Is Outsourcing Still the Best Way to Build A Mobile App?

According to Statista, in 2020, total worldwide mobile app revenue will be worth over 500 billion. No enterprising entrepreneur or Fortune 500 company can afford to ignore these kinds of numbers, especially with those figures set to keep rising through the early 2020s.

Outsourcing your mobile app development might seem the best way when it comes to getting a mobile app off the ground quickly. However, there are pitfalls to outsourcing, as well as advantages to in-house app development, and vice versa.

Five years ago, it’d have been an absolute no-brainer. With cheap, skilled labor exploding out of the east and plenty of app development services around, it made sense to outsource all digital development work, but in 2019, is that still really the case?

Getting the Most Out of Outsourcing

Outsourcing has always been a major part of all kinds of anti-micromanagement, maximized-profit business thinking. However, in the digital, internet age, it’s taken on an omnipresent tone, permeating all kinds of businesses and industries completely.

In 2018, the global outsourcing market was valued at $85.6 billion (Statista). Look at Tim Ferriss’ “4 Hour Work Week”, a bestseller built entirely on the promise of outsourcing as much as humanly possible. Outsourcing is not some magical cure-all though.

Like all services, once the demand outstrips the availability, prices start to rise. And quality, as far as the cheaper services are concerned, drops off sharply.

Services like app design and development are ideal for outsourcing. There are multiple services businesses draw the line at outsourcing; 89% won’t outsource strategic planning roles, and 80% won’t look at outsourcing sales.

When it comes to building the perfect mobile app for your start-up, you need to be taking the nature of the outsourcing market into play. On top of that, communication is the most outsource app development team’s key shortfall.

Finding yourself a mobile app development team capable of providing the full depth and scope of the investigative interview, as well as including the business in the later development phases is absolutely key.

Let’s Not Pretend In-House App Development doesn’t have Its Merits

Effective outsourcing requires a certain level of experience and understanding to get right. No start-up can afford to pay top-dollar for an app that doesn’t meet requirements, but how can businesses avoid this? Before anything else, in-house app development should be considered.

While it can mean the trouble of sourcing, hiring and building an effective and cohesive development team, that same cohesion and effective communication can help you avoid many of the costs incurred through miscommunication with outsourced app development companies.

As well as that major benefit, in-house mobile app development teams have another major advantage. Through generally being embedded in the company and service they’re creating an app for, not only are the communication issues of outsourcing avoided completely, but by integrating app development teams with the rest of a business, the business is fostering a much better level of product, goal and brand understanding.

Think About the Future, Ask the Key Questions

At the end of the day, businesses have got to be thinking about the future. While it might make sense in the short-term to produce a mobile app through effective outsourcing, is that going to be the last app a start-up needs? Or will that start-up be implementing much in the way of updates, developments, and changes?

Would it be more expensive, in the long-term, to outsource? Don’t forget, it’s completely feasible to use a combination of outsourcing and in-house team, especially with overlapping the development for a changeover. This can have its own shortcomings though.

At the end of the day, the key thing to realize is that while outsourcing out to the East’s glut of programmers and developers isn’t the gold rush it once was, it can still be an effective way to get an app to market quickly. On the other hand, if businesses are needing app developers on an on-going basis, maybe in-house could work better.