7 CTOs’ Tips on Choosing the Right Outsourcing Partner

Did you know why in 2020, 61% of small and midsize businesses outsourced almost 30% of app development tasks? Why are large corporations even farther away in the virtual business world, with 56% of them outsourcing 45% of the workload to onshore, nearshore, and offshore professionals? And why are the levels rising?

The balance of cost-efficiency, sustainability, speed, and quality becomes more and more important. That’s why the approach becomes more popular. Companies choose to save time, effort, and money instead of hiring additional in-house specialists.

But how many of those collaborations are successful? What does a chief technology officer have to do when choosing an outsourcing provider to meet a perfect match?

In this guide, we provide pro-tips on selecting an outsourcing partner, questions to ask during the interview, tasks you should never trust to an outside expert, and more!

Key takeaways:

• When choosing an outsource provider, you need to match your business goals and expectations, check the mindsets and tech skills, as well as testimonials and cultural compatibility, communicate time and budget and data security, flexibility and opportunities of swift team scaling, and more.
• CTOs shouldn’t outsource tasks that involve final decisions and key assets. Although the risks can be mitigated if you use all the criteria for the selection of an outsourcing partner.
• To find the right company to outsource to, you can use search engines, review platforms like Clutch, and networking.
• During communication, you should state your criteria for the selection of an outsourcing partner and ask about the company’s track record, references, fees, security, and more. Also, you should state your needs for technical seniority and stack, project security, mindsets, etc.

CTOs’ Practical Tips on Choosing the Right Outsourcing Partner

When it comes to software development outsourcing, you have to approach the topic seriously. The people you eventually choose will be responsible, to some degree, for your future success.
Here are our tips for all CTOs struggling with choosing the right company for outsourcing. All are based on our experience with clients.

Tip 1. Match your business goals and expectations

First of all, establish your outsourcing partner selection criteria. Do you want to try offshore or nearshore software outsourcing? What are your business goals? How should this company help you achieve them? What are your expectations regarding the cost, hiring time, and the end result?

When you know what exactly you want, it’s much easier to find a perfect match. Consider the following factors when selecting a provider of outsourcing services:

• Cases longevity and quality
• Fees
• Security policies
• Range of services
• Hiring model (full outsourcing or staff augmentation), etc.
• Flexibility to scale and reduce capacity

Tip 2. Check the mindsets and technical level

When it comes to other factors to consider when selecting an outsourcing provider, most people think about technical skills first. They are of utmost importance, but so is the mindset of the company.

Interview the representatives and later the experts working for you just like you would interview your own candidates for in-house positions. Ask about their values and beliefs, approaches and methodologies, expertise and availability, and so on.

With ProCoders, you don’t have to conduct several interviews to evaluate hard and soft skills because we do it for you. But there’s an option to interview the dedicated team members as the final step to make sure you’re about to hire someone who will actually bring value to your project,

Tip 3. Check testimonials

All these pitches and testimonials you see will always put the outsourcing provider you want to choose in a good light. As you pick a favorite, ask for references and verify them. You don’t need to look for a company for months only to end up with sugar-coated mediocrity.

You can check reviews on websites such as Clutch and Upwork. Also, consider networking and connect with previous customers to find out about their experiences.

Tip 4. Check cultural compatibility

Another important criterion in outsourcing partner selection is cultural compatibility. You have to make sure that the future experts working for your company understand its structure, workflow, business process, and employees.

You also need timely responses, proper communication culture, and quick reaction to issues and drawbacks of assigned tasks. So, not only the culture but also the time zone is important.

Tip 5. Make sure they are great planners

The plan is as important as the skill. You need to select an outsourcing partner that knows a thing or two about budget and time planning. They have to know how long it will take to finish your project, how many people you need for it, and how much it will cost before the cooperation starts.

Prepare to share some data in order to find common ground. For example, at ProCoders, we have Discovery Phase services where our analysts take the info you provide and clearly see how much time, people, and money are needed, what model is best for you (staff augmentation vs outsourcing), etc.

Tip 6. Communicate data security concerns

Before you choose an outsourcing provider, find out about their privacy policy and how they handle data. Development, testing, and other tasks involve you providing sensitive information to the vendor, and you need to know it will be used and maintained properly.

This is essential for all industries and types of apps, but especially for healthcare and mobile banking applications.

The ProCoders recommendation is to always sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with the teams and, obviously, choose the right outsourcing company with decent policies.

Tip 7. Check in actively at the start of the project

While regular check-ins are a given with the outsourcing partner you choose if the company’s good enough, at the beginning of the project you should monitor the project process closely to make sure the team or specialist is a 100% perfect match.

If anything seems strange to you or you don’t understand the necessity of some tasks, specialists, or decisions, don’t hesitate to ask directly. It’s much easier to change the vendor at the beginning of the collaboration than toward the end.

Talking about the necessary tasks…it’s your decision which ones to outsource, but, based on our experience, we know that some things should be done by your employees only.

What Tasks CTOs Should Never Outsource?

Outsourcing and staff augmentation can help CTOs overcome lots of main challenges, including innovation influx, quality talent, and best engineering practices. But if you fail to choose the right outsource UX/UI design team your security concerns may come true.

While it’s very beneficial and rather popular to outsource app development, quality assurance, and other related tasks, when it comes to CTOs’ responsibilities, there are some things that should remain within the business:

Key Intellectual Property

Such important projects have to be handled very carefully. Giving full control to an outsourced team over such an asset may bring up security concerns.

Opportunities and Risks Identification and Management

CTO’s tasks include management of IT assets and associated revenue, as well as risks and opportunities identification for the business they work for. As they know the company best, it’s more logical and beneficial to leave such research and decisions in-house.

Final Decisions

In project management, strategy definition, design approval, etc., the final decisions have to be made by the in-house team manager. Outsource these tasks and you can never be sure whether those people will make the right choice for the business.

Architecture and Choosing Tech Stack

As CTOs you surely know what’s the best tech stack, technology’s alternatives, so making decision architecture and tech stack choice aren’t the best tasks to outsource.

That being said, you can mitigate risks. For example, if you and/or the sponsors of the project are concerned about its security as you work with a key intellectual property, you can make changes to the team’s structure.

Having an in-house “knowledge holder” on the team will help you control who works with sensitive information, delegating other tasks to the outsourced specialists. We must also mention that when you select an outsourcing provider that cares about your business goals and success, the risks are mitigated more easily.

Where to Find the Right Outsourcing Company

When we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing software development, we never get tired of mentioning that finding the right outsourcing partner is THE top priority. With the tips, we shed some light on how to pick the right outsourcing partner. Now, let’s see where you can do it.

Networking

Networking allows you to find out the details about the company of your interest through communication with its former customers. You can eventually choose a company with the best reviews, but you won’t be sure about the capacity of the chosen vendor.

Clutch

Among the factors you can use when selecting an outsourcing provider, there’s checking testimonials. On companies’ websites, there will surely be some reviews and cases that were successful, but you need more than that.

Platforms like Clutch can help you find the right outsourcing partner through detailed, honest reviews from real clients of real companies. ProCoders also have over 60 opinions on the service where our customers share their experiences.

Upwork

Upwork isn’t only for freelancers. While the latter may be a good choice for certain tasks, when we talk about serious projects that need a holistic approach, agencies are better. You can find top-notch businesses on the platform with the capacity needed for your project, as well as other criteria met.

Search Engines

This might sound obvious, but Google knows everything. Choose the right query, include a location there if you need it, and the search engine will show you a list of ads, organically ranked services, TOP-N lists, and more.

It may take a long time to surf each website, compile a list of seemingly good outsourcing companies, research each of them, contact representatives, and finally select the best outsourcing partner. But it’ll be worth it.

Of course, just reading about a company isn’t enough. You have to know what to ask representatives to find out the essential information.

18 Questions To Ask When Choosing An Outsourcing Provider

On the topic of how to choose the right outsourcing partner, here are the questions you should ask before making the final pick:

1. Is it possible to contact your former clients?
2. What’s your track record?
3. Do you have a portfolio? Where can I get familiar with your cases?
4. What’s the most influential impact have you made in your clients’ projects?
5. What are your fees and payment options?
6. What’s your hiring algorithm? Do you interview specialists? How do you test them?
7. How do you maintain and improve employee qualification? Do you provide education for your developers?
8. How do you coordinate your team’s work with clients’ in-house teams?
9. Do you have a contract?
10. Do your employees sign NDAs before working with a client?
11. Does your development team have experience with industry-specific tasks you want to outsource?
12. What will you do if I need over 20 developers with industrial expertise in a special stack?
13. What’s your algorithm in case of a missed deadline or poor work quality?
14. Will you be able to meet our business needs? state the needs
15. What equipment and software are you using?
16. What’s your corporate culture? (see if it matches yours)
17. What quality level can you provide?
18. What level of technical support do you provide?

Based on the replies and the testimonials you read online, you’ll be able to create an impression of the company and narrow down your list. Communication with former customers will boost the process even further, allowing you to choose the best company for outsourcing.

Why Choose ProCoders as Your Outsourcing Partner?

Finding a proper outsourcing partner may be tough as there are lots of criteria and it’s difficult to build trust between brands and customers nowadays. The only company we can vouch for is ProCoders, as we’ve been in the business for over 7 years and have a number of compelling cases to prove our experience.

You can contact our customers, read about our work, and apply for a Discovery Phase where our specialists look into the needs and goals of your business and determine how much time, money, and people you need to succeed.

CTOs select us as their outsourcing partners because:

• We provide well-tested developers and take care of all administrative and HR processes. Our 4-step hiring process ensures you get the best possible experts for adequate money.
• One of our primary values is honest communication, so you can expect that at every stage of the project.
• We offer complete project support and are ready to provide additional resources whenever needed.
• Our workflow is always transparent. The goal of our teams is to create a top-quality project for you, so we will communicate with you during every step.

We value communication, safety, and quality, and understand that one top-notch long-term project is much better for our experience than a bunch of smaller ones that are already off the market. So, if you’re still looking for a how-to on finding the right company for outsourcing, keep ProCoders in mind. Or even better, let’s communicate about your latest project now!

Conclusion

Although the title focuses on the top tips ProCoders gives to CTOs on choosing the right outsourcing company, you can find much more than that in this guide.

First of all, yes, to make sure you select a partner for outsourcing that is reliable and can bring your business closer to success, you have to:

• Define and match your goals and expectations
• Make sure the company culture is compatible and values communication
• Check testimonials and ask for references’ contacts
• Find out their privacy policy and talk about data security
• Ensure the company has the needed development capacity and is flexible enough to raise and reduce capacity.

Also, you have to know that you shouldn’t outsource major tasks connected to your core intellectual property, final decisions, and opportunity and risk assessment. It may backfire in terms of safety and benefits as only you and your core team know the company from A to Z, inside and out.

Now, a how-to on choosing a proper outsourcing partner, you can use search engines and top-notch research skills, as well as platforms like Clutch. As you create a list of potential partners, make sure to ask them about their track record, portfolio, fees, contract, equipment and software, and other essential factors you need to consider before selecting an outsourcing provider.

And finally, make sure ProCoders is on your list. Service is our superpower, we value honesty and transparency, and we only hire qualified professionals suitable for our client’s projects.