OPD or Outsourced Product Development stands for a business strategy where any third party developer helps the business owner in marketing the products. From generating ideas to sales, customer engagement to innovation –there are a number of factors that make a product or service perform successfully in the market.
With the global pandemic and ever changing market standards, outsourced product development for startups can prove to be quite helpful to keep the business afloat. No matter how excellent your product or service is, without proper outsourcing you cannot perform well. To help reach your product to the target customers, you need strategic planning, specialized resources and proper communication.
The renowned tech giants in the market started their journey with very limited resources and see where they are now! People often complain how their businesses, although better than the others, cannot perform as good. Well, for startup IT services, outsourcing is the key. By understanding the requirements of the customers, an outsourcer incorporates new ideas into marketing and promoting. At the same time, adaptability according to the current market scenario is also needed.
Development Stages Before Outsourcing
Unless you have clear insight and marketing experience, it is hard to develop your product and services initially. That is why there are professionals to help you pass the basic stages and you can also collaborate with potential business. A successful collaboration ensures that you get outsourcing help and provide services in a way so that both can benefit.
Generating An Idea
In outsourced product development for startups you can take inspiration from various businesses that are performing well. Utilize the internal resources and take suggestions from the employees. Do proper research on market values, customer requirements, current trends and preference of target audience. Take feedback and criticisms from existing customers to come up with a solution. Also, look out for your competitors to analyze where you lack.
Screening Idea With SWOT Analysis
Now, properly scrutinize all the shortlisted ideas and discard the ones that do not resonate well with the target customer base. SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat regarding your idea. The idea should be strategic with opportunities for both you and your customers. Weakness or disadvantage should be as minimal as possible, so is a threat.
Visualize And Develop The Idea
For Startup IT services, it is vital that you conceptualize the blueprint of the idea before finally launching it to the market. Reach out to the existing or core customers, provide the services with detailed information and take feedback. Check whether they find the service suitable, whether they find anything lacking and whether they would use the service again. Now, you can make further developments to concretize the idea.
Analyzing Business Strategy
The prototype or MVP (Minimum Viable Product) will now be transformed into the actual IT service for a wider audience. Focus on your business strategy including branding, marketing, pricing, estimating profitability etc. Keep on doing alterations according to the customer feedback while abiding by smart business strategy.
Launching And Commercializing
Once you are done strategizing, launch the product and make the best out of marketing tactics regarding outsourced product development for startups. Remember, this is the final decision and unless the product is ready, it will crash in the long run with its competitors. Social media, search engine and offline mode –launch your services extensively for wider reach.
Factors To Address While Outsourcing
Once the services are made public and products are launched, outsourcing needs to be done by considering certain aspects
- Skyrocketing Cost –Unlike in-source development, outsourcing is way cheaper in general. However, it is subject to market standards, complexity of the product and development stages. Analyze your budget before investing a fortune in outsourcing a product you are not sure about.
- Product Complexity – Startup IT services often tend to be complex enough and require a large team to follow up. If the product is too complex to develop or too expensive to outsource, you need to think twice. Either appoint greater expertise to development or settle for a simple product that is easy to outsource.
- Latest Technology And Trend –Quite often, complex IT services and products require the latest technology for development. Unless the technology or expert workforce is available, outsourcing can be beneficial.
- Competency And Efficiency –The core competency plays a big role in outsourced product development for startups. Hire the professionals who can match the core or are even more efficient than it so that your product stands out among others in the market.
Keeping OPD At A Continuous Flow
If you think outsourcing is needed only until your product is successful among the customers, you are not aware of the volatile market. Technological development is an ongoing process, so should be your outsourcing for each product you launch.
- Beware of cultural and professional barriers while dealing with customers and outsourcers on global scale.
- Keep control of the product in startup IT services and stay in loop during each development step. This will ensure that you will learn about new skills, be it technical or non-technical from the outsourcing team.
- According to your budget, hire freelancers or professionals who can check for any loopholes. Even if you are not skilled, these engineers can rectify any issue to reduce risk.
- Do not provide all the information to the freelancer or contractual engineers before completion of the project. There is no surety that they will complete the project and might take all your ideas while leaving.
- Offer a clear idea of the scopes that the product offers to the customers so that they become engaged and the outsourcers so that they come up with better ideas.
Whether you run a small large scale business or a small start up, the initial development stages are the most crucial. Once you get a clear idea on how to initialize outsourcing, you will understand about the things to consider while doing so. Your work does not end there, as outsourcing in startup IT services is a continuous process and needs constant monitoring of certain factors.
For all your mobility solutions, Mobisoft Startup IT Services can help you out throughout the seed stage, expansion stage and during scaling or hypergrowth. Mobisoft Infotech strives to develop your business by not only limiting to MVP, but also scalability, optimization, security and user experience. From product engineering to technology migration and startup advisory, there is something for every stage of every business.
Nicola Holder 