Choosing a technology partner for developing a product can turn out to be an intimidating task irrespective of whether its your first or tenth time. Gone are the times when you were forced to hire the services of high priced consultants who delayed the project by months and final product lacked the luster. Choosing the right project partner could surpass your expectations and a wrong one can be as good as draining your money.
Stakes are high when you are planning to hire a technology partner for custom software development services. Let’s tell you what exactly should be taken into consideration:
Understanding of Your Business
An ideal technology partner needs to understand your business inside out and what problem the software will solve. Technological solutions cannot be provided in a vacuum. The partners can’t render justice to your vision if they fail to understand the entire business.
A proficient technology partner will be able to evaluate the intricacies of your business and find ways in which technology can improve efficiency, reduce costs and add value for your end customers.
Generalists or Specialists
A team with a wide range of cursory skill base or a team with true expertise in one or two specific areas? It’s a question to consider as the pros and cons need to be measured against your project requirements.
A generalist style team can carry out a variety of tasks and efficiently handle projects that require development of a multifaceted product. They are like the ‘Jack of all trades but master of none’. Also you won’t be willing to cut costs in the job of a specialist as the consequences could threaten success of the final product.
When it comes to custom software development, an ideal tech partner is the combination of both. It is referred to as the T-shaped skilled set. Top line is the general set of skills held by the team and vertical line consists of the very specific set of skills.
Thus, try to decide on a technology partner that specializes in your core need along with possessing strong generalist characteristics.
Experience
Often people choose technology partners based on price rather than experience. In reality, experience is more important as experts are aware about how technologies interact with the existing systems and can provide a more practical plan for your company.
To measure the company’s experience you can do a little research. Can they provide you with references and clear examples of their completed projects that are similar to yours? If you look them up online, what do you find? Have they won any awards or recognition for their work? These credentials will help you make an informed analysis about their experience and expertise level.
Apart from the usual factors such as the developers team and experience, there are other factors to consider too while you choose a technology partner!
Testimonials and References
Practically, in every example you will find that the software development companies share a bunch of case studies, testimonials and client references.
Of course the testimonials are useful many times but you must be careful to look behind everything that is displayed. It’s essential to inquire with a future technology partner about the list of clients you can contact. Also, you can ask to skim through their portfolio as it will provide assistance in understanding company expertise and whether they will be perfect technology partners or not.
Transparency
It’s essential to have an open line of conversation with the vendor. Open line of conversation includes honesty about goals, resources and time management. It’s critical for a tech partner to keep their clients updated using regular status reports.
One way to implement this is that the technology vendors should have in place a simple, straightforward roadmap of project completion so that a non technical client can easily decode the step wise implementation and milestones of each stage along with their respective time period.
Cultural Fit
Once you have applied various filters in the screening process, the list of potential technology partners is reduced to a great extent. When it comes down to finalizing a partner, it is of utmost importance that both parties are compatible in culture and working style for a smooth collaboration. In most cases, people are not aware about the questions to ask when it comes to team culture. Some common questions you can ask are
- Communication tool used by them and is it different from yours?
- Technology partner’s desired depth and frequency of feedback sharing
- Company structure
- Opinion on continuous learning
- Encouragement of group activities
Answers to the above questions will disclose whether the software development company promotes employee engagement and growth and structure of the company is hierarchical or flat.
A flatter company structure indicates that people working on the project will take initiatives throughout the project duration.
Last but not the least, support policy of the custom software development company you choose also plays a major role in deciding all your future endeavors!
Support
Technologies such as servers, web browsers, mobile devices etc keep on changing. Therefore, the software and apps that run on these platforms should also change. Constant software support makes sure that your systems run efficiently and small bugs are fixed quickly for maintaining a good user experience.
Extended support services are usually an additional option to your partnership agreement, general warranties and implementation support should be included in the basic project package wherever applicable.
Let’s Get Started
Choosing the right technology partner is not a simple task as that choice could have major implications in future with respect to time, money and success. The top management might not be certain about the right technology partner, however, assessing these qualities can ascertain them about finding the right fit. Ultimately, the best choice is the one that raises minimum doubts about their ability to work with you and accomplish your goals.
Let’s discuss specific challenges you are facing and what we have to offer. Visit www.kodytechnolab.com now!
by Sagar Bagsariya
by Manav Patel
by Alpesh Kher
