5 Software Outsourcing Challenges And How to Overcome Them

As an increasing number of founders turn to upscaling and joining the entrepreneurial wave of building startups with lofty visions, there is one common predicament that is faced by all. The need to amp up customer experience and bring in business by breathing life into quintessential software development projects such as website development, application creation and online platform revamping.

With more and more companies stepping up their user experience to better engage audiences, it is vital that startups founded in today’s day and age think out of the box to drive competent business outcomes.

And to do this, what every startup needs is talent, time and capital; something that they all lack.

This is when outsourcing comes into play.

Outsourcing refers to the process of delegating your developmental chores to an external agency skilled in them. It is garnering renown, trust and customers rapidly with the IT outsourcing industry projected to grow by $98 billion by 2024.

From being time-efficient & cost-effective to highly malleable & agile, a remote software development team hired through outsourcing that meets your project requirements can fast-track your software development phases and help you cut down on time and costs without compromising on the end results.

Yet a lot of businesses face challenges when implementing software outsourcing. Let’s take a peek at a few hiccups and how to tackle them:

Trust Issues

Even though this can no longer be deemed as a prevalent issue, it still is a predicament faced by many companies when they turn to outsourcing. This issue is not really a problem of the external agency as much as it is of the company looking to outsource.

Solution: If you want to outsource your IT development without facing any trust issues, you will have to do your fair share of research by deep diving into vendor profiles. Understanding which vendor best meets your requirements and upholds values that are close to your organisation will help eradicate any sense of mistrust and counterfietability.

Communication Barrier

Some people who have worked in a consolidated, on-site office space at times find it difficult to communicate let alone work with a remote team. Many find the issue of not having a common language to communicate a barrier in outsourcing.

Solution: Dedicated remote outsourcing teams today are pros at mastering seamless communication with client companies and so this should not be an issue any longer. Also, nations with the most outsourcing vendors require their developers to speak English fluently as a prerequisite to being hired.

Lack of Experience

Companies that haven’t outsourced before don’t have any prior experience with outsourcing. They use this pretext as a justification for outsourcing being an ill-choice for software development.

Solution: Until and unless you don’t give it a try, you wouldn’t know what your in-house product and teams are missing. A remote software development team can be a boon, a real godsend for startups as they fulfil your product vision, churn out the expected deliverables and meet your deadlines all the while forging a flourishing bond that benefits you and your company in the long haul.

Forfeiting Authority

One of the biggest fears of leaders is that they might have to relinquish their authority and stance as a boss if they are to accommodate a foreign team in their modus operandi.

Solution: This is more of a myth than a challenge. Outsourced teams have their models and hierarchies which they follow. At the end of the day, they report to the client party with full transparency and accountability, giving the client every spec of control over what has gone through the day and what stands where in the pipeline.

Theft of Ideas

The fear of being stolen of one’s intellectual property and intangible resources hangs heavy on any company. Ideas are the currency of today and being robbed of them can impact any entity heavily.

Solution: Before even beginning developmental work, clients and vendors lay the groundwork by signing pre-defined NDAs, MoUs and SLAs to underline what the repercussions would be in a scenario where ideas have been stolen and illegally put to use. This makes the process of outsourcing even more transparent and just.

Conclusion:

The above 5 challenges have been the flag bearers of pessimism towards outsourcing. We hope our solutions to the same might have quelled any doubts and apprehensions you as a business leader might have while outsourcing IT services for startups.