In our previous blog post, we took a deep dive into the challenges organizations face when trying to develop a new piece of tech in-house and concluded that, in many cases, involving external help is inevitable. But how can you start an outsourcing project and find the right team to work with? One of the first questions is to what degree a company should outsource a development project. In this post, we examine two approaches: core involvement and holistic involvement.

1. Core involvement means when you only outsource the core activity of the project: the software development. The main goal is to get the requested piece of tech out the door and into production as quickly and smoothly as possible.
2. Holistic involvement is when you widen the project scope and outsource not just the core activity but the related business functions that make the product sell well. These might include but are not limited to the IT infrastructure, branding and marketing, the GTM strategy and the sales force. 

Both core and holistic involvement revolve around four main pillars: design, creation, security and transformation. The tasks and goals are different in each pillar depending on the scope of your outsourcing project. If you don’t need business service support, your development project is limited to technology-related tasks, such as UX design, application development, or app modernization. On top of development, a holistic project approach adds on-demand business services such as digital transformation, sales and marketing, compliance, and auditing. Let’s take a detailed look at each pillar.

Design

UI, UX & CX‍

These are the core pillars of user satisfaction, ease of use and customer retention. There is no sense in writing a single row of code without a clear plan of the emotions and experience you want to generate. These are the real things your customers pay for. They do not want to know about the underlying technical details. They are only interested in the output.

Prototyping

‍It is an excellent tool for presenting and selling your idea. Using a low-code platform for prototyping also enables you to involve stakeholders and clients in the concept phase. Imagine a case when an architect models a house with Lego bricks together with the client. It dramatically reduces the chance of misunderstanding and failure. Plus, creating a working PoC in days and making changes upon request in minutes is very convincing, with a high probability of success.

Branding & Marketing

It is about creating an advertisement powerhouse for the organization and its solutions. You can benefit from a complete (virtual) marketing team right next door. Leading agencies use funnel development as a holistic approach to a unified sales engine. It is achieved by integrating the entire process from branding through marketing and sales to customer care. The funnel approach also means result orientation, practicality, and accountability.

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Creation

Digital Business Automation

No-code platforms enable the entire organization to work together on digital projects, increasing digitization and operation speed up to tenfold. No-code allows your business professionals to drive and manage digital projects where IT involvement can be significantly less or absent.

Application development

Be it e-commerce, mobile, or experience portal solution, application development today requires a fascinating frontend, a bump-free backend, and seamlessly integrated neighboring systems. For a successful app, you must design a comfortable customer journey, a sleek UI, and an irresistible promotion. An outstanding IT agency can provide accustomed mobile and app development teams for all the above, including UX design, front- and backend development, cloud deployment, and middleware integration.

Data engineering

Data is the new oil that needs collecting, storing, securing, and refining to become beneficial for your business. This is done by following a few crucial steps. First, build a data warehouse. Secondly, collect, filter, and pre-process all the data. Next, get compliant! So, you may also need a professional data warehouse development team to leverage your data for better business decisions and AI-driven automation.

DevOps & cloud-native deployment

DevOps means treating software development and IT operations as a single unit and implementing an agile approach to your production infrastructure. It increases the frequency of deployment, decreases the occurrence of failures, and reduces the recovery time. Outsourced DevOps engineers are experts in Kubernetes or other cloud-native technologies.

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Transformation 

Application modernization & agile transformation

Future-proof applications run in the cloud and are accessible via mobile platforms on the go. True modernization requires a modular architecture and a containerized infrastructure boosted by DevOps automation. The hand-picked engineers are masters of their craft and are familiar with various agile techniques. They bring the tech and your organization up to speed by implementing a modern working culture and a modernized application environment.

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Security 

Identity management & code audits

In DevOps, security is often treated as an afterthought and evaluated too late. Professional IT agencies take a proactive approach to security and integrate it into CI/CD practices to build a convenient, mobile-first customer identification ecosystem that securely connects users and your business. Certain partners can even provide Common Criteria-based code audits as well.

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Conclusion

Contracts with IT outsourcing agencies are great for acquiring a desired adaptive IT workforce. IT contracts offer a workforce with adequate competence in the amount and duration necessary for your projects. In addition, IT contracts are easily scalable if the circumstances demand them. 

Modern software with an eye-catching UI is not enough to market success. You should consider following a holistic outsourcing approach, extending your contract and outsourcing the most lacking business functions. Professional sales and marketing support is also essential for fast go-to-market and providing a sustainable and prosperous product for your customers. But only a few IT outsourcing agencies can offer these value-added business services. Mndwrk is one of them.