One of the most common ways of obtaining software for various firms involves investments into proprietary solutions. Many firms on the market develop products that they later sell to customers. For instance, Oracle makes major investments into its ERP solutions. You can then subscribe to them in order to receive the full-scale functions. In the majority of cases, such investments are rational and make sense. However, that’s not always the case. In certain situations, proprietary solutions aren’t what a firm needs. In this article, we want to talk about an alternative way to obtain high-quality software for your firm within the APAC region. This path is the investment into a dedicated development team.

Let’s start with the analysis of the core reasons for investment in dedicated software developers. In this respect, we believe that there are multiple motivations an average company on the market may have. The first reason to pursue this type of investment has to do with the lack of necessary functions among the existing proprietary solutions. One of the core problems modern proprietary tools encounter is their focus on the general market. In short, they target an average customer due to the fact that it’s impossible to anticipate all possible combinations of features on the market. This circumstance means that certain firms simply won’t be able to find high-quality solutions among the products offered. A dedicated development team may offer a response to this problem. How exactly? You can hire a team of dedicated developers in order to create a solution that fits your exact needs.

For example, let’s imagine a language school in Japan that focuses on grammar drills and writing-oriented learning. Its needs in terms of software are likely to include two types of apps: it may require tools for generating exercises for grammar learning and instruments that can assist their students with writing high-quality texts. The problem is that the majority of the teaching tools on the language-learning market simply don’t offer any solutions to the issues encountered by this company. Consequently, it’s necessary to develop an independent solution that fits the specific goals of the outlined firm. The best way to achieve this goal is to ask a custom development company with a dedicated team to lead the development process.

The second reason to invest into dedicated development teams has to do with resource optimization. Of course, you can hire an in-house team for developing a learning solution. What’s the problem in this case? You’ll have to spend tremendous amounts of resources on managing the presented team and assembling it in the first place. It’ll also be necessary to actually make investments into equipment and relevant software for them.

A dedicated team, however, allows one to avoid the presented problem. How exactly? Dedicated teams are usually assembled within outsourcing and outstaffing businesses that have clear management structures. This means that those teams are already well-organized. All you have to do is hire them and then offer those teams a clear task regarding the development process. Such an approach saves tremendous amounts of time and, more importantly, completely removes the need to invest into resources that will ultimately prove to be temporary (for instance, operating systems for developers).

Now that we know the core benefits of hiring a dedicated development team, it’s time to look into the steps that are essential for hiring a team for your company. So, what should you do to hire a full-scale dedicated development team?

Step 1. Analyze the market. The first step we recommend is analyzing the market. You should look at the firms that are present on it in order to make full-scale conclusions. Analyze the leaders and some smaller companies with the goal of creating a clear list of offerings on the market. There are hundreds of outsourcing companies in various markets throughout the world. In the APAC region, countries like India, China, and the Philippines have a strong presence in the IT outsourcing sector. Hence, you should look not only at solutions in your regions but at companies that work in other parts of the world.

Step 2. Sort the existing solutions. Once you have a complete list of existing solutions, outline clear criteria according to which you’re going to choose a firm. Using it, you should eventually arrive at a top-10 list of the firms with which you’re likely to work. The only criterion which we don’t recommend including during the selection process is the location of the relevant firms.

Step 3. Contact the relevant firms regarding your solution. Your next step is to contact every firm and ask them for their opinion on your project. You should ask for quotes regarding the potential development price to outline how much an investment into this or that firm will cost you. It’s also essential to analyze other firm characteristics in order to understand their long-term reliability.

Step 4. Choosing the development partner. After negotiations, you’ll likely have a clear understanding of the best firm on the market for your development goals. Here, the solution is simple: it’s necessary to sign a contract with the relevant firm and start development. Our recommendation for improving the development process is simple: try to be as precise as possible in your description of the future project. It’s also crucial to be involved in development.

To summarize, the investments into dedicated development teams are highly rational in some cases. When you need to develop custom software, they’re undoubtedly the best choice to consider. In the end, you may have one more question: what criteria for development teams are the most important? In our opinion, you should look for companies like Keenethics. The relevant firms must have more than five years of experience on the market and at least several projects in their portfolios. If the firm is new, an essential characteristic for it is to have a set of development industry veterans in it.