A good venture starts with finding the right partner at the right time. As for software development partners, there are a lot of quality vendors available in the market.
When there are too many choices available, dilemmas and confusion arise. But you can come over this by assessing your options carefully. Software development is more of a technical process and requires experience and tools. But for a good partner, there are more things to consider.
In this article, we have discussed 5 tips to help you find the best software development partner. We hope it can help you with your decision.
Tips for Finding the Perfect Software Development Partner
You can judge a software development company in many ways. You can look into their pasts, clients, and portfolio.
But here are our five tips to find the perfect software development company as your partner.
1- Your search method for finding the right software development partner
The first tip is how you search for a software development company. The most common methods are Direct referral, organic research, and unbiased ratings and reviews.
Direct referrals could be a great method of listing the best potential partner companies. But the issue with this is that the referrals could be biased. So it is not to be trusted alone. You can list those referred companies, but you should judge them equally as the others.
The next method is organic search. That is to search for top companies in search engines like Google. But this method has a lot of controversies, especially for SEO and marketing strategies used by the companies.
Smart SEO strategy can rank a low-quality vendor at the top and the deserving companies at later pages. So we do not recommend you use this method.
Finally, unbiased ratings and reviews. We think this is the best solution. Because rating and review websites build their business model on unbiased opinions. So it makes sense to trust them with their ratings.
So to sum it up, you should use direct referrals and unbiased reviews for searching for the best software companies.
2- Do not rush through the RFP process
RFP, short for Request For Proposal. This is an important step in forming a partnership. Sadly, most of us rush through this process for many reasons. This is a big mistake. You should take the time to get to know who you will be working with within the project,
Often some companies are too desperate to partner with you just for money. They are usually low-quality software developer companies. They will put out discount incentives and many other strategies to make you rush the RFP process.
You should not give in to such offerings. It is always better to start late with the right partner rather than starting soon with the wrong partner. Also, the wrong partner may increase your work by creating software bugs and issues that will need more time to fix.
So you should take as much time as you need to know your partner and then finalize the RFP.
Here are some crucial facts that you should consider about your partner before finalizing the deal.
- Clients that they have worked with in the past
- See if they have any big references
- What kind of software do they focus on the most
- Have a look at their portfolio
3- How do they deal with challenging scenarios?
The next thing to consider is how the company deals with challenging scenarios. Think of any challenging scenarios. Such as sudden change of deadline, difficult software bugs, implementing new features in current software, etc.
You can ask them such scenario-based questions in the interview with their representatives. This will allow you to peek into their strengths and weaknesses. You know how important it is to know about a business’s strengths and weaknesses. It can help you determine whether the company is fit to carry out your project.
Speaking of the interview, it is the perfect opportunity to ask the company about its process of software development and testing.
4- What is their process and what tools do they use for Software development?
Understanding the process and tools used by the other party is crucial before signing up for a partnership. The reason why you need to know that is because of compatibility among both companies.
Suppose your corporation needs HR software for managing its employees and assigning tasks. Your office already has some sort of system that can be upgraded with software for this process and thus you are looking for a software development partner.
If the partner’s development process does not imply the already installed facility in your office building, then it will be a matter of concern.
You can stay open to the idea of installing brand new facilities for the software to work, but it involves more cost. That does not mean you should back out from it. If you can see that installing new facilities provided by the software partner can bring new opportunities in the future, then you should go for it.
5- Cost-Effectiveness of their service
Now you need to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the partnership. Most managers look for cheap software development solutions. But going too cheap can be more troublesome.
Cheap software vendors often skip many important software development processes. That includes software testing, the most crucial step of any software development.
But if you have followed our previous four steps, you won’t have to worry about such low-quality providers. Now from the list of high-quality vendors you have created, evaluate each company and its cost.
Some companies will charge less than others, but they will also provide fewer facilities. Those that charge higher will provide more facilities, but not all of them are needed.
You will have to evaluate which services you need and choose according to your requirement.
Conclusion
So, these are the 5 tips from us for finding the perfect software development company. Try to follow them and you will have no trouble finding the right partner. But if you do happen to run into confusion, you can call in a software expert to help you out in this matter.