For your business to survive, you must be able to embrace technology. Entrepreneurs and CEOs should take advantage of technology to help their businesses thrive in the ever-shifting consumer landscape. The more willing you are to adapt to new strategies, the better poised your company is for success today and tomorrow.
Let’s talk about software outsourcing. Software outsourcing is the practice of hiring a third-party technology vendor to do tech development instead of doing it in-house. Speed and control are two essential things every tech-enabled company must exercise. You must launch the product to the market as quickly as possible while ensuring that costs remain within the budget. Having projects done efficiently puts your business in a better position to succeed.
Entrepreneurs vying to make it big in the market must consider technology an integral part of their business plan. If you fail to incorporate tech into your business, you have already lost the game. Almost, if not all, transactions are now happening on the Internet. The best place to be right now is online. Once you push for a tech-first approach in your business strategy, you would find your chances of succeeding a lot higher than before.
With software outsourcing, you have greater chances of achieving speed and efficiency while ensuring you don’t run the company’s finances into the ground. If you want to explore cost-efficient strategies that allow you to reinvest your money while speeding up development, you might want to consider outsourcing. Here are five great tips on how to do just that.
Know Where to Start Looking
Looking for great software teams to outsource can be quite challenging if you don’t know where to look first. It can be similar to finding a single needle in a haystack. To avoid consuming too much time, you should narrow your search to trustworthy sites such as Upwork and LinkedIn. It is also best if you can build your team from specialized platforms such as Toptal and Clutch. These sites have already vetted and rated specialists. You can dig deeper into the reviews to see worthy candidates.
Upwork, Toptal, LinkedIn, etc., allow you to find experienced developers in no time. Toptal tests their applicants for technical and English skills before their profiles can be approved. Only less than 3% of all applicants are said to be approved.
When finding great candidates, you must also take culture fit and hourly rates into consideration. Communication is especially challenging in remote work. Cultural differences will only serve to add to those difficulties. Save the trouble from possible misunderstandings by thoroughly researching the country you want to find a team. Ensure that the people you tap share a similar mindset and can fit your company’s values well.
Another matter you should consider is hourly rates. It is common knowledge that developers in Asian countries tend to charge the lowest rates while their western counterparts charge more. It would be best to choose teams coming from countries that also fit well with your allotted budget.
Be Specific About Requirements
Sorting out applications can be a massive thorn in your side. Often, people send out applications carelessly, not bothering to consider if they fit the requirements or not. You will also likely receive a fair share of copy-pasted applications sent to multiple job postings before yours. Of course, it is easy to see through these types of applications since personalized ones can easily stand out from a mile away. However, sorting the genuine ones can be time-consuming. You might end up getting tripped up by the overwhelming volume of applications, wasting precious time you could use for more important things.
One surefire way to weed out the wrong applications is by being specific about your job post’s knowledge requirements. Try asking these possible candidates particular questions about their experiences. If they fail to answer these questions, you can immediately tell if they read your job post or not.
Here’s a secret to further narrow down the pile of applications you have to go through. Ask them to type a random sentence at the end of their application. Then, you can quickly delete emails that don’t contain this random sentence. Suitable applicants read job posts in their entirety.
Also, specify that they must send links to the projects they are most proud of. Reviewing their work allows you to gauge their skills and see if they meet your company’s needs or not.
Evaluate the Team
Learn your potential team’s background. Knowing your applicants’ skills and experience is one thing, but getting to know them as people is another. Before sending them the contract, you must study them first. After all, they will be the ones in charge of developing the technology that will either make or break your company. You want to ensure that the people taking on this critical task are people you can rely on.
Study Their Portfolio
Portfolios are essential when it comes to gauging professionalism and how someone works. Portfolios provide insights into their outputs. You can better grasp what their work may look like and then measure if their style meshes well with your vision for the company. Ask if they deployed their projects. If they hadn’t, dig into it and ask why that was the case. It’s essential to know if they can deliver based on their previous performance.
Get References
Let your applicants walk the talk by sending over references. Take the time to follow up on these references. Having real feedback on how they work as a team and their work attitude can provide you with essential insights. Taking this step helps you make an informed decision whether you would want to hire these developers or not.
Gauge Communication Skills
Superior communication skills are advantages you must leverage. CEOs and entrepreneurs tend to overlook communication skills. You can have the best developers, but they would always fall short if they couldn’t explain their work to their non-technical workmates. Even if you are not the most tech-savvy, it is your job to understand how the tech runs in the background. Your developers must be able to explain their process of developing your product.
Invest in Your Team
Your company’s success depends on the people that help it reach its business goals. Your software development team is one of the essential parts that make your vision come to life.
Invest in them by organizing webinars and providing access to various online courses and subscriptions. Giving them the necessary resources grants your developers’ the opportunity to develop their hard skills further. Help them upskill. Not only will your company benefit from it, it sends a message that you also want your teams to succeed.
Foster good relationships between you and your developers. Gain their trust. If this is not your last outsourcing project, you now have trusted developers who can work on your products in the future.
Avoid Micromanagement
If you have to check your team’s every step and breathe down their necks while they work, then you haven’t succeeded in forming an agile team of developers. It can be tempting to check if they are doing their jobs, especially since you can’t be present all the time.
However, micromanaging can damage your team faster than you can say software development. You can’t monitor everything all the time. Not only will you lose sight of the bigger picture, but you will also most likely push your team into giving up and letting go of you as a client.
Trust that you’ve chosen well. Trust the team you built. Trust your decision in assigning team roles and let them work independently. Having trust in working relations ensures that projects get done more efficiently while maintaining harmonious dynamics within the workspace.
Scale Your Company Through Tech Outsourcing
The key to a successful tech-first company lies on the shoulders of your developers. A rockstar team of developers can be the key to your company’s success. However, having an in-house team can be expensive. It would be hard to scale. Therefore, most companies opt to outsource their software development teams.
Outsourcing provides you with competitive advantages by minimizing costs while enhancing customer service and maintaining quality on a limited budget.
Businesses must adapt the growth mindset through innovation and digital transformation. A growth mindset demands you to be flexible. Great third-party contractors provide the flexibility needed for company growth and even maximizes it. They can anticipate potential risks and eliminate them due to the agile methodology outsourced contractors adapt. Most vendors can even go further by adjusting working hours to make sure that they can beat tight deadlines.
Outsourcing can be very complicated. Looking for the right software developer suited to your company can even be more challenging. You must be extra careful when it comes to hiring contractors.
We develop reliable and scalable software solutions, whether in the form of an app, website, or productivity software. By bringing together highly experienced and professional tech developers with industry expertise, we can deliver tech solutions and products that fit our clients’ needs. If you are looking for reliable tech vendors, you have come to the right place. Contact us today to receive a free consultation.
