7 Reasons You Should Outsource App Development

It seems like every business has an app. And with good reason, an app not only lets your customers interact with your business whenever they want, it means that you can choose to interact with them too. It’s a great way to improve customer service and maintain a dialogue.

If you want your app to be truly effective and add value for your customers, the chances are that the development project will be a significant one. You could opt to recruit software developers and do it in-house; however, an increasing number of businesses are opting to outsource their app development. There are a few reasons for this.

Expertise

Expertise is probably the most important reason to outsource your app development. A good outsource software development company will be dedicated to keeping themselves up to date with all of the latest technologies and working practices in the software industry, as well as having a good knowledge of what technologies are likely to become popular in the future.

This means that not only will they be able to suggest an app solution for you which delivers the best possible results for your business, but they will also be able to ensure that your app is ‘future-proofed’ meaning that as technology moves on your app will be able to move on with it, rather than having to re-develop it as technology changes. A lot of companies had this issue when technology moved into the cloud, having to spend millions updating their software to be compatible.

They will also be knowledgeable about security practices and legislative requirements, meaning that your app will be equipped to keep your customer data safe and will be in line with security procedures as required by the government.

Capacity and Speed

Software development companies will have a team of professionals, experts in multiple different technologies and development practices. They will also have project management experts on board.

Firstly, this means that they will be able to run your project incredibly efficiently because they will have run so many of them before they know exactly how to organize the work and their staff for optimum results. Secondly, this means that they have additional capacity for your project to expand into as needed. For example, if during the app design process you discover that a particular piece of emerging technology would solve your issue and it wasn’t part of the original scope, they will probably have a staff member who can take on that piece of work. Or if you need to move your deadline forwards, they will likely be able to assign additional resources to your project to make it possible.

This flexibility just isn’t possible if you are developing in house.

KPIs

When you create an agreement with a software development company, you will also set KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). These are measurable values which indicate whether or not your targets are being met.

You will be able to regularly review the progress of the project against the KPIs with your project manager at the software development company. If they aren’t meeting your expectations, then the project manager will take steps to resolve the issue.

Managing the KPI process with an internal software development team becomes a bit more of a headache because if expectations aren’t being met your company would be the one who had to take steps to resolve the issue – whether that was by hiring additional resources or through a HR procedure. Either way, it’s a headache you can probably do without!

Remove HR Headaches

Depending on how quickly you want to deliver your app, and how much functionality you want it to have, your app development team could potentially be a large one.

For each staff member, there is an entire hiring process, taxes, reviews… the list goes on. And then what happens to those staff once the app development project is over? Do you try to find room for them elsewhere in your business? Or do you have to face the headache of redundancies?

By outsourcing your app development, you remove all of this extra work, as the company you outsource to will be responsible for managing their staff.

Labor Cost Savings

If you employ software developers and project managers, you will be paying them a set wage for a set number of hours each week, plus holidays, sick leave etc.

The nature of software development is that the workload intensifies and then lessens depending on the staff member and the stage of the project. For example, during requirements gathering your project managers will be doing a lot of work, but your developers may have minimal input. In the same way, when development is underway, your project managers workload will be lessened.

This means that essentially you will be paying people for work that they aren’t doing some of the time. Plus, if you need extra work to meet deadlines, you may have to pay overtime.

If you are paying an app development company, you will only pay for the work that they are doing, which will save you money.

Lessen Disruption for Permanent Employees

Introducing new software will always entail a certain amount of disruption for your employees. Productivity is likely to drop temporarily as they adapt to new supporting processes, and they may feel unnerved by the change.

It’s important to involve your existing employees in the development process by asking them to act as stakeholders and provide their input, as this helps them to feel valued and will provide you with useful insights. However, if you also ask them to take an active role in the development project, this may cause them stress. Software development is a specialized field, so by asking people who are not trained to work in that area, you may leave them feeling out of their depth and stressed out.

It’s a much better approach to allow your staff to concentrate on their own roles while asking for their input but allow the ownership of the delivery of the software project to rest with an outside team.

You Can Concentrate on Your Core Business

Unless you are a software development company yourself, software development is unlikely to be part of your core business.

By employing experts in software development, you can get on with growing your business and doing what you do best, while they do what they do best. The result will be a successful app deployed into a company that hasn’t pulled itself apart, trying to develop it!