What Are the Advantages of Software Development Outsourcing?

Throughout a wide range of industries, outsourcing software development to a dedicated software development company has become a growing trend. But why exactly? What are the advantages of software development outsourcing?

Full disclosure: Yes, this is a service we offer at Baytech Consulting, so yes, we’re in support of it. But we’ve also been at this for a while now, and we have a pretty good handle on why outsourcing software development works so well.

There are lots of reasons why we and others say outsourcing makes sense as the cost-effective choice for software development. Many of the specific reasons come back to one or more of several factors, including focus, efficiency, cost effectiveness and access to needed skills.

Of course, those factors play out in all sorts of interesting and unique ways, including the 11 we’ve included here.

1. Outsource Software Development to Stay Focused on What You Do

First, outsourcing software development to a dedicated software development company allows your business to stay focused on what you do. Unless your company itself specializes in software development, this discipline is not one of your core competencies.

Building up the in-house capability is possible, but is it the right idea? Does building out an internal team and all the infrastructure that goes with it truly enhance your mission, or does it begin to distract from it?

Stay more laser-focused on the core of your business by outsourcing your software development needs to a company that can remain laser focused on them.

2. Outsource Software Development to Be Cost Effective

Related to the previous point, it can cost a lot of money to staff up an in-house software development team. Not only do you need to pay premium wages for skilled software developers, you also need to build out additional management capability as well as project management capacity and additional IT infrastructure.

All told, this can be a complicated and very expensive process. And the smaller your business, the harder it will be to absorb these costs.

Let someone else worry about all the overhead of hiring and training and managing the software development team. In many cases, outsourcing to an external, dedicated software development team is the most cost effective approach.

3. Gain Efficiency by Outsourcing Software Development

It hardly matters the size. Hardly any organization (besides those where software development is a primary focus) has the resources to develop the breadth and depth necessary for truly efficient software development. It’s such a specialized field, and by the very nature of your organization you’re forced to hire people with more generalized skills.

That’s because when this project ends, a new one begins. And that new project may require an entirely different approach. If you hired software developers with the exceedingly specific specializations needed for Project A, they may be next to useless for Project B. That’s why in-house personnel tend to be more broadly or generally skilled.

But when you outsource your software development needs to a dedicated software development company, you get instant access to devs with a whole host of skills, both general and deeply specific.

In other words, when you work with us, the conundrum of depth versus breadth is solved. Since software development is one of our core competencies, we have the capacity and ability that you don’t. We can work far more efficiently than many in-house teams we’ve partnered with can do on their own.

4. Overcome Skills and Experience Shortages through Outsourcing

Even companies that are seeking to do development in house face roadblocks to doing so. They may run into a situation requiring a particular programming skill that no one among the staff has. Or they may struggle to maintain a staff with the right combination of skills and experience for the projects on the docket.

Not having the right skills available at the right time is an issue for many businesses, and it’s not for lack of trying. One survey concluded that in 2017 fewer than 50,000 people in the US graduated with a degree in computer science. That seems like a sizeable group until you consider the 500,000 open positions in the field!

With a ratio like that, hiring is challenging. Then, even if you’re the one in 10 that lands a recent grad, they’re inexperienced and may need additional training before they can be completely effective.

Overcome your team’s gaps and shortcomings by outsourcing that portion of the project to a firm that has the requisite skills and experience.

5. Increase Accountability by Outsourcing Software Development

Another way that working with an outside software development company helps your business succeed is by the increased accountability that comes with it. When you work with a vendor, the vendor is contractually bound to deliver what is agreed upon. In this case, that’s functional software with a certain set of features.

Now you may be thinking, “How is that any different than building software in house?” That’s a fair question.

Here’s the big difference: what happens when something goes wrong?

With an in-house team, if the team reaches the end of its rope and can’t solve a problem or deliver an agreed-upon feature, you’re stuck. Either it doesn’t happen, or you have to bring in someone from the outside (like us). But since the outside specialist didn’t build the software, you’re going to lose time and money getting the vendor up to speed on what’s going on. If fixing the problem requires significant reworking of code, you’ll end up losing all sorts of productivity (not to mention money).

But when you outsource to a vendor, you also outsource the responsibility of getting it right. If a vendor can’t figure out how to implement a feature they agreed to create, they have to find a way. That may mean the vendor has to go outside itself to a specialist. But better them than you, right?

Save yourself the headaches that occur when your in-house team hits a wall. Outsource from the beginning and let those headaches be someone else’s problem.