How To Choose Your Tech Vendor: The Insider Guide?

You plan to fully or partially outsource IT projects, scale your business, or create a digital product for a startup, you need to find a service provider. It is easy to get some tips on how to choose the right custom software development company. Most will provide you with a relatively standard checklist that includes researching the candidate company’s reputation, ratings and portfolio.

Tech vendor

Role

A company that delegates its IT tasks and projects often imagines itself as a mythical client who gives money to the manufacturer in exchange for services. Although this is not far from the truth, the journey starts with defining who the real customer is and what role this manager has in the company.

Founders and product owners

They understand the product and have the necessary market knowledge to make informed business decisions. A product owner is a product development and management specialist in digital projects responsible for the vision and value of the end product for users.

Other stakeholders

Usually there is no complete immersion in the project and lack of technical knowledge. When you’re ready to make your first contact with a tech company, you should build the communication based on your own role in the company and the future business.

Approach

You see your development project as an investment

Such projects usually start with the development of an MVP a minimum viable product with basic functionality, but ready to go to market. It’s hypothesis testing on the go. Using feedback from real users, you look for new features and ways to develop your idea into a fully functioning business.

You need product for launching a fully operational business

In this case, you should already have the results of customer and hypothesis testing, a viable business model, and a solid understanding of the market to conquer. While in the first approach you can adjust your goals based on user feedback, here you need to know your customers’ pain points and needs before starting the project. 

Resources

Experienced software development companies provide dedicated teams that deal only with your project. In this case, you don’t have to worry about human resources recruitment, hiring, training and subcontracting are handled by the vendor. The most expensive resource in this adventure is market knowledge.

Partnership

A custom software development company for startup founders is a partner first and foremost. Sure, you can hire a few freelancers from different parts of the world. An effective partnership is based on complementarity. You are not looking for a partner to tell you what you already know.

Conclusion

Experts prepared our insider guide on how to choose an IT vendor effectively, approach this essential task strategically and eventually select a long term trustworthy tech partner.