Software consulting involves using the services of professionals specialized in technology in an outsourced way. This way, you can reduce risks and costs in building your software. For example, you can hire an enterprise software development company to develop a system that will benefit your business.
There are several areas in which a consultancy firm can help your company thrive, from developing a specific technology to applying agile methodologies. However, there are criteria to be evaluated before hiring a software consultancy. After all, a long-term and trusting relationship with the chosen company is required to work.
Therefore, this article will look at the benefits of hiring a software development consultancy firm.
When to Hire a Software Consultant
It is not always recommended to hire a consultancy. After all, none of them work miracles. Therefore, it is very important to consider the timing when hiring a consulting company. Otherwise, the cost and risk reduction expectation can be a shot in the foot.
So, I will list the two most common.
Lack of vision from the top management of the company
In this case, one of the most important items is the lack of vision of the company’s management. After all, it’s no use believing that third parties will solve all your company’s problems.
What happens a lot, for example, is a company hires an agile consultancy to solve project deadline problems. When we analyze it in depth, the company’s management is not agile.
Remembering that a consulting project is done “four hands,” without the support and consent of the company, the project will rarely work.
Very messy house
Much like the previous item, it’s no use believing that a consultancy will solve all your problems.
If everything is disorganized, hiring another company can cause even more problems. The information needs to be as transparent as possible for the projects to work.
Of course, unless the project is really “cleaning up the house,” in this way, the most important thing is to make everything very clear at the time of hiring.
Benefits of hiring a software consultancy
Now that we’ve discussed hiring a third-party company, it’s time to discuss the benefits.
Risk reduction
The main one is cost reduction. Hiring a team specializing in solving what you need is much less risky than hiring and training an internal team. In addition, with outsourcing, all the burdens are passed to the third party. It is obliged to offer support and a service level agreement for solving problems if they happen.
For clarity, let’s imagine, for example, that you need to develop a mobile solution, but your team doesn’t have any experience with app development. You can hire people and put them on your team for such a task, but if they decide to leave, it’s something you won’t be able to solve in a simple way.
Therefore, when you hire a mobile development consultancy, you outsource all risks to that company.
Time and cost reduction
Much linked with the reduction of too. Let’s use the same example above in the case of mobile development.
We will consider several ways to solve this “problem.” They include:
Hiring someone who specializes in mobile development in-house
Also mentioned above, this may seem like the best decision, but let’s put all the activities necessary to carry out such activity on paper.
- Look for expert people;
- Interview each one of them to do a pre-filtering;
- Assess cultural fit;
- Perform technical tests to ensure your expertise;
- Hire;
Train your team for mobile development
Dedicate your time to set up training (it could be online courses, workshops, or anything similar. Choose the people necessary to carry out the training and make sure that both have the necessary requirements for the new activity.
Hire a specialist consultancy in mobile development
In this case, you transfer almost all the risks to the outsourced company. Choose a third-party company according to the client portfolio or indications to reduce risk. It is good to point out that there are still risks when you hire a company. There is no silver bullet. To mitigate most of them, try to hire one you trust.