The Definitive Guide to

Outsourcing Mobile App

Development

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Mobility has taken over the business world. Companies today are using mobile apps to serve customers in new ways, create new revenue streams, and solidify a lifetime of loyalty. At the same time, savvy organizations are moving more and more applications to the app world to boost employee productivity and empower the virtual workforce.

Because these solutions are so custom and being first in the market can create a strategic advantage, companies need a strategy for optimizing their mobile app development program. For many it begins with the question — should we build an in-house team or look for an experienced partner to handle it for us?

Each has their merits, but outsourcing is becoming an increasingly attractive option for companies to avoid the challenges and delays that seem to plague in-house development teams.

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Why Outsourcing Makes Sense

Enterprise mobile apps rely heavily on backend connectivity to enable robust functionality. Sales apps may need access to the CRM, order entry and email systems to complete a workflow. A support app may need access to customer, trouble ticket and knowledge center data to function properly. On average, a suite of enterprise apps has to connect with two and six backend systems to provide the functionality needed to make it worthwhile to an enterprise employee.

Not every company has the seemingly unlimited resources of an Amazon or a Google, who can establish in-house development teams ready to quickly respond to any need. In reality, most companies can’t afford to hire dedicated resources for mobile specific projects, nor can they easily redeploy existing IT assets without disrupting ongoing programs.

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Before you can decide which path to take, it’s important to understand what actually goes into creating an in-house mobile app development team. Many companies think they could just hire 10-15 software developers from the deep pool of talent that’s out there and satisfy all of their mobile app needs within a month or two. Sadly, this is not remotely close to the reality. Studies show that

94% of organizations that employ a 15-person development team still don’t have the necessary staff to meet their mobile app demands.

Hiring a larger team might seem like the right answer, but it can become very expensive. Mobile app development requires manyspecialized skills — user interface design, backend integration, network optimization, etc. These skills are in such high demand that

32% of in-house teams today are dealing with a shortage of qualified developers as they strive to meet internal release goals.

All of these costs and challenges are pushing companies to switch to an outsourcing approach to mobile app development. Often, the flat-fee for a project is much less than the long-term costs (in both money and time) of creating an in-house team and companies can hire a third-party team that has all of the experience necessary to build an app that delights customers and employees.

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As with any major undertaking, a bit of upfront planning goes a long way to ensure the success of the project in the long run.

Defining RequirementsBefore diving into the world of outsourced mobile app development, it is important to first define your requirements. If you can’t communicate what you want, you can’t even approach a potential partner or hope to get an accurate quote or timeline. Here are some tips for getting started:

GETTING STARTED WITH MOBILE APP OUTSOURCING

The first step for any company should be to define what the app will do and how you want users to interact with it once it’s published. You can optimize the experience if you fully understand who the users are and what they’re looking for out of the mobile app. If companies can articulate the endgame to the outsource team, the development process will go much smoother.

Knowing what competitors are doing is essential to creating the best mobile app experience. Are competitors using social media integration? User authentication? In-app purchasing? On a higher level, knowing whether to make a free or pay-to-download app and which operating systems to develop for make a big difference in the process.

When outsourcing mobile app development, it’s important to outline the types of features that you want to include before you begin the interview process. You also need to understand your design requirements — if you already work with a digital design team or have one in house, you may want to leverage them for your mobile app projects to ensure a consistent look and feel across all your solutions. If you need design services, that will make a difference in the selection process.

Are they an agile development group?

In practice, agile development groups are better equipped to adjust to the inevitable changes that crop up in complex projects and better able to ensure that projects are completed on time and on budget.

Is user experience a core concern?

Providing a great user experience is critical for ensuring the high engagement rates that ensure the success of both employee and consumer-facing apps. Make sure the team you select believes that user experience should be top of mind in all projects and has a solid plan for optimizing the user interface for popular mobile devices.

Will they continue to support the app after its release?

Successful mobile app projects don’t stop at the launch. Look for a company that has a plan for supporting and modifying the app on a continuous basis. Some companies will even provide a tool that “lay people” can use to make changes on their own without incurring additional costs.

How big of a concern is app security for the third-party?

Securing private customer and employee data as well as access to backend systems has to be a concern for any enterprise. Ask about the company’s security strategy as part of the vetting process.

Do they have project-specific experience and capabilities?

Each project has unique requirements — some need complex data integrations where others demand a complex set of plugins. Understand the requirements for the project and choose a partner with the proper level of experience to get the job done within budget.

Are they innovators?

With so many apps being developed, creating a unique offering can make a big difference in drawing more usage. Companies with cutting edge ideas can provide a significant value add to your mobile app development program.

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Choosing an Outsourced Development Partner

Once an organization has established its requirements for a mobile app, it’s time to hire a team to get the project moving. When choosing a development partner, these are a few key points to consider in the process:

Develop a Realistic Timeline

Time to market is critical to any mobile app development, but don’t get ahead of yourself thinking that an outside development team can turn around a project in a matter of weeks — no matter how agile their group may be. It takes some time for two groups to come together to a point where they can communicate efficiently.

An agile development group can help compress the timeline, but it is important to establish a regular set of milestones and checkpoints throughout the project to maximize collaboration throughout the process.

The developer group is bound to run into technical issues along the way. More importantly, you may want to deviate from your initial plan as you see the app created. Asking for builds at specific intervals will help make sure that everyone stay on the right track as far as requirements go. Staying involved in the testing process throughout development can keep the mobile app on schedule and ensure a high-quality final product.

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Plan for Change

Once your customers and employees begin using your apps and become more reliant on them, no doubt you will want to make changes over time —expanding capabilities, streamlining the UI and customizing the app for the newest devices and OS releases. When architecting your mobile app development strategy, it is important to devise how you want to handle this type of work over time.

If you decide that you want to have modifications done by your development partner, be sure to discuss their fee structure and turnaround time beforehand. To avoid disruption for your user base, you will need a company able to ensure that your mobile apps will be compatible with major OS releases from Day 1.

Even though you are partnering with an outside group for the initial development work, you may want the freedom to make updates in house. If so, ask if your development group can provide you with a tool that lets you make minor tweaks and updates to the app without having to alter the underlying code. When in-house and external development groups standardize on a specific development platform, companies get the best of both worlds — they can take on discrete projects when they have available resources and use their external teams to handle the bulk of the development work.

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CRAFT A STRATEGY THAT ALIGNS WITH CORPORATE GOALSToday mobility is a requirement of almost every customer and employee productivity initiative — there is no getting around that fact. When architecting a development strategy, you need to decide how important having those particular skills sets are to the organization as a whole. Is it enough that the company’s core IT group understands at a strategic level the kinds of apps they want to deploy or do they need to know Java code as well? Is it enough to meet release goals and offer apps that delight customers or do they need to manage all that work themselves?

For many organizations, it comes down to numbers. It’s unfortunate but today in-house groups carry an average backlog of 10 to 20 projects. These delays are having a negatively impact on both revenue and productivity in these organizations.

And it will only get worse. With mobile phone sales predicted to hit the 2.1 billion unit mark by 2019, Gartner believes the demand for mobile apps will far outpace in-house development abilities by 2017.

More and more companies are looking to external organizations for both expertise and time to market advantages. However, finding the right development organization is an essential piece of the outsourcing puzzle. Partnering with an experienced team that you can truly collaborate with is critical if you want to keep pace with the increasing demand for mobile apps. More importantly, these strategic partners can help you take advantage of this channel in ways you may never have known were possible.

About Nexaweb

Nexaweb provides software and

services for the development of

enterprise-class mobile, tablet, and

web applications. Nexaweb was

founded in 2000, offering tools and

enterprise to develop web and, later,

mobile applications for the enterprise.

Today, Nexaweb has more than 2,500

customers around the world across a

range of industries.

Nexaweb Inc.1 New England Executive

Office Park, Suite 205

Burlington, MA 01803

Tel: 781-345-5500

Fax:781-345-5501

www.nexaweb.com

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