It is always a daunting task to find the right software partner for your business. The majority of people have had bad experiences working with many consultants and companies. Some delay the work, some deliver poor quality code and without a technology founder in place, it often becomes difficult to monitor what went wrong and this leads to huge losses for businesses. The below points discusses some of the important things to look out for while selecting your software partner.

  • Do they understand your business?

It is primal for your consultant to understand your business as they need to work hand in hand as your own extended team. Without understanding your business, there will be no synchronous effort from the consultant team which would lead to a loss of time and money.

  • Do they understand the problem statement?

The right product which go out and succeed in a market is the one that identifies and solves a problem for the end customer. You will need to check that whether your software consulting partner has properly understood the problem statement that you are addressing. This is the most crucial aspect as else the product would fail in the market.

  • Will they put enough effort on planning, prototyping and iterating?

Planning and prototyping is as important as coding. Planning your product development and delivery cycles beforehand will eliminate a lot of unnecessary overheads and losses when the product is finally out in the market. This is also the phase that requires a lot of client interaction.You need to check whether your partner company will put in that effort to deliver you the best final product.

  • Do they have the required technical expertise?

It is seen that most of the consultants out there might know one or the other programming language. It is vital for the developers in the technology team to have the right technical skills to plan, build, launch and then after releasing it, provide necessary support till the product succeeds in the market. Support should be a part of the development contract and the software development company should include the detailed support terms in the project proposal. Beyond that, a support structure should be in place in the company to provide support in an ongoing manner.