Developing a successful software product is highly challenging in today’s competitive market. With customer expectations evolving, companies now focus on developing new-age solutions leveraging disruptive technologies for their businesses. Meeting customer expectations and delivering a reliable solution in the market is the biggest challenge for every organization.
Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and businesses that depend on software to be both operational and profitable find it difficult to manage core organizational commitments while transforming their innovative software ambitions into reality. This could often lead to delayed time-to-market or the launching of a substandard product.
One way to address this challenge is by partnering with firms that are experts in product engineering and application development. They will work as a fully integrated part of your internal team – fully invested in the success of your application. This way, the in-house team can focus on the core tech elements and USPs, saving time and efficiency.
How Product Engineering Services Accelerate Business Growth?
The most critical challenge a software product company or startup faces is in being able to build out a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) using their core IP and innovation. For example, a startup that innovates with AI will require full stack application development skills, Cloud infrastructure capabilities, and specialized QA services in addition to the AI/ML resources which form the core of their Engineering team.
For enterprises, their current IT teams are trained and have the skills to manage their current platforms and applications that are based on older versions of software. Transforming their legacy product into contemporary versions for new features and performance will need skill sets that their current systems team may not possess.
In these cases, businesses can either look on to hire resources with the required talents or partner with an IT services company that has the experience and credibility to work on the required tech stacks. Once the product is developed, the company would need partner support with a different set of skills to run the Operations.
Creating new capacities on their payroll for all these requirements, which might not be permanent, would generate a lot of monetary and timeline overheads, in addition to training requirements. With the right technology partner, businesses can quickly get these done with experts and scale up/down based on needs.
A US-based third-party logistics (3PL) provider wanted to reimagine its core business operations in an effort to gain a competitive advantage. The 3PL acts as the link between shippers and carriers. It had an existing system to track, monitor, and assign loads. Some of the key operations pertaining to quotations and pricing were handled manually. They aimed to leverage technology to determine prices that offered the most value to shippers while maximizing sales and margins. The organization invested in developing an AI solution using a Machine Learning model for price prediction to stay competitive in the market.
The organization sought a team of seasoned experts to help them with adequate domain knowledge and technical know-how to build, deploy and integrate the new AI solution into its core systems. They partnered with Trigent to leverage its technical knowledge and domain expertise. As the engagement evolved and the scope increased, Trigent’s Amoeba Product Engineering framework enabled the organization to scale up as well as ramp down several critical functionalities.
Want to know how the 3PL gained an acceptance rate of 98.3% with tech transformation?
Best product development practices to ensure growth, scale & success
As per a survey by Deloitte, “59% of companies outsource their product development for cost optimization, while 31% want to achieve better product and service quality through outsourcing. 57% of organizations indicated that they considered outsourcing to be able to focus on their core business better, and 47% did so for getting quick access to high-quality technology capabilities.”
The role of product engineering partners is pivotal as technologies evolve with time. The ability to ramp up/wind down engagements based on requirements without incurring high resource overheads is a critical advantage of managed services. This applies across all stages of the product life cycle, from initial conceptualization to post-deployment support.
Product Discovery & Conceptualization
This is the first and most crucial phase of the product lifecycle. A product engineering service partner can assess the product concept from an agnostic viewpoint and evaluate what will work best for the business. This phase is led by the Product Manager and would include clarity on the target audience and the feasibility of innovative features. The role of the ISV/product owner would be to coordinate with the teams on both sides for the status updates and focus on the core business strategies.
Product Design, Development & Deployment
Product design and development must be highly agile to adapt to ever-changing business and user requirements. For companies that are not into core IT business, having the existing resources to adapt to this change is very challenging. In such cases, working with an experienced product development partner with relevant experience and expertise is ideal. The right service provider can provide keen insights on how to evolve product functionality, improve process flow, mitigate risks, elevate the user experience, and maintain costs.
With the right service partner, businesses can ensure a smooth transition to different development efforts based on requirements.
Product sustenance support
This is the last and most crucial phase of the engineering cycle. Once the product is launched in the market, with time, every product needs some updates and feature enhancements and requires continuous maintenance.
With a wide variety of client project experience, the product engineering firm can better predict how far an existing technology can be stretched and how it can apply to different facets of the customer experience. You gain access to expanded services and trending, modern technologies that can both improve the product as well as affect the overall bottom line in increased sales conversions, better customer engagement, and more.
The right partner can help you with the best sustenance engineering strategy, adding new service and feature enhancements to extend the life of the legacy products and meet the needs of modern and innovative applications for better operational efficiency and user experience
How to select the right development partner?
When evaluating prospective product development partners, you should ask various questions to determine if they understand and can align with your organization’s needs and goals.
Utilize case studies and references to analyze how they work with their clients, their delivery process, costs, time to market, etc., which can help form an overall review. But then take a deep dive into how their experience, techniques, and other strategic aspects are fair in the various metrics your organization needs.
Here’s a quick checklist of items all organizations should consider during the development partner selection process.
- What experience does the vendor have with various modern or emerging technologies?
- Does the partner have certified resources in the technologies the project needs?
- Does the partner have a complete understanding of the functional requirements of your project?
- Can the partner address all your requirements, including product architecture, design, implementation, and post-go-live support?
- How experienced is the partner with ensuring security at all application layers?
Technology innovation is continual and has the power to revolutionize your go-to-market on many levels. A product built on a solid foundation with cutting-edge technology and a robust user experience will position you for success.
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