing first instead of making their own profits.
2. Their expertise should reflect in the way they describe your issues. Be sure to notice if they are just agreeing to what you ask for, or are they able to understand your needs and actually fill the gaps in your logic, if and when necessary.
3. The final point might be a little tricky and you might try and you might need some technical guidance for this one, but analyzing the suggested technical stack can also be a vital point that can help you narrow down your options. The base logic here is, the best tech stack isn’t the one with all of the latest technologies, what you need is the right balance between the modern and the reliable/stable tools for building the perfect solution for your business.

Once you have these checkboxes ticked, you will very likely have a very small subset of companies left. You can make the final call from here based on the project quote they are offering. Once you have your final choice, you can start scoping your project in the most detailed way possible.

(4) Check On the Project’s Development From Time to Time

Now that you have all the initial due diligence acknowledged, the majority of work from your end is done. However, there is still a long way before you can rest slouch with a leg-on-leg pose. The next task on the checklist is to proactively participate in the development process by evaluating the progress of the website from time to time.

As an application development outsourcing company, we break down the entire project into smaller user-verifiable milestones, to help clients evaluate the progress of their project without getting into the code. We pre-decide that a certain number of features will be available at the end of each milestone, once we finish developing the features for a milestone we invite our client to test those features, once they approve the changes we announce the milestone to be over and move on to the next one.