What are your options when your business is not software development but you need a custom tool, especially if you are replacing a legacy software tool?
One option is to grow an internal software development team. But if you’re not a software company, that can be daunting. A better option is to engage a software development agency.
A software development agency is a company that develops software for other companies to create business tools, mobile applications, integration between tools, and replace legacy systems.
When done right, software development firms work with your stakeholders not just to write the software you need but also to gather specifications, handle project management, and help you support and streamline the application over time. The better ones even work to improve the capabilities of your development and support teams.
Outsourcing to an agency makes sense because they bring the expertise you need in a scalable way, and they focus on your project while you focus on your business goals. However, partnering with an outside company for your custom software development needs may seem daunting. How do you find the best agency for your unique project, and how do you make sure that you do your part to get a high-quality solution that meets your business goals? What is the right fit when it comes to the unique needs of replacing or modernizing legacy software?
The good news is, since this is exactly what we do, we have developed a pretty good understanding of what works and what doesn’t. This post will cover the advantages of working with the right software development company and what to look for when choosing an agency.
What a Software Development Agency Brings to the Table
Software is integral to today's business world. You can get a competitive advantage with backend tools that use automation to improve your business processes and give your decision-makers access to the data they need by integrating your enterprise software.
For example, your sales team can increase efficiency and grow revenue with an update to your CRM tool. Or, your customers will be more engaged with a better user experience on a modern and efficient e-commerce site. However, to realize these advantages, you need a software development team that can get the job done without disrupting your business.
Here are some of the advantages of working with an external development partner for application development, integration, and especially updating legacy tools.
Focus
Unless you are in the business of delivering software products, your focus should be on other things. Bringing in a development partner creates a division of labor where you are responsible for your business goals, and your partner can focus on your custom software solutions. A dedicated team outside of your organization can provide the focus you need.
Expertise
Software engineering is a complex undertaking, and having expertise across all the different aspects of the discipline takes time spent working on real-world software development projects and dedication to exploring the latest technologies. A software development company brings what they’ve learned working for other companies. They bring experts who focus on crucial cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the latest DevOps methods.
Multi-Disciplined Capabilities
Having a deep bench for software development disciplines is essential. A digital transformation project to convert a legacy FinTech platform may need a user experience (UX) expert for two weeks, a React guru for a month, and a scrum master for the whole project. An experienced service provider can bring these disciplines to the project only when needed. A top software development firm will also have great project managers, quality assurance, and a proven deployment process.
Scalability
For many companies, the most significant advantage of working with a software development consultancy is their ability to grow and shrink the number of team members according to the needs and budget of the project. Scalability is about more than adding or removing expertise or capability. As a client, you don’t have to pay for those people when you don’t need them or find them when you do.
Lower Cost
In short, with an outsourced development team, you share overhead costs on recruiting, IT services, paid time off, and training. At first glance, a resource from a software development consultancy may cost more per hour, but you are only paying for the hours they work on your project.
Updates Outdated Systems
The advantages above are even more important for development projects that involve modernizing legacy solutions. Expertise is needed to understand the older frameworks, recognize the new UX design needs, and bring game-changing new technologies to the application. Focused is a great example of a consultancy that has these hard-to-find people who understand modernization. Most importantly, your chosen consultancy needs can bring a development process to the project that uniquely fits the needs of legacy modernization.
What to Look For When Choosing a Software Development Company
There is no shortage of options out there when it comes to software development agencies. Some are general, and some focus on specific technologies, types of software projects, or industries. Many are offshore, near shore, or domestic. The important thing for you and your company to consider is which of these options are best for your technical and business needs.
Here are a few suggestions for areas to investigate before making your choice.
Know Your Project Goals and Challenges
You don’t need a detailed product development plan, but you should start with a high-level understanding of what you want to achieve with your project and what problems you expect to encounter. Do you need a web application or a mobile application? Will data science play a big role, or does the project require the development of an application programmer interface (APIs)? If you have answers to these and similar questions before you start your search, finding the right partner will be easier.
Determine Their Focus
Every dev shop has a focus, even if that focus is general application development. If you are updating a legacy healthcare application, you don’t want a firm focused on mobile app development for FinTech startups. If you need a mobile app, don’t go with a company focused on only web development. Another area to look at is what technology stack they are used to working with and make sure that platform will fit your project's needs.
Review Past Projects
The best way to get a feel for a custom software development company is to look at their past projects. Don’t just read the case studies. Look at the finished product and ask your prospective partner to explain the methodology they used to plan and execute the product design, development, and deployment.
Understand Their Capacity
The big advantage of using outside custom software development services is the ability to scale capacity. How large and deep is their bench for software development, UX design, testing and quality assurance, deployment, and project management? Do they have the people your project will need? Also, ask where their employees are located. Can your project deal with the delays of working across time zones?
Uncover How They Tackle Legacy Modernization
Replacing or updating older digital solutions is a unique skill. If your project involves legacy modernization, make sure they know the difference between incremental modernization and a complete overhaul of the product and when one is better for your project. Try to get a feel for how they have made older UI designs modern and user-friendly. At Focused, we have learned over time that incremental modernization, something we specialize in, can deliver real advantages sooner and better long-term outcomes.
Learn How They Deal With Problems
Of course, you want a partner who doesn't make mistakes. But in the real world, things go wrong, and the best software development agencies show their value most when it is time to fix things. If you deploy an MVP to customers and realize that the front-end customer experience is all wrong, you want an agency partner that is agile enough to identify the problem and quickly apply solutions.
Investigate How They Finish Projects
Another area that separates the top-notch from the good enough is how a company treats its customers when a project is wrapped up. The lifecycle of a digital product includes deployment, maintenance, training, and enhancements. Will they train your team to handle updates and modifications? Is everything thoroughly documented, including user workflows? Don’t go with a company that just delivers code and moves on.
Building a Better Team with Focused as Your Software Development Agency
Now that you have some background on why building a partnership with an outside software development company can be a good solution and how to find the right partner, we want to share why many companies large and small and across various industries choose Focused as their consultancy. Yes, we have expertise and capacity, and our staff shines when encountering tough problems. But what sets us apart is how we work with our customers and our extensive experience incrementally transforming outdated systems by making strategic modifications at the right time. We’ve seen trends come and go and have learned that incremental changes to existing systems have the greatest impact.
At Focused, we work side-by-side with your stakeholders, in-house developers, and IT services, leaving your organization stronger and more capable when the project is done.
When you partner with Focused, our team is your team. We practice extreme collaboration by embedding ourselves into your team to build solutions that adapt and scale. Our experts like to tackle hard problems just for the satisfaction of finding answers we can share with each other and our customers. And we keep that success going by enabling and training your team so you can maintain and grow your technology.
So, what are you waiting for? Reach out to our experts today, and let’s build something together.
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