Key Areas of Building Successful Software Outsourcing Partnerships

Quick Summary: Partnering with a skilled and reliable software outsourcing vendor requires careful consideration and due diligence. To ensure a successful collaboration, it’s essential to ask the right questions to your potential vendor. In this blog post, we have compiled a list of five crucial questions that will help you assess their commitment, capabilities, and alignment with your business goals. Read on.

If we are to ask entrepreneurs about the top three principles that they live by, there is a great chance that one of core principle would be - Greater the risk, greater the reward. But there is a reason for 90% of the start-ups fail to survive the competitive market. It is true that one must take risk in business to succeed, but it is essential that the risk is calculated. Because it is simple that the ‘risk’ which is not a ‘calculated risk’ is simply a gamble.

When we talk about ventures in the technology industry, outsourcing your project and entrusting your idea to a third-party vendor is a calculated risk that an enterprise or an individual undertakes to hire a talent pool that can effectively complete the project at affordable rates in stipulated timelines. But that risk will be a gamble if you do not enquire about the software outsourcing company, and you collaborate simply because of the lowest bid.

In this era of digital transformation, even giants like Facebook and Google haven’t been spared of data and security breaches. So, it becomes mandatory concern for small, medium and mega corps to think and re-think before venturing into the unknown waters of outsourcing for software projects.

While you outsource your software project to a trusted software development company, you need to ensure that you are in control of the project and not taking a leap of faith without a proper understanding. One of the major steps in this direction is to first sign a software agreement that clearly lays down your requirements, payment terms, project timelines, and all other clauses in the interest of your project. To help you make the right decision, we have prepared a list of 5 questions that you must ask your software outsourcing vendor.

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5 Questions to Gauge Your Outsourcing Vendor’s Capabilities

1. What are the measures that your partner takes to secure IPRs?

Whenever you are partnering with a vendor, your trade secrets and confidential information should stay secure- come what may. Intellectual Property Rights can become a major concern if your partner is up to any unethical behaviour. Understand if your technology partner offers to sign any Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to ensure the safety and use of any kind of application data or sensitive business information. In most cases, towards the end of the contract, you should get complete ownership of the source code. Any backup if required is only kept after taking your consent for the purpose of future developments. Most reputed and trust software development companies have required infrastructure, role based access and secured communication channels for safety of sensitive information.

2. How will you be informed about the project developments?

It is important to stay aware about the delegation of responsibilities- and development of the project. The answer to this question will help you understand how transparent the communication channel is in the organization. It will also help you understand how involved and informed you will be at each stage of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Ensure you have enough clarity on the developers for your project, scrum meeting updates, weekly and monthly reports and adhering to Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This will help you stay on top of your project and will also ensure that you know about all the developments. Total transparency will allow you to trust the vendor and will help you build a rapport with the development team.

3. How well are the time zone and cultural differences managed?

When you are off-shoring your project to a country that has a different time zone than yours, you must ensure how will vendor easily handle the communication to keep the process smooth and not hamper the development of the project. It’s important to have communication tools like instant messaging, video conferencing and several project management tools to help connect teams with the distant clients. A good overlap of 2 to 4 working hours will help build productivity. Transparent and well-communicated software development outsourcing turns out to be a boon if done right.

4. How compatible the teams are with different cultures?

Cultural compatibility is always a puzzle. In a world where a handshake can denote several different meanings, it is an important question especially if there are multiple vendors involved in the development process. Every culture has their own methods that affects their thinking process and decision making abilities. You must ensure that the team that will work on your project has the ability to comply with people of different cultures and has enough exposure and interpretation skills to make correct decisions based on the nature and culture of you and your user market. For smooth custom software development- try to understand from the work portfolio, experience and expertise they share- it helps to know if your tech partner is well nuanced in overcoming cultural differences.

5. What kind of support and maintenance services should you expect?

After project completion, you need to be sure of the support and maintenance services provided by your software outsourcing partner. Failing to do so may result in severe loss of money, efforts and in some cases even company reputation- once product is in market used by your customers. Discuss in detail about the documentation transfer, code maintainability, and product warranty.

Wrapping UpIf you have plans to work with an outsourcing company for a long time, it is imperative to build a stronger partnership. Because when two companies aren't compatible, their consequences will reflect on the project in terms of delays, budget constraints, and many other challenges.As an award-winning software outsourcing company for over 25+ years, we have witnessed a successful software outsourcing partnership built on trust, transparency, and commitment. By considering all these core aspects, we designed the above questions outlined in this article. It will help you carefully evaluate your vendor and establish a clear expectation from the outset.If you are still confused, feel free to consult our experts and find a best-fit outsourcing partner you can rely on.