As per research published by Deloitte, 31% of IT services have been outsourced and this number will keep growing for the years to come. This means that businesses tend to outsource a third of their IT needs to outsourcing partners. When such a big responsibility is at stake, how do you ensure that you are getting the most value out of every penny you spend?
Android app development is a very competitive market. Whether it is for in-house purposes or for reaching out to you target audience, you need to be at the edge of innovation and quality to attract your target customer through your Android app. It is fairly easy to find a mobile app development company that will fit into your ‘brief’ on paper but it is extremely difficult to find the right outsourcing partner who provides the mobile app development services you actually need.
As outsourcing gets more and more global, offshore companies are on the rise and with the return on investment they provide, they should be; but, with geographic distances the process of outsourcing just becomes difficult. Increasingly, the small to medium sized businesses are finding it difficult to get the best out of their outsourcing process. Many businesses are facing categorical problems like: 1. The finished product is not par with the expectations or cost. 2. The outsourcing partner has left them hanging before delivering the final product. 3. They do not understand the exact functioning of their own product. 4. There is no one to guide them post the delivery of the product, meaning, lack of after-sales services.
It is difficult to find the best mobile app development company that can provide you with the best Android app development services you need; but, it is not impossible. So, here are five ways to make the most out of your outsourced app development process:
1. Understand your exact needs and put them on paper. This is the primary step. Many a time, midway through the process, clients realize that they are lost somewhere in the technicalities and are unable to see the big picture. When you know exactly what your expectations from the final product are: a. You create a clear benchmark for your outsourcing partner to follow. b. You can get back to the initial brief and check progress. c. You can create a clear pathway and chart the process, even before you start. d. You and your outsourcing partner can create an organized chart of deliverables.
Simply by understanding your exact needs in the very initial brief, you have made the entire process extremely efficient and organized.
2. Create a work-schedule before starting. It is very easy to get lost in details, iterations and test runs. For bigger projects, even a week of deviation can cause major delays and for efficient businesses, time is money in all literal senses. Hence, once the expectations and deliverables have been discussed upon, create a mutually agreed schedule to track progress.
3. Ask for your outsourcing partners previous work and clientele. If an outsourcing company has done some work, there is no guarantee that it will be able to deliver at same levels in every single project thereon; but, by doing this you would know who are you partnering with, what are their competencies and who have they worked with. If you want to take a step ahead, you can reach out to their clients and understand the ups & downs they had with their process. This will enable you to shorten your learning curve as a client and understand everything you need to know about your outsourcing partner. This process is termed due-diligence or background check by many. You can term it anything you want, but doing this will keep you and your outsourcing partner on the same page.
4. Ensure all your communication with your outsourcing partner is recorded, transparent, frequent and purposeful. Many clients give a brief and expect the deliverable to fly into their storage systems. Yes, you might have found a very reliable mobile app development company but that does not mean you can close your eyes for the project. Your communication with your outsourcing partner should be frequent and purposeful, which means you should be at the distance of a call or email when your outsourcing partner needs an approval or guidance. Even if they do not need it, it is your duty as a client to keep a check on the progress.
Recording and transparency are by no means to be used as literal legal weapons. Recording does not mean you record every conference call you have with them, it just means that all the communication should be stored in some form (email, call logs etcetera) with a brief description of why it was done. This way, you will naturally flag everything in the process and can directly refer a piece of communication, in case anything needs to be repeated.
5. Before getting your outsourcing partner on board, know what you can expect post-delivery. Different mobile app development companies have different protocols. Some of them will you give you only the final product, some will help you with the integration and some will also provide you with maintenance and data mining. It helps to know in prior, what services you can expect at what costs post the final product has been delivered.