IT firms these days have been experiencing highs as well as lows in recent years due to the pandemic. Though they have suffered, IT firms are not the only victims of these highs and lows; many other business firms have suffered as well.
As a company owner, you have to look for possible solutions to avoid these troublesome situations, and if your company is operating alone, then you know that your company won’t survive taking another hit. Then how would you tackle this issue when a similar situation arises?
Most of you may already know the answer to this question, and that is to build a partnership with another software development company. It’s true that a partnership will give a huge boost to your organization and its development practices and will save the company in any situation. But finding a capable partner and building a software development partnership is hard.
Most big IT companies have chunks of layers of the management system that might slow down your operation. Hence, it’s important to choose and build a partnership with the right firm in the right way. If you are perplexed by the concept of partnership, don’t worry because this article will teach you how to find and build a software development partnership that will improve your business operations.
What is a Software Development Partner?
A software development partner is an entity or group of professional developers that helps you deliver your software products successfully by introducing shared operations and quality production. For example, app development partnerships.
Types of Software Partnerships
1. Channel VARs
Channel VARs(value added resellers) partnership is best for increasing sales volume to their existing customers. It focuses on selling the products to end users by adding profit margin to the product value. It’s an ideal type for companies working on new technologies and those who want to expand their reach.
2. Service Delivery Partners
These partners don’t really focus on selling their parent company’s products, but rather enhance the product value by providing configuration and maintenance services to the product for user satisfaction. This separates your business operations from your competitors and makes your product more attractive. It is an ideal choice for companies that want to polish their user experience and satisfaction.
3. Technology Alliance Partner
This type of partnership introduces you to working with a partner who provides similar products to your company. For example, if you provide an operating system(OS) to a machine, then the alliance partner must be the one who manufactures the machines that contain the OS. This collaboration pushes profits to the next level by selling more products. Hence, it is an ideal choice for companies that want to get popular by providing that technology.
4. High Velocity Partners
These partners are responsible for managing and administering the products for high volume sales and rapid product delivery. They can help you maximize your sales within no time as they act quickly. It is an ideal choice for companies that want to scale their operations and company while maintaining max volume sales.
5. Cloud Service Providers
As the name suggests, these partners offer cloud services such as SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS for your product to help improve its cloud security, speed, and reliability. It’s an ideal choice for companies who want to deliver software products with reliable options such as the cloud.
6. Managed Service Providers
These partners manage the IT infrastructure of the parent company to make it easily accessible for user operations. It is an ideal choice for companies that want to attract a wide range of customers by enhancing their IT services.
7. Global System Integrators (GIS)
These partners build computing systems using various networking equipment, hardware, software, and cloud services from multiple vendors. It is an ideal choice for companies that have a product that can service a wide range of markets.
8. Embedded Partners
These partners embed the parent company’s product in their system and sell it to end users under their brand. These are ideal for companies that want brand recognition and want to boost their sales in a wide range of markets.
9. OEM(original equipment manufacturer)
Similar to embedded partners, OEMs embed a parent company’s product in their solutions and sell them to customers. They sell these solutions under their own brand, which gives them market recognition. This is an ideal choice for companies that want to enter a new market in a specific region.
10. Strategic Partner
As the name suggests, a strategic partner is involved in performing strategies that can lift a parent company’s business operations and drive huge revenue and benefit maximization while delivering value to the parent company. Hence, it is an ideal choice for all companies.
Software Partnership Models
1. Referral
Referrals stand on the basis of lead generation, where the partner company generates the lead for software vendors. Afterwards, the partner company sends this lead to the vendor to validate and pay the referral fee to the partner company, which closes the deal. It is beneficial for companies, partners, and vendors as it lowers the risk of business operations.
2. Revenue Sharing
Whenever a customer buys a partner company’s product, some of the revenue is shared with the vendor who is responsible for providing the resources. The advantage of this model is that it lets vendors endorse the shared revenue, and the bond between both tightens.
3. Resell
A software vendor sends his product to a reseller, and then the partner sells the product of the vendor to the customers.The advantage of this model is that it builds strong relationships between the reseller and the software vendor.
4. OEM
In this model, the software vendor provides his OEM product to the partner organization, then the partner sells this OEM product directly to the customer. The advantage of this model is that an OEM model can be sold to customers with fewer hassles.
5. Certified Solutions
The certification solution model solely focuses on integrating two software solutions by adding some quality to their operations, and to prove this, vendors have started certification programs that keep the competition between two partners to maintain lower product prices and increase software integration.
Why Do You Need a Software Development Partner?
As we discussed earlier, as a company owner, you have to adapt to strategies to tackle business loss and prevent bankruptcy. One of the strategies that enables you to scale your business based on market conditions is partnering with other IT companies. The following factors might turn out to be the best answer for your why.
1. Ideal for Increasing Business Operations
Many will disagree with this statement, but software development partnerships might improve your business operations. If you try to handle everything on your own, you will end up spending a lot more time offering a single service. In addition to this, you will need expensive resources, teams, and equipment. Additionally, it restricts your operations to a certain extent, and because your internal teams may have developed poor quality products, your reputation in the market may suffer.
On the contrary, you can delegate entire development operations to the partnered company while still maintaining some control over production. This enables flexible operations and lets you concentrate on your primary corporate goals. According to market demands, you can even scale up or down the software development process, meaning you won’t lose anything and won’t have to deal with any development hassles.
Another intriguing aspect of these businesses is their experience in delivering software products, which allows you to feel secure and concentrate on other aspects of your business while they handle development processes, deadlines, and any other issues.
2. Cost Effective
When you collaborate with other development companies, you can save a ton of money on various expenses, such as equipment upkeep, remodeling, hiring fees, employee salaries, and more. Furthermore, choosing a partner company from an offshore location reduces development costs significantly.
Especially if you are a small organization or startup, you can take advantage of the partnership methodology to cut down on your unnecessary costs and boost software development practices to a greater extent.
3. Reduces Management Hassels
It’s challenging to lead development teams. From hiring to solving other issues with various engineers, it is not an easy task, and you can avoid all this with the help of a software development partnership. The partnered company will be responsible for solving all the issues arising in the development phases and other hectic tasks such as hiring engineers and assisting them during their training period.
4. Covers Best Pool of Talent
The best part about working with a software development partner is that you get access to the world’s best pool of talented developers. Hence, it is beneficial for any organization to be able to boost their business operations with the right technology experts. Besides, these offshore talents are cheaper to hire and are an ideal choice for small businesses to grow.
How to Find a Software Development Partnership
You can begin to find software development partners online by using Google and other search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo. There are many companies that put their profiles online, so dig deeper.
To determine whether they complement your company’s operations or not, examine their client testimonials, services, and core values. This is a part of software partner evaluation, which will help you evaluate the key aspects of any organization. Even though looking for a partner company online can be time-consuming, it’s worthwhile because today’s top development companies are all accessible online.
Moreover, case studies are great ways to look deep into how the company is helping other firms; hence, studying these case studies will allow you to understand companies’ projects and how they solve issues for business firms.
How to Choose a Software Development Partner
After you are done finding the best companies for partnership, make a list of companies that you think are the best suited for your business operations, include and highlight their services, customer reviews, and core values; and set up a meeting with your associates to discuss various factors, such as company size and management layers, and accordingly make decisions and choose the best companies.
Afterwards, reach out to the companies and interview their development and management teams. Depending on the performance of the development and management teams, make an offer for a software development partnership.
What Are the Qualities of a Good Software Partner?
- Similar goals and visions to the parent company.
- Technical expertise similar to that of the parent organization.
- Ability to produce satisfactory software solutions.
- Robust software development cycle.
- Produces latest technology products.
- Transparent and honest.
- Use of different methodologies to push development ahead.
- Puts primary objectives and customer satisfaction first.
How to Build a Software Development Partnership
Carrying out business operations by relying on a partner isn’t easy as there is always a risk of losing something. “Precaution is better than cure” terminology should be applied while partnering with firms to avoid falling into a pit. Therefore, joint operations between partners should be fair, cooperative, and transparent.
Moreover, to create synergies between business firms, both parties should participate in talks to help resolve issues and improve production. Since your organization will be heavily reliant on a partner company, you need to make sure your investments are paying off. To achieve this, you must coordinate your efforts and gain some authority over the development process.
Work on Key Aspects of Partnership
A partnership brings streamlined and productive operations, and for this reason, forming an alliance with your partner and keeping it running for a long time is important. For healthy relations and an active contribution, both companies should adapt to the following key aspects.
1. Communication
Communication is the most important aspect of the software development partnership as it allows both parties to share their opinions, requirements, and other things. You should actively communicate with your partner and discuss various development procedures, quality checks, and performance. For this, you can assign a representative who will communicate with the partnered association regularly to get details on every other development process.
Most importantly, when first introduced to the partnered company, try to hold long video calls to get an idea of your associates and their tasks. This eases out communicating to the respective person and you will get a brief idea on whom to contact for any particular scenario. Set communication priorities, such as development issues will be addressed first in meetings, then other factors, which will allow you to address primary goals first and talk about other things afterwards.
2. Trust
Trust building is another important key aspect as it builds a strong bond between the two organizations and pushes quality production and business operations to higher levels. When you treat your vendors and other outsourcing agencies as partners, they will commit to delivering you the best resources for quality production.
In the initial days, it will take time to build a stronger bond with your partners, but as you collaborate, communicate, and respond well, you will likely build a much stronger bond. To build on the foundation of trust, you can take small steps such as taking their feedback on a particular system or issues, asking for suggestions, and dividing the operations into smaller parts to allow associates to work on them faster and give you work updates, etc.
Being open minded is another factor that will build the foundation of trust as you and the partnered company will listen to each other. Listening is the best practice to understand any situation before making any possible assumptions, so listen to all the vendors, outsourcing agencies, and partners to carry out collaborative work operations.
3. Transparency
Though it may sound like a subpart of the trust factor, it isn’t. Everyone working in the development chain has to be transparent about their work function and shouldn’t hide anything from the leaders. The same goes for the partners. Both parties should maintain transparency to avoid trust issues that will impact on development practices.
Transparent operations show integration among team partners and build a strong bond that elevates the software delivery rate.
4. Similar Goals and Vision
Vision and goals are the future aspects that reflect the company’s achievements and accomplishments. It also outlines how the manager and team members should collaborate to mold the organization in line with the vision. Therefore, both parties should adjust their operations to produce outcomes that are similar to their goals and should collaborate from a professional standpoint to meet clients’ needs.
Both parties must work on the what, why, how, and other questions that will help shape their vision in a clear and concise manner in order to more accurately define their vision and goals. The company’s core values should also be stated clearly so that employees can adhere to them and create software products accordingly.
Another strategy for managing a software development partnership company more successfully is to set long-term goals. These objectives cover the future of both businesses, technological developments, operational improvements, and customer satisfaction. Numerous significant partner organizations have comparable audiences, goals, and work processes. Therefore, it is crucial to mold every other process in accordance with your long term goals.
Conclusion
Software development partnerships are a great way to scale up and down your development objectives easily as per market needs to avoid losses. It’s been seen as the most effective method by many companies to maximize their business operations overseas and achieve maximum benefits. Having said that, finding and building software partnerships isn’t an easy task, as it requires research, validation, and software partner evaluation to find out which firms serve your needs. This article has all the insights that you need on finding and building software partnerships to start maximizing your business operations and achieve new heights in the market.
