Tips to Choose the Right Technology Partner for Your Agency
If you want to start a company or an agency, you need to have certain technical skills. If not, you need to find a technology partner for yourself. Yes, either way, you need to have the technical part sorted.
However, coding, programming and other such IT-based professionals have to be paid well, and they are always in demand. So if you want to hire a technology partner, you’ll always be in competition with agencies and start-ups similar to yours and also with well-known companies like Apple and Google. You cannot afford to pay a CTO well if you’re still in the initial stage of your establishment. You might look for equity sharing, but even that doesn’t help beyond a point.
But again, if you go on running an entire company without a technology partner, you won’t be able to survive for long in the market. You can surely get a prototype built at very cheap rates, but if you fail to scale or version it, you’ll miss out on a lot of time and invite financial loss for yourself.
There’s no perfect time for finding a tech partner, but the most important factor one needs to consider for hiring one is “time”. It’s your company, and you already know what stage of development are you at. You need to consider the timing and make decisions that support the sustainable development of your company.
Have a look at some tips to consider while hiring a tech partner!
#Tip1: Watch your budget and cost of tech partner simultaneously
Start easy, start light! If you are planning to materialize your business idea, you will need to make an MVP, i.e. a minimum viable product to make your pitch and get the funding. MVP is nothing but the simplest possible implementation of your business idea to be presented in front of anyone who can provide or generate funding for you. You need to present a working model that represents your idea of business and why one should be interested in buying it.
So this stage of your business is bound to have financial restraints, hence the need to minimize your investment arises. You cannot hire an in-house CTO at that time before knowing that your idea would really work. Go for hiring a CTO in further stages of your business and finally, when your product works out and is adding balance to your business account, you can hire a team of technical partners for your agency.
Simultaneously, do not choose any IT service company just because they offer you the technical assistance at a lower cost. Compromising with quality may worsen the business scenario. Try to select the firms that provide you with promising services at economical rates. Check their clientele available on their websites. Negotiating the price is also essential, but it should be placed forward such that your needs are fulfilled in the price you offer to the company.
#Tip2: Evaluate the technical skills of developers
Firstly, always choose an IT consulting firms that offers full-service development. This ensures a complete coverage right from market trends analysis to choosing the right business models and fabrication of a scalable product that helps to boost your market.
It will take a longer time testing the technical skills of your technical partners. Hence, shortlist the firms that have specialized UI/UX designers as their full-time team members. Also, give a close look to the firm’s portfolio. It will give an insight into core features of the company. See if they have all-time customer support services, intuitive search interfaces, user adaptability, and other such features.
#Tip3: Analyze the trustworthiness of the IT service Company
A genuine company will provide the list and contacts of their past clients. You can get the exact information about the firm’s technical services by directly talking to them. Do not hesitate to ask this list from the firm.
Secondly, you need to analyze their transparency. Any trustworthy firm will be ready to provide numerous tools for project management and analysis of the project. This allows you to go back to your product, analyze the aberrations and correct them to improve your existing product.
Lastly, make sure that the technical partner you choose ensures long term support. This will land both the firms in continuous progress. A long-term relationship will eventually bring new business opportunities for both firms.
#Tip4: Make sure that the firm understands your clients
Building your app with the best designs cannot solely fulfill your purpose of business. Clients’ expectations are equally important. So, always choose a firm that questions you about your clients’ business setups and their needs. Such firms have technical experts who will build your app such that it fulfills the client requirements. This will generate profit for your business and an excellent reputation for providing client-centered services.
#Tip5: Ask the right questions with no hesitation
Do not allow space for doubts when you are choosing your technical partners. Make a list of questions that stand relevant for your business and ask these to the technical team before hiring them. The questions can range from the information on technical platforms they use to their experience and expertise in the fields.
Clarify your goals and ask questions related to their fulfillment. Besides going for the fundamental inquiry like rates, turn over time, and working methodology go for a wider approach and ask questions related to their past services, efficiency and outputs of the apps that the team built in the past, etc.
#FinalTip:
Waste lesser time in finding the best technical partners. Go to some of the apps that you think have an excellent user interface and design. Check out the technical experts behind the app. Approach the respective IT service company and follow the above-mentioned tips religiously.
Wrapping it up
The market is full of a massive number of IT service companies. And when options are countless, choosing among them becomes difficult. Make sure you make the right choice. Your search for best technical partner ends here! Layer One Networks offer you a range of IT services with a well-experienced team. Our team offers you the best rates along with all-time support, transparency, and trustworthy technical experts.
