When do you need an offshore development company?
Outsourcing is purely about two things: saving time and saving money. All other considerations and questions still boil down to these two things on a fundamental level. Below you’ll find four more specific reasons why you may want to outsource.
1. You need specialized programming — The biggest reason to outsource your project is because it falls outside the knowledge and technical expertise of your in-house team. For example, if you need to develop an Android app but your in-house team only knows how to build web applications, you’ll save time and money by outsourcing the project to an Android development firm.
When you look for an outsourcing partner, you need to find companies with extensive experience developing products with the programming languages, frameworks and libraries your project requires. This means looking up reviews online and calling up several companies to understand their areas of expertise. While outsourcing to an offshore development company is cheaper overall, you still need to do your due diligence when selecting a company. You hand over part of your business’s product roadmap to another company when you outsource, so it’s important to understand their track record of success.
2. You have a limited budget — It’s 3 to 5 times more expensive to develop software in the United States when compared to offshore outsourcing alternatives. You can build more features, iterate more and build for more platforms when you work with an offshore development firm because their hourly rates are much lower.
When you have a limited budget there are only two ways to keep your project within budget: you can either reduce scope or reduce the hourly rate. If you reduce your scope to the point where you no longer provide value to your customers, then you need to think about finding a good offshore outsourcing partner. In general, good offshore firms start at around $25/hour for engineering.
3. You have a tight timeline — Do you have an upcoming conference deadline or event where you need to demo your product? If so, outsourcing your product’s development may be your only option. Recruiting top web and mobile developers today is expensive and time consuming and it can take even longer to from a team that works well together. Good outsourcing partners have team members who work together on numerous projects, enabling your project to move faster.
Your outsourced team has processes and most importantly they’ve built products like yours before. They’re subject matter experts who can guide you through the dos and don’t of everything from responsive web development to mobile app development to Apple TV development. Your outsourced designers and developers accomplish more in their first few weeks then you’d be able to achieve with new team members in their first few months.
4. You have too much work — If you are thinking about outsourcing a piece of a larger in-house project, remember that coding requires collaboration and cooperation between your team and the team of the outsourcing vendor you select. As mentioned earlier, it’s best to hand over complete ownership to one or more pieces of your app. Give your outsourcing partner your mobile apps or your web app or your backend application. Give them something significant and let them focus on delivering the features and product you need.
