By Natalya Borisenko
Outsourcing company or your own development department: what is to choose when you need some software to be developed?
We will not recommend against searching for good developers to become a part of your company, but we will give you 10 reasons in favor of outsourcing.
Outsourcing or involving third party’s resources means entrusting a third party specializing in some particular field with performing specific tasks under a contract.
In simple words, if any certain task appears to be too burdensome and/or expensive, you can entrust it to professionals in the relevant area.
Is it reasonable to outsource part of the activities within your business to external company (either web development or some other)?
Read, analyze and draw your own conclusion.
According to Statista, the revenue of the global outsourcing market demonstrated rather steady growth from 2000 to 2012. The stable period was followed by some ups and downs in the period from 2012 to 2016. And in 2016 the revenue achieved $76.9 billion.
As for IT outsourcing market, the situation appears rather stable:
According to Whitelane Research results established through study of 4600 IT outsourcing contracts, in Europe:
– clients are satisfied with 89% of contracts;
– 80% of the respondents were going to continue outsourcing;
– of which 43% said they planned to expand cooperation with outsourcing companies.
As you see, outsourcing has secured its footing in the modern business world. And what’s more, it does not seem to be going to give up its position.
Why, after all, do we make a decision in favor of entrusting (albeit partially) the conduct of our affairs to external parties?
Umbrella offers professional services in the area of mobile and web development. We are always glad to share our experience and knowledge on umbrella-web.com, and in this article we will speak on web development services outsourcing.
We will specify 10 reasons to convince you that web development can and should be outsourced to external company. Or viceversa you may found yourself dissuaded realizing that you are able to cope perfectly well on your own. And the idea to outsource will be given up once and for all.
Please, read this article to the end, and everything will fall right into place.
REASON NO. 1.
COMPLETE TEAM
You do not need to gather a whole team for a specific task. Working with an outsourcing company assumes, that there are all required specialists available. Each specialist will perform a specific task over a defined period of time. In this case, you are not responsible for distributing duties and downtime of the specialists.
Please, note: You would have to hire all the specialists in-house, regardless of the degree of their involvement. And any downtime of the in-house team members would result in some expenses.
For example, Umbrella team includes generally:
· PM (Project Manager);
· backend developer;
· frontend developer;
· QA: works on a project part-time;
· DevOps specialist: only required at the project starting and deployment stages;
· webpage layout designer and designer: they do their part of the job and are not needed throughout the project all the time.
REASON NO. 2.
PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT
In case of intended large-scale expansion of your business on a tight schedule, where you obviously are not able to cope on your own, you need professional approach. Required is an experienced working in harmony team to join the project quickly and to act in clear and coordinated manner.
Please, note: Hiring such an in-house team will take time to search and get adapted. At the same time, the hired professionals are not guaranteed to pass a trial period and to work well together in order to make your product a success.
REASON NO. 3.
NARROW FOCUS SPECIALISTS
Suppose you have a perfect in-house team that successfully copes with the tasks typical for your business. But for new projects or seldom used work stages (such as design or analytics) it is recommended to engage external field-specific specialists.
Please, note: If you have a startup or an idea to check, you involve third-party specialists to test its effectiveness. And only having the new project feasibility confirmed, you start hiring your own specialists for its further support. Thus, you avoid unnecessary costs.
REASON NO. 4.
ORGANIZED PROCESS
Against a backdrop of a current market competition, outsourcing companies are primarily focused on the customer’s needs. And, accordingly, their workflow are intended to be as efficient as possible, eliminating any challenges for the customer.
Please, note: If you outsource web development to a team with PM, this is this specialist, who is in charge for organizing the workflow and interacting with developers. In the meantime, you can focus on your own business, dealing with one contact person and getting complete information when required.
REASON NO. 5.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Outsourcing development teams are always in the forefront of technologies. Such companies ensure their team professional growth, enriching experience and mastering new trends, and send their specialists to courses, conferences, and trainings.
Personal preferences may vary, but in any case, experienced professional developers can give you recommendations and tips to optimize your product.
Please, note: You would have to spend your own funds and time to train your own in-house team.
REASON NO. 6.
NEW EXPERIENCE
Interacting with professionals, you gain new experience both in terms of technology and management. Good outsourcing teams ( please, be reminded, that the team should be selected very carefully) apply well-established and well-developed processes, which can subsequently be used by you, entirely or partially.
Please, note: It will take time and resources for your team to master a new and untried process. Your resources.
REASON NO. 7.
ADVANTAGES OVER COMPETITORS
The reason is directly related to the previous two reasons: use of cutting-edge technologies and proven well-developed processes increases quality and competitiveness of your products and strengthens your company’s position at the market.
Please, note: Once again we should repeat, that searching for new working procedures and technologies on your own is neither excluded nor discouraged, but it will take more time and investments.
REASON NO. 8.
PLANNING RESOURCES AND RISKS
An outsourcing company itself handles the planning process (as agreed with you as the customer). The contractor is responsible for allocating resources and running all types of risks (organizational, tax and technological) stipulated in the contract.
Please, note: For example, you do not need to spend time to plan distribution of human resources (vacations, sick leaves). Still the work is carried out non-stop.
REASON NO. 9.
EQUAL PARTNERSHIP
Outsourcing is a partnership on contractual terms. Both parties are interested in successful implementation of the contract. You expect to get a quality product on time. An outsourcing company strives to meet all its contractual obligations (counting on long-term cooperation, worthy addition to its portfolio, and good references on your part).
Please, note: You enter into employment agreements with members of your in-house team, and they fulfill their duties, being often not so much enthusiastic about implementing internal company’s projects. While all risks related to working process and the outcome are ultimately borne by your company.
REASON NO. 10.
COST SAVING
In addition to indirect savings, already mentioned above, you save on direct costs required to find, hire and organize labor relations with employees, and provide working environment.
Please, note: Payment of a contractual amount to the outsourcing company release you from:
– issues of hardware maintenance;
– workplaces arrangement and resources procurement;
– any risks of equipment failures or emergencies that otherwise would have to be covered by you.
These are 10 key points confirming how outsourcing web development may become beneficial.
But Umbrella always gives more than it promises at the start. Therefore, our traditional bonus is awaiting you.
BONUS. SPECIFIC WORLD OF DEVELOPERS
We will lift slightly the veil on a special world of web development. If you start working on a web project, you need to know that programmers live in their own universe. New exciting challenges are breath of their life, and if their work gets boring, the developers can simply leave to search for new opportunities for self-development and improvement.
And you will have to urgently look for and train new employees to replace them. But searching for new staff members, like searching for an experienced outsourcing team, is not an easy task. In many respects the result of teamwork (in both cases) depends on the way you solve it.
For example, it is quite possible that your in-house IT team (in case you managed to get together skilled and experienced specialists) can handle the task with flying colors.
And poorly selected outsourcing team may not reduce costs, as you expect, but bring to an opposite result. Making you to finish, re-do or start the project from the very beginning again.
THEREFORE:
Be careful while choosing the contractor.
You can enjoy the advantages specified in this article only if you have an experienced team to do the job.
Do not spare efforts and find as much information as you can prior to starting cooperation:
– portfolio;
– market experience;
– staffing;
– customer communication processes;
– qualification of developers;
– customer feedback – any factor can be crucial.
Any questions left? Not sure where to start searching for developers team? Start with contacting Umbrella! We are ready to answer any questions and discuss any ideas!