Selecting an IT company to help build your growing business can be a daunting undertaking, to say the least… With such an abundance of software development companies vying for your business, what should you look for? How do you separate the good from the not-so-good? Other companies that have successfully tackled this challenge have found the following points to be important factors to consider.
- Listen to your needs and goals and embrace your business plan as its own.
- Work with you to understand and define your unique requirements and to build a relationship with your company based upon trust, open communication, and a shared dedication to your business objectives
- Offer outstanding technical capability, with teams of engineers who have considerable depth of experience in multiple hosting environments and are proficient in a wide range of developmental languages
- Provide a variety of hardware and software solutions, ranging from complete custom-designed systems to programs that will interface with your current technology – and back up its solutions with ongoing technical support.
- Demonstrate a proven track record of producing successful solutions — and doing it within budget and on time.
Investing the time and money to expand and fine-tune your IT capabilities is a major step – and one that will prove pivotal to the success of your business. Taking the time and effort to select your IT partner wisely will pay huge dividends, both now and in the future.
As your business grows, your Information Technology needs grow apace, but too many companies fail to give IT the budgetary and planning priority it deserves. Putting IT expenditures too far down the list of priorities will hamper your efficiency and stifle the growth of your business.
Think strategically about IT, focusing on where you want to be in 6 months or a year, rather than where you are now, so that your IT capabilities will be able to work in tandem with your business strategy without lagging behind. It’s also vitally important to include training and support in your overall IT plan. If your employees aren’t equipped to fully utilize the software and equipment—efficiency will be significantly diminished and you won’t get full value for your IT investment.
If you give low priority to IT planning, you will often find yourself in a reactive mode, forced to make quick decisions to replace technology that’s outdated or has suddenly failed. This puts you always behind the curve, buying impulsively – a mistake that can saddle your business with mismatched products that are hard to administer and make subsequent training more difficult. By thinking strategically in your IT planning and by understanding and anticipating your business needs, you can acquire and integrate leading technologies in a systematic fashion.
Choose your IT vendors carefully. Establish partnerships of trust with your preferred software development outsourcing firm, hardware suppliers, commercial-off-the-shelf software vendors, and support people. Avoid the common pitfall of keeping your needs close to the vest. You need to be clear and open about your current situation, your goals, and priorities. Find a company that is dedicated to understanding your particular business needs and to working within your parameters to develop custom designed software and hardware solutions that deliver good value and low risk. This strategic investment in information technology helps create consistency and standardization and increases efficiency, which in turn reduces labor costs and helps your business grow.
Posted
on 13 October 2008, 5:32 pm,
by jimdusthimer,
under
Outsourcing.
As of 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau ranked Kansas City 40th by population. A well known transportation, finance/banking, telecommunications, and agriculture hub—companies like Sprint, Kansas City Southern Railroad, Associated Grocers, and YRC Worldwide are based in Kansas City. The area is blessed with a wealth of talented software development teams either in “captivity” (as directly hired employees of a company) or in the form of companies like Mersoft—firms that exist to serve in a consulting and development role when businesses need to utilize external resources. We’re in a good market and we have talent… but the economic downturn we’ve seen recently gives us good cause to look at the outlook for IT Outsourcing and Custom Software Development.
Unfortunately, nationwide spending on equipment and software shrunk by 5% in the second quarter of this year—56% more than was anticipated. It was the second straight quarter that spending in this category contracted. This is a signal for economists that production plans are being scaled back. These are not the kind of statistics that anyone wants to hear. When production is slowed, everyone feels it. We could see job loss and decreases in consumer spending—signs of recession.
We’ve positioned ourselves to overcome the slowdown. Economists can read the proverbial cards all they want with respect to decreases in software spending reflecting a production slowdown—but there are other reasons to spend money on software development. So despite what the economists are saying, we remain optimistic about putting our local experts to work for Kansas City area companies in need of outsourced development teams.
We know that businesses outsource software development for other good reasons, like:
- Increasing efficiency. Spending the dough on software solutions that allow reallocation of employee resources will enable a more efficient multi-tasking model. An outsourced software solution can decrease the burden on employees in multiple areas, allowing them to divide their workday in a way that allows them to do the work normally done by 2 or more people.
- Avoiding HR headaches and expense. Salaries, foibles, health insurance, time-off—just a few examples of what can be avoided by local outsourcing for software development.
- Doubt free prioritization and outcomes. Hiring an outside firm to take a project to completion doesn’t permit internal priorities to dilute efforts. In general, internal IT staff is routinely pulled in different directions as challenges erupt. End users constantly “opening tickets” for help with legacy systems is a prime example of this. If the engineers only had more time to work on the solution that would replace the legacy system in the first place… In many cases, outsourcing the project is more likely to get the project done on-time and with a superior outcome.
- Dedication and commitment. When a project is outsourced to a reputable software development firm, the chosen firm is 100% vested in the project. In a market like Kansas City—big enough to offer wealth of choice, and small enough for reputation (good and bad) to spread quickly—it’s a certainty that the right outsourced development firm will attempt much more than simply meeting the minimum requirements on a project. The right company will seek ways to exceed expectations, earning bragging rights, referrals, and repeat business in the process.
So lack of intent to increase production doesn’t preclude local software development as a solution to enhance business processes and, ultimately, drive cost reductions. On a basic level, a downturn in the economy means we need to do more with less. This is what local outsourcing is all about: doing more with the line of business application itself, without increasing headcount and headaches.
Try as we may…we can’t help everybody. Recently, we worked closely with a Kansas City company in the healthcare field that needed a custom software solution. After running through several options in terms of commercial, pre-built options, we came to the realization that there was indeed nothing available that did precisely what our customer needed. Customized applications would need to be created in order to fulfill their dream of more efficient processing, tracking, and reporting.
Their’s is a unique niche…complete with convoluted state forms and processes, complicated billing mechanisms, redundant order entry and paper…lots of paper. Hundreds of hours of development time would be a certainty for the project and costs would run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Their budget was a fraction of what it would ultimately cost.
Do you say, “Sorry…you can’t afford us”, and wash your hands of the situation? Do you take it on and pray that you can resell the solution to other companies operating in the same unique niche? Do you bite off a piece of the project that fits their budget and use every penny of it for a partial solution?
We really wanted to help these folks…they provided a great service for some very disadvantaged people. They were good caring people, deserving of some help. In the end, we settled on a creative path that just might eventually get them where they want to be.
We called a local educational institution and explained the situation to them. Turns out—this sort of project was right up their alley. Any given semester, there are Computer Science graduate students who are assigned projects and internships. The requirements often include assisting a local, established business improve processes with custom software applications. The cost for their service? Zip. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. The university wins, the customer wins, and so does the student. Everybody’s happy…
Sure there are some unknowns…but at least now there’s a possible path to success illuminated. And although we regret that we couldn’t help out directly, helping indirectly feels pretty good too. So talking to local universities is worth a try when a custom solution from an experienced, professional firm blows a budget out of the water before the project ever gets off the ground.
Posted
on 8 October 2008, 1:25 am,
by jimdusthimer,
under
Outsourcing.
RHT paid for a survey of 1,400 CIO’s and published some interesting results with respect to outsourcing software development work. The results came out earlier this year and confirmed the points we routinely make in discussions with clients, prospects, and others in our field.
The study found that a small percentage—around 5%—currently outsource overseas. Ninety percent of those that do outsource do not intend to increase outsourcing levels and some of them actually intend to decrease overseas outsourcing efforts. Companies with more than 500 employees are more likely to outsource than smaller organizations.
The biggest factors cited for the waning urge to outsource are:
- Language barriers. Poor communication is a huge problem when trying to convey complex project requirements. Even when the language barrier can be overcome, it can be a constant source of concern. You’re often left wondering whether or not there is a deep enough level of understanding of the unique business processes that are driving the project in the first place.
- Culture Clash. October 2nd is Gandhi Jayanti in India. It’s a declared national holiday there…but here, the work continues. Even with the most important projects, when work and culture clash, culture wins.
- Time Zones. With a nearly 12 hour time difference from the central US to New Delhi, it’s not likely to find a spry development team at your beck and call at 2:00 a.m.
- Lack of Close Collaboration. Good software development teams require the constant ability to interact with colleagues and management. “Putting heads together” across a table from each other is a far superior way to get things done effectively.
Our own experience has shown mixed results in terms of quality when we’ve worked with overseas teams. But even when the quality is top-notch, the aforementioned challenges still rear their head. What this recent study seems to show, is that any perceived savings (in the form of lower wages for overseas
software developers) is usually washed away by the numerous challenges experienced by those who outsource.
What does it take to successfully offshore development work? In our experience the best results are gained when companies first work with a “local sourcing” company to help manage the tasks to be outsourced. Generally these companies have lots of experience working with offshore teams and can help you navigate around the pitfalls.
The moral of the story: If you are wanting to use offshore resources, leverage the experience of a local outsourcing firm to increase your chances of success.
