As increasing numbers of organisations turn to digital solutions to meet evolving customer demands, you might be debating whether outsourcing your bespoke software development is the best option for your company. 

Outsourcing offers some very significant advantages over maintaining an in-house development team. 

When you outsource, you gain access to a network of talented, experienced professionals you would be hard-pressed to attract with an in-house position.

You’ll be able to release your product faster, scale it quicker, and have more time to focus on other strategic areas – and you’ll spend less money than using a house team, too. 

Below, we delve into five key advantages of outsourcing software development and how they could benefit your company. 

1. Outsourcing Software Development Is Cheaper

You can make significant savings by outsourcing your software development rather than shouldering the costs of keeping full-time dedicated teams on the payroll. 

For a full-time java developer, for example, the median salary is £55,000 – and because competition for top talent is fierce, if you want experienced developers on your team, you’ll likely need to go much higher than this. 

Software developers are in high demand – however, according to Hired’s Mind the Gap report last year, there is a huge skills gap in the following areas:

As the demand for software development skills outstrips supply, salaries are increasing. The report puts the average salary of a software engineer in London at £63,000, with the following roles in particular attracting the biggest salary increases. 

The skills shortage also increases other costs associated with attracting and retaining a full-time software development team: 

• Hiring costs: Job boards, recruiters, training, tax contributions, and new software licenses all add significant sums of money to finding new talent. 
• Benefits packages: As competition for good developers is fierce, to attract the best, you’ll need to offer generous holiday allowances plus a host of other benefits. 
• Replacement: Most employees will move on eventually – and replacing an employee is even more expensive than filling a new position, costing up to 60% of their annual salary, according to Toggl. 

These are all costs you don’t need to pay when you use outsourcing services. You agree on a fee for select services, and that’s it. In other words, you pay exclusively for development work without the need for any sideways investment. 

Because many software outsourcing providers can draw on global talent, there are also significant savings in labour costs compared to hiring an in-house team exclusively from a limited UK talent pool. 

You’ll also save money on new software, and the hardware needed to support it. 

Whilst a good number of developer tools are open source, some software spend is inevitable. Software development companies have this infrastructure in place already, so you won’t need to worry about big upfront purchases or ongoing maintenance and replacement costs.

2. You Benefit from Ongoing Support and Maintenance

Whether you outsource or rely on in-house teams, development is an ongoing process, not a “set it and forget it” project.

For your platform or app to remain attractive to customers, you’ll need to carry out routine maintenance and debugging procedures, release regular updates and add new features throughout its lifetime. 

When you outsource long-term, you don’t need to worry about running these operations in-house. If your software development company outsources to developers in different time zones, you might also get the benefit of round-the-clock support that would be hugely impractical and expensive to set up as a permanent, in-house solution. 

3. Outsourcing Software Development Reduces Time to Market

It takes an average of 42 days to fill an open position, according to the Undercover Recruiter. For in-demand professions or senior positions, it can take even longer. 

Creating a whole team of in-house developers who work well together and suit your company culture is a lengthy process – and that’s just at the hiring stage. You’ll also need to allow time for onboarding and training, plus an adjustment period where productivity is lower than ideal. 

Remember that app that was an essential part of your Q1 goals? That’s now pushed back to Q4. Any competitive advantage you hoped to gain by getting to market first has disappeared.

Using a software outsourcing company will get the job done quicker. Software development companies have teams of in-house user experience designers, software engineers, testers, QA engineers and project managers ready to start work on your project right away.

If your project requires more manpower, software development agencies can also tap into a global network of talent to scale quickly. 

Because outsourced teams scale faster and can call in extra support whenever its needed, they’re inherently more agile than in-house teams. Tight deadlines are easier to meet and you’ll ultimately be able to launch your product quicker. 

4. Outsourcing Gives You Access to a Flexible, Experienced Pool of Talent

Developers tend to specialise in particular areas – specific programming languages (Python, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.), platform (iOS, Android, etc.) or specialism in the frontend, backend, or middleware. 

If you hire in-house developers, you’re limiting yourself to their skill sets. This is fine if you know exactly what you want upfront. If you’re 100% certain that all you’ll need is Python for the backend and JavaScript for the frontend – and that this is all you’ll need, forever – this isn’t a problem. 

Software development is rarely that simple, however.

For example, Uber uses Python, JavaScript via the node.js runtime environment, Go, SQL, and Objective-C in its tech stack, plus a couple of extra libraries and frameworks (notably React Native and jQuery).

Most software projects require an equally complicated stack – and the more complex your project is, the more software developers with their differing specialisms and skillsets will need to be involved. 

One major benefit of outsourcing is that it gives you the capacity to create a high-quality product without having to hire a large software team. If there’s a particular feature that would work better using a particular library, your software development company will bring in an expert to do it. 

Outsourcing software development is also a great way to keep your app adaptable and ready for on-the-horizon technologies like machine learning, augmented reality and AI.

Software development companies have the flexibility to bring in experts in these fields whenever they’re needed, whereas you might struggle to support them on an in-house budget. 

5. You Can Focus on your Core Business Offering

If you’re a financial services provider, your expertise lies in helping your customers manage their money. That’s the core service around which your key business processes are built. 

Suddenly expanding in a new direction by adding an in-house development team for your new app is a substantial risk. It would require a significant budget.

You may lack the expertise to execute smoothly. There will likely be delays, steep learning curves and a serious amount of restructuring as you figure out how your software development team fits in with the rest of your organisation. 

If you outsource your software development, not only do you gain access to a network of top developers, you do so with minimum disruption to your existing services.

When you outsource, you know that the digital solutions you’re building won’t affect your core business processes and ability to provide first-class services to customers and you’ll have more resources to dedicate to innovation in key strategic areas whilst pursuing digital transformation objectives. 

Choose the Right Outsourcing Partner

Outsourcing only works if you choose the right software development services company to partner with. Whichever company you outsource to should be able to demonstrate significant expertise in their field, an expansive network of talent to draw from and plenty of testimonials from happy customers. 

Evolve is an award-winning software outsourcing company based in the UK. We use our expertise to create solutions tailored precisely to your requirements, using our team of top-level industry developers, designers, and project managers. 

Take a look at our case studies to see how we’ve helped companies similar to yours, or get in touch for more information.