According to startup genome’s report, about 74% of startups around the world fail when they scale prematurely. What does this mean? The initial stages as a startup founder should be spent on validating the product idea – is the product solving a pain point for the customer? would a customer pay money for this problem to be solved?
At the next stage, the business model is devised and fine-tuned, and finally, when you are certain you have a winning product on your hand, you step on the gas pedal and scale production quickly.
Finding the right team with the desired productivity bandwidth, maintaining cost savings, and having an R&D team with a limited budget and resources are some of the main challenges that startups face. At this point, choosing to collaborate with a technology partner that helps you address those challenges becomes a good option.
Several start-ups that have done well for themselves, including giants such as Slack and Skype, used outsourced development in their early days. Fab.com, a highly successful eCommerce platform, outsourced its initial development when they started, and continue to work with a development team based out of the city even today.
If you have a groundbreaking idea that needs to be built ground-up and are contemplating the pros and cons of outsourcing your product development, take a look at this list of advantages
What are the advantages of outsourcing?
- Access to multidisciplinary expertise & knowhow
Companies that focus on Software Product Development have a talent pool that is vast and diverse. If you are trying to build an innovative product, it will need to be thought through using different concepts and theories to ensure differentiation and value in the market. A team that has years of experience working in various industries will have the expertise needed to apply the best available technologies to your product concept.
Leveraging their knowledge and understanding of the business domain can ensure increased productivity, improved efficiency, superior quality, and enhanced customer experience.
- Cost-effective resource enhancement
One of the most obvious advantages of outsourcing is the cost-effectiveness of the operation. Unlike dealing with full-time employees, whose time and expenses you cannot fully control, a development partner will be able to give a phased break-up of costs, enabling you to control how much cash you spend on each stage of development. Since the entire project development will be broken into phases for you, you can identify the areas in which most resources are required and keep a rein on costs spiraling out of control.
The project might require a sudden scale-up for a short duration, or you might find that you need a highly skilled engineer to complete one specific part of your product idea. At this juncture, hiring a full-time employee would be an under-utilization of your resources, not to mention the difficulties involved in finding a resource with the right set of skills. Hiring temporary help is also time-consuming and can pose confidentiality risks. When you outsource development, you have access to the entire talent pool of the company, ensuring your development will happen quickly and cost-effectively.
- Reduced time-to-market
Several startups are victims of missed or extended deadlines – the product never takes off the ground because there was no accountability for timelines. Sticking to a deadline for completing your software development is not something you will have to worry about when you outsource – your development partner will take up responsibility for time management, allocation, and management of resources.
Ensure both parties agree to a fixed program time and don’t forget to check the reviews of your development partner from other clients they have worked with. Websites such as Clutch can provide specific scores for criteria such as timeline management and cost-effectiveness of the companies you are looking into.
With the right development partner, you will be provided end-to-end support from conceptualization, to design, build, and deployment with a specific point of contact for each phase, ensuring maximum efficiency. Your development partner will most likely have experience building a wide array of products, further enhancing their problem-solving skills and speed. Their resources don’t have the same steep learning curve or limitations that internal resources will have.
- Focus on core functions
When you have the assurance of a reliable team handling the technical side of things, you have the time to focus on the tasks you need to complete to run a profitable business. Ensuring your software product development is in safe hands allows you to focus on branding, marketing, ideating, strategizing, and other all-important functions that are imperative to the success of your business.
Black Rock IT Solutions, an expert in software development services has been empowering start-ups by helping them bring their vision to life for the last 14 years. From concept to design to deployment, we can guide and support you every step of the way. If you have an idea for an innovative product and are looking for the right talent to help you build it, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com.