Choosing to insource or outsource software development

Do you staff or outsource software development?

The software development industry continues to expand rapidly, with thousands of highly skilled developers and engineers available from all over the world. More than ever, your company has the opportunity to hire a developer with almost any skill set you require.

Although staffing your organization with developers gives you a high degree of control over your software development projects, it comes with several downsides. The primary challenges you may face with hiring full-time are talent scarcity and cost. It can take a long time to find the best developer for the job, and when you do, their salary could stretch your budget to its breaking point.

For this reason, many companies that provide software are ditching their in-house developers and looking to outsource software development to external experts.

Why Do Companies Outsource Software Development?

When building a software development team, you should look for three things: Quick access to developers, expertise, and affordability. However, it is almost impossible to achieve all three when you only hire full-time, in-house talent.

Outsourcing provides you with a solution similar to delegating tasks – sparing you the need to gain niche skills and use your time to build your business instead.

Partnering with an external software development company helps you to:

• lower your fixed costs
• accelerate or scale your development team
• find skilled developers fast
• release your software before your competitors

Outsourcing software development is a SaaS tool that helps you grow the technology that powers your business.

Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Software Development

Outsourcing software development helps you to solve these pain points while offering the following advantages:

Lower Development Costs

Cost is the biggest reason why you should choose to outsource your software development needs. According to a study by Deloitte, nearly 59 percent of companies say that they outsource to control or reduce costs.

Your organization will benefit from cutting down its costs: Lower costs mean more funds for you to channel into other critical areas of your business such as hardware and software upgrades, better salaries for your employees, marketing, or office expansion, among others.

The cost savings mean that many of the world’s top brands have embraced the concept of software development outsourcing. For instance, WhatsApp outsourced the development of the iOS version of its widespread application.

The founders of WhatsApp – Brian Acton and Jan Joum – opted to outsource the app’s development due to severe technical issues in the beta app’s early stages. They considered it a cheaper alternative to hiring a specialist developer to make the app market-ready.

The decision was a masterstroke, with WhatsApp now boasting an incredible 2 billion active users each month, with almost 70 million in the U.S. alone.

There are many reasons why outsourcing helps businesses save on their development costs. When you work with external workers, you only pay for the service they offer and avoid the everyday expenses of hiring full-time staff such as hardware, training, rent, software, sick pay, and more.

What’s more, you also avoid the costs of advertising vacancies, conducting interviews with candidates, and onboarding. All these costs can significantly dent your company’s finances, with Glassdoor estimates putting the average cost of a new hire in the United States at about $4,000.

Increased Speed to Market

For most businesses, innovating rapidly without compromising product quality is essential to keeping pace with their competitors. Among the most significant benefits of outsourcing software development over hiring an in-house team is that it gives you better control over the speed of software development.

Instead of having your timelines dictated by your available resources, you can leverage outside talent and capabilities to quickly scale software development up or down when needed.

Increasing your speed to market gives you a vital competitive advantage, increasing your market share and bringing your business immediate success and profits. Some of the benefits that outsourcing brings by reducing your time to market include:

• Mitigating your costs and boosting revenues
• Allowing you to become familiar with – and react faster – to the prevailing market trends
• Keeping you one step ahead of your competitors
• Delivering your product to the market ahead of customer expectations

Flexibility Of Resources

All IT departments struggle with the finite capacity of their in-house developers. Each software developer you hire probably has to fill multiple roles – working on a combination of enhancement, remediation, and new development assignments simultaneously.

It is difficult for in-house developers to re-prioritize their existing commitments at short notice to focus their attention on a new project. This inflexibility will hinder your company’s growth and revenues.

When there are new projects or the scope of a project changes, you need the ability to scale your development team up or down rapidly. However, hiring and onboarding new developers could take months.

When you work with outsourced talent, it becomes easy to rapidly ramp up your capacity with a team of qualified programmers. As demand fluctuates, you maintain complete control of the mix of technical skills and the team size to add or remove specialized skills. Best of all, you do not have to worry about letting staff go when a project ends.

Access To Skills and Experience

When you outsource your software development, you empower your company to connect with local and international leading specialists. You can then take advantage of the skills you might not have in-house or experts who could be too expensive to have on your team permanently.

A good example is IKEA. The Swedish furniture manufacture is committed to participating in the smart home revolution through its Smart Home program. However, as IKEA is primarily a furniture company, it does not have the needed expertise to make its vision a reality.

IKEA has outsourced the development of the initiative to some of the most dynamic tech teams in the world. What’s more, the company does not restrict itself to its local talent pool – it has the whole world to explore.

Outsourcing your software development instead of hiring programmers means that you can use the expertise of your outsourcing partner to:

• Access programming skills in high demand within your industry
• Use niche skills that you only require for a one-off project
• Take advantage of technical certifications which your staff do not have
• Access subject matter experts with experience in developing applications for many other customers

Outsource Your Software Needs to Leading Specialists

EV&D Solutions is a full-service consulting firm that provides technology creation solutions to businesses using highly experienced and vetted teams that in-house developers cannot offer. You can trust us to create software products that users value and have real potential for significant payoffs.

We specialize in:

• Machine learning
• AI
• Software development
• Blockchain
• IoT
• Cloud computing

Are you ready to turn your vision into a genuine and meaningful transformation? Click here to contact us and find out how outsourcing your software development can help your business succeed.