Today, technology changes outpace manageable timelines for their adoption. To stay competitive, businesses have to adopt innovations at the same rate, which pushes them to try new working models, including outsourced software product development services.
In this article, we will discuss software product development solutions, the differences between in-house software product development and outsourcing, the key advantages you receive from professional software development services, and the key scenarios where professional development services are essential.
- Understanding Software Product Development Services
At the current rate of technological advancement, finding, keeping, and developing the right talent is as elusive as ever. It is also expensive, as each new technology requires a new round of staff training, infrastructure development, and software and hardware updates.
Therefore, companies are balancing between internal sourcing strategies (training the in-house staff, hiring new talent, and building up new departments) and outsourcing software development to product development services companies.
Software product development services include end-to-end design and development of software products, which often presupposes in-depth market analysis and developing a strategic vision of this product within a business’s ecosystem.
Due to the regional differences in rates, providing companies outsourcing services are usually located in LATAM, Eastern Europe, or Asia. Historically, these regions have powerful educational systems that provide highly qualified talent to curb the needs of Western economies, flexible tax systems, and lower hourly rates.
What is more important is that they already have the right number of people to develop a software product in demand and possess skills for establishing effective remote collaboration – the perfect solution to help companies keep on track with technological advances.
- Benefits of Professional Software Product Development Services
According to the latest Deloitte outsourcing report, the majority of business owners resort to outsourcing to pursue lower costs (51%) and gain better access to the talent pool (27%), while the value and focus on talent are increasing from year to year. Scalability, faster time to market, and reduced risks are also important benefits of outsourcing.
● Access to Expertise and Specialized Skills
Typically, a software product development agency invests greatly in training its team’s skills and professionalism. Therefore, when hiring an outsourcing vendor, you benefit from a team of experienced developers, designers, and engineers who are skilled in finding effective solutions to specific challenges.
It is especially important when dealing with industry-specific solutions, like those for healthcare, finance, e-commerce, education, etc. Professional software development services will help you focus on a product’s market-winning features based on their previous knowledge of what worked and what didn’t.
● Cost-effective and Scalable Solutions
Outsourcing lets us avoid costs associated with establishing new teams, like HR and legal expenses. Also, development rates in top outsourcing destinations like Eastern Europe, Latin America, or Asia are, on average, twice lower than those in the US, Western Europe, and Japan.
Besides, companies offering custom software product development services have all the necessary resources and capabilities to flexibly respond to your scaling needs, whether you scale up or down. This is really beneficial for businesses like e-commerce retail, which witness seasonal peaks and lows in workload. An outsourcing team usually has resources to quickly augment the team during a period of a peak load and ramp it down, then reduce the workload without the need to hire or fire the essential staff.
● Faster Time-to-Market
More than 80% of business owners who tried outsourced software product development services report they have achieved increased standardization and efficiency of processes.
This benefit comes from technical prowess and skills in agile project management technologies, which come with specialized experience and are not inherent in freshly built in-house teams.
A typical software product development company guarantees quick development cycles and a faster time to market, which translates into a faster return on investment. In the case of competitive projects, the increased speed helps to win new audiences faster and boost brand recognition.
● Reduced Risk and Increased Quality
The ever-changing compliance and security landscape requires continuous monitoring. Therefore, keeping up with technology and regulations poses new challenges, such as keeping a particular part of your staff busy with tracking changes.
Companies offering software product development solutions already have specialized departments that monitor the latest developments to ensure they implement the best security and compliance practices in their new products.
Moreover, they produce high-quality code and adhere to the highest testing standards, minimizing bugs and downtime. This reduces the risk of product downtime, which will definitely boost your service’s credibility among the audience.
- Key Scenarios Where Professional Development Services Are Essential
Determining the right balance between outsourcing and insourcing is not easy. Yet, there are cases where custom software product development services are essential. They are:
● Launching a New Product or Feature
When considering a product that is new to your business, such as an electronic patient records (EPR) solution for a healthcare company, you may have to build an entirely new company department and wait several months until it starts working without friction.
Suppose you hire a vendor with an EPR software development service as a core business offering. In that case, they will present you with an innovative vision of the product and provide you with all the needed expertise to build the product from scratch. Since many technology products fail, a professional approach is necessary for novelty products.
● Scaling or Modernizing Existing Software
Modern audiences are always hungry for more advanced tech features of the products they use, and keeping up with their expectations can be difficult when upgrades require novelty technologies like AI. Therefore, when scaling or modernizing existing software is needed, a company offering outsourced software product development services can step in quickly with the right expertise in the technology niche to launch the new feature quickly and effectively.
● Maintaining and Updating Legacy Systems
For some companies, switching to new solutions can be temporarily impossible because of the volume and complexity of their legacy systems. Yet, some older software is not able to keep up with infrastructure and hardware updates, so solutions like updating legacy systems are necessary for businesses to survive.
Product development services companies take over the challenging tasks of maintaining and updating legacy systems from owners, ensuring smooth transitions and zero downtime.
Summing up
Building new solutions in the quickly developing technology landscape meets new challenges, such as high expectations for product development speed and technical complexity. Since creating new teams to keep up with tech advancements becomes increasingly expensive and complicated, outsourcing software development to third parties helps businesses of all sizes solve sourcing and cost-cutting challenges.