How to choose the right Software Outsourcing Vendor for a Start-up

How to choose the right Software Outsourcing Vendor for a Start up

Start-up companies are new entrants, that’s why, the things that really matter to them are rapid growth and sub-vertical development restricted with small budget.

For such companies outsourcing vendor should be selected according to the following criteria:
• the process/scheme of rendering the services
• meeting deadlines of services delivery
• relatively low price

Also, it should be noted that in the first line one needs to find out some information about the potential outsourcing vendor. This applies not only to start-ups, but also to small, mid-sized and big businesses. For this purpose, it’s useful to visit the official site of the pre-selected vendor where it’s easy to find all the necessary information about the company itself, its services, employees and terms/conditions of cooperation with clients. A good idea is to arrange a phone/skype talk with vendor representatives – so that one could get first-hand information and understand whether the vendor satisfies one’s business needs or not.

So, after the above mentioned is done, one should explore the scheme of rendering the services, the process of cooperation with clients and general operating principles of the company. To determine the operation style of the potential outsourcing partner, one should spot the following aspects:
• how they build communication and interaction during a real project in case of emergency;
• what web-oriented solutions they use to manage and track projects, and etc. (web-oriented solutions for project management are very useful in case of starting several projects simultaneously or when a client wants to track work performance, control the budget and in general grasp the whole picture easily – where the team is exactly in the process of development, also it helps coordinate the work of the team and company own employees).

The next step is to determine what business processes occur in the company of the potential vendor, then one should project them on his/her own company – how this work style matches the one that reigns in your company. After that, one should request to provide some samples of their work and then ask how they see it could be the most effective to establish mutual business processes.

Meeting deadlines is the most important criteria of choosing outsourcing vendor, irrespective of the scale of the company – start-up or a big business with many years’ experience.

Whereas start-up companies have limited budgets, every now and then price can play a crucial role in choosing a vendor.

If one cannot make up his/her mind when choosing a vendor, and has several companies to choose from – one can ask potential vendors to make a small scope of work (during 2-4 weeks) as a showcase. During this period one will be able to evaluate the level of technical expertise of the vendor, the level of communication and work style – then one can decide whether to start cooperation or not. By the way, the result received after the so-called probation period can be used later on irrespective of choosing this very vendor or not.

Please, do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, or would like to get any clarifications or consulting.

2 thoughts on “How to choose the right Software Outsourcing Vendor for a Start-up”

  1. Pubudu,

    In general – yes. But here is lot of cases when sharing connections is protected due Non Disclosure Agreements. For example in Iksanika we providing service’s for some European and USA banks and other financial companies – some of them is public – this organization is avoiding public fact of using services of abroad companies by outsourcing model in this case companies so you can’t prove in such situation significant experience of the vendor – here can be used other metrics which can be seen through interviewing of vendor.

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