Maybe you’re in need of a proprietary piece of software to give your startup a competitive edge, or maybe you’ve launched a tech startup and you find yourself in need of top industry talent and developers who will bring the project to fruition – either way, you’re in for a challenge. The simple truth about software development is that it is a lengthy, labor-intensive, and costly process that can quickly drain a startup of its financial resources before the product even hits the competitive market. And that’s without factoring in the promotion campaigns and your marketing expenses overall.

However, outsourcing software development is not just about financial savings, it’s also about tapping into the top-echelon of industry professionals without having to commit to lengthy contracts or hiring anyone full-time. Let’s break all of this down to see why outsourcing software development just makes sense for startups.

Create a more cost-effective infrastructure

The key objective for you right now is to grow your startup, and establish a foothold in the competitive market any way you can. To achieve this, you have to cut all extraneous expenditure and reallocate the resources you do have towards your core competencies and your core business goals. Now, whether or not software development is your core objective is irrelevant at this point in time – what matters is that maintaining a development infrastructure is a drain on financial resources. This is one of the key reasons why business leaders will choose to outsource these services, at least partially, until the company starts generating revenue.

Once the company solidifies its financial position, you can start thinking about hiring full-time developers who will continue working on updating and refining your products, and even innovate new ones when the time comes. When the company is still in its infancy, though, it’s important that you compare the costs with your development requirements to figure out if you should outsource the process.

Reduce your staffing and hiring needs

This one directly ties into the money problem, however, it’s not so much about the financial expenditure as it is a problem of actually acquiring top talent in the industry, and keeping them in your company in the opportune job market. The best developers are not only expensive (and rightfully so), but they also notoriously difficult to get to, and it can be a while before you manage to poach them from another company or convince them to join your team of all the teams they could work with. Unless you have a sizable budget for talent acquisition, this might not be a viable option for you.

Keep in mind that talent acquisition in this field is not just about convincing a developer to join your ranks, it’s also about convincing them to stay, to do their best, and to truly become passionate about your brand. If you choose to outsource, though, you will automatically get all of this without having to worry about staffing requirements, costs, or the end result – the agency you’re outsourcing to has it covered.

Improve cross-department collaboration

One of the biggest problems that startups face is the lack of cross-department collaboration. Now, this might come as a result of poor hiring choices, subpar leadership and organization, or it might just come down to the fact that you don’t have the resources to facilitate business-wide collaboration, especially when it comes to ensuring collaboration between development and operations. This is one of the key reasons why business leaders will choose to bring the needed resources to them through a comprehensive solution such as DevOps.

Instead of outsourcing software development completely, business leaders will often choose to use DevOps as a service and bring the necessary resources into their operation. DevOps has been around for a while now, and it aims to bridge the gap between development and operations, facilitate the automation of numerous processes, and shorten the product’s time to market while minimizing risks, errors, and rollbacks. This type of partial outsourcing is great for business leaders who want to retain as much control as possible.

Gain access to industry-leading technology

Another important reason why startups should outsource software development is that technology is evolving at a rapid pace – and you need to keep up if you want to stay relevant in the years to come. Needless to say, continuously adopting new technology is a costly challenge, and it might not be realistic for a startup.

When you outsource to a professional team, on the other hand, you will have gained access to industry-leading tech, and most importantly, the team will have an obligation to always stay on top of the latest tech developments – their reputation depends on it.

Ensure easy flexibility and scalability

And finally, outsourcing allows you to stay flexible, and it allows you to scale your resources according to the requirements of your company. This is often a major problem when the startup finally starts to gain some ground in the competitive market, and the need arises for the company to grow and preserve its momentum. During this critical time, you want to have the ability to scale quickly without breaking the proverbial bank, which is exactly what you’ll be able to do by outsourcing this costly task.

Wrapping up

The outsourcing culture is on the rise around the world, and unsurprisingly so, as startups finally have a way to overcome the common challenges that stifle their progress and potential. With these key benefits in mind, be sure to consider outsourcing software development until you have solidified your position in the industry.