Am going to talk about one more evergreen topic, “OutSourcing.” Being a technology company based out of NearShore and Offshore resources, I always face this question in my sales calls, “Why I have to Outsource.” Many information is available on the internet, and the lengthy discussion on the outsourcing by many of the Industry experts is well published. The best practices to make “Outsourcing” work is largely available. The list of “Risks & Mitigation” are well published. But still, you get the same questions “Why I have to outsource.” Am taking a client’s “Red” hat and trying to answer the question better one more time in this blog post by referring the Software Development arena.
Outsourcing is always consider to be an economical and efficient approach to grow a business. But is this the fact in all cases? Do outsourcing benefit all types and sizes of business, especially in software development. It is believed to help startups improve their speed and increase their reach in a shorter timeline. It is evident that the newbies will have many great ideas to achieve, however, due to lack of time and budget, and most importantly lack of right workforce stresses on the need for them to look for a development outsourcing.
According to an IBM research, about 27% of the startup companies outsource Software Development to reduce expenses.
However, while outsourcing is consider to be a better choice to save on costs, about half of the startups that attempts outsourcing fails, and they exhaust budgets. This situation now makes the new entrepreneurs think if outsourcing can be advantageous to them.
One of the main reasons that may make startups to think about Web Developments outsource can be knowledge gap while believing that outside expertise can provide an intelligent solution for their business success.
Today, most of the startups consider outsourcing as a better choice, and they try to fuel their growth by adding expertise to their team. However, startups need to be smart, innovative and agile to compete in the present competitive market.
Services from Expert Team for Outsourcing
Based on the type of startup you are, you may need a few services from an expert team outsourced, particularly during the early stage of your business and this may include;
- Software development
- Web development
- Graphic designing
- UI/UX
- Copywriting
- Legal and more
Although outsourcing has many significant benefits to offer the newbies like as follow, you still need to analyze and ponder over how effective can that be to your business. Outsourcing benefits the startups in various aspects, including;
- Enable you to concentrate on your core service or project
- Find a cost-effective solution for extensive list of work items, especially when your finance is low
- Switch to a freelancer or any other outsource team that is efficient than the previous one
- Fast turnaround without any delays
- Flexible approach and more
It is not about “Outsourcing,” but more on how to make “Outsourcing” work. There are ways and means to do it.
How to make outsourcing successful?
Besides knowing the benefits of startups outsource their development process, it is still essential to understand how to make your outsourcing successful. Here are a few factors that can help your outsourcing idea fortunate;
- Try to compile a list of tasks that you want outsource team to perform
- Also try to create a policy document regarding confidential information, which should never be disclose to other parties
- Try to identify the most efficient outsourcing team that supports you in every aspect of business growth
- Provide detailed information about your requisites to channelize the outsource process in a right way
- Most importantly try to manage the outsource budget, particularly in the early stage of startup
- Set time to review your outsourced projects, no matter how reliable the freelancer or outsourcing team is
Besides knowing why startups need to outsource, you should also know that there are certain things that you should never outsource such as, your core business functions, proprietary company information, quality assurance and other sensitive details that need to be maintained confidentially.
One more important thing to consider for this offshoring the work and ensure to taste the success is managing the requirements better. Requirments gathering is a different topic, but ensure to read my blog which talks about this item: “7 Tips to Gather Better Requirements For Your Software Project.” This concepts and clarity for outsourcing explained in this blog, fits in most of the clients/prospects am working on at any time in my professional career. To be more precise these work for some of the India clients too.
“Outsource” is mostly smelled as work from other countries. But for one of the Indian Clients am talking to last week, they had great ideas about cryptocurrency landscape. Their concept is cool, and founders & investors are from the excellent business background. Still, they lack the proper team. Team Agira started working with them. In 4 weeks, we helped them to achieve whatever they cant accomplish in 14 weeks before. So its been always a win-win situation if we make the right choice to get help at the right time. Will write in detail about this experience later.
Ensure to read my previous blog post on one such similar topic here: “Offshore Development – A shift in perception.” Please share your comments about this topic and post any questions you might have.
