According to Statista, the software as a service (SaaS) market is steadily growing and is expected to reach $374.5B by 2028. Due to the global shift towards this business model, the demand for outsourcing SaaS has risen significantly.
In this article, you will explore the reasons why so many businesses opt for SaaS outsourcing and what they gain from it. Also, we will provide tips on how to choose a trusted outsourcing SaaS development provider.
Why should you consider outsourcing SaaS development?
SaaS is a cloud-based solution provided on a subscription or pay-what-you-use basis. Such solutions typically offer a range of tools and services for a specific business process. Two bright examples of SaaS are Dropbox as shared storage and workspace and Shopify as an ecommerce platform. Customers can access these services online via a browser, desktop, or mobile application.
Here are some reasons why outsourcing SaaS development is a good idea:
- SaaS solutions are multicomponent. Even an MVP development that has a limited number of features requires a skilled team and time;
- SaaS solutions offer continuous support, leveraging diverse cloud services and data management tools within their complex infrastructure.
- SaaS products need to continuously evolve to retain customers. Thus, providers need to respond to customer needs quickly, add features and integration capabilities, and scale;
- SaaS systems are usually integrated with third-party services, so it's essential to have all the required security practices in place.
How can you benefit from SaaS development outsourcing?
The SaaS model offers many benefits for solution development, maintenance, upgrades, and provisioning.
1. Development cost optimization
For businesses, outsourcing SaaS development is a more cost-efficient way to introduce their solution to the market. Outsourcing SaaS brings significant savings at an early stage of development and when the project scales up.
Moreover, outsourcing providers usually overtake the HR, employment, and infrastructure expenses. So, you optimize both the development and operational costs.
2. The ability to quickly kick off the project
One of the most significant advantages of outsourcing SaaS development is quickly setting up the team and launching the project.
If you choose to hire an on-site team, you need to find and recruit dozens of specialists (e.g., BAs, UX/UI designers, architects, developers, QA, and DevOps professionals) only to get a project running. It takes a lot of resources to compose a cross-functional team, train people, and then continuously expand it when the product evolves.
SaaS partners help to address this issue. Larger outsourcing vendors typically have the streamlined processes to assemble a development team or augment your in-house one quickly.
3. Reducing the time to market and scaling the team fast
To ensure timely project delivery, your outsourcing vendor needs to be able to engage specialists on demand as well as engage the right specialists at the right time.
However, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find talent these days. The world is experiencing a shortage of skilled tech talent due to the increasing demand for developers. According to Gartner, 86% of CIOs who participated in the survey stated they faced increased competition for qualified candidates, while 73% expressed concerns about IT talent attrition.
SaaS development outsourcing is a viable response to this challenge. This approach allows you to tap into a much wider talent pool. It also gives you the flexibility to ramp up your tech teams fast and speed up the development process.
4. Bringing in business and tech expertise
SaaS solutions require expertise in building and supporting infrastructure, cloud, data storage and management, application development, third-party integrations, and other domains.
Companies often partner with tech providers to bring new expertise to their projects. Vendors who work with high-load applications, cloud platforms, etc., help clients select the tech stack, choose third-party services, or integrate cloud computing.
5. Refine product strategy
Focusing on business objectives and strategic goals is essential for further growth and scalability of a SaaS product. Tech companies that have worked on SaaS projects for years contribute to the product strategy and help clients reach their business goals.
How to build an effective partnership with a SaaS outsourcing vendor?
Here are several tips on how to seek a reliable SaaS development outsourcing partner and establish a successful collaboration:
1. Build a strong tech team
SaaS development requires diverse expertise, so your vendor should be able to assemble a team of professionals from different areas. The SaaS project team usually consists of:
- Solution architects who make informed decisions concerning architecture;
- DevOps experts who work on the integration of all components of your solution and work with servers;
- Software developers who craft the code;
- A delivery manager who is a mediator between a client and a development team;
- A project manager;
- QA specialists.
Also, your SaaS outsourcing partner should have strong cloud expertise to host your SaaS effectively.
2. Establish agile processes
Agile software development brings vital benefits to businesses, and SaaS software development is no different. To maximize business value, your outsourcing vendor should have experience utilizing an iterative SaaS development approach. Here are several benefits you get with agile SaaS outsourcing:
- Accelerated product delivery;
- Enhanced ability to manage changing priorities;
- Improved quality;
- Reduced costs;
- Better cost and time predictability.
3. Choose the right tech stack
Today's technology offers various SaaS development tools to build a product. SaaS software usually has a complex architecture requiring different frameworks, libraries, and tools. Your outsourcing partner should have comprehensive expertise in these technologies to utilize them competently. The most popular tech stack for SaaS development usually includes:
- Server-side technologies. They do not differ from the common server-side web development ones. Your vendor can use Node.js, .NET, Java, PHP, etc. These technologies should be easy to use and customizable.
- Front-end technologies. JavaScript frameworks are one the most widely used in the market. Angular, React, and others are often used to deliver top-notch UI/UX design.
- Cloud platforms for hosting and maintenance. The majority of businesses use third-party providers to host their products. Cloud vendors like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS offer a wide choice of supporting software and DevOps tools.
4. Choose the right engagement model for cooperation
Before you start your partnership with an outsourcing vendor, you should select a cooperation model. There are three standard types of contract for outsourcing SaaS development:
Dedicated development team
This model is ideal for long-term projects with evolving needs. When a client seeks to create a product or enhance its software capabilities, this contract provides a team of software professionals solely dedicated to the project. The client may choose to actively participate in team management or entrust it to the vendor, ensuring complete control over the software product.
Time & Material (T&M)
The T&M model involves paying the outsourcing team for the actual hours worked and materials used in the project instead of a fixed sum upfront. It suits projects when costs and timelines cannot be accurately estimated. Without a set price or strict deadlines, the team can adjust requirements, change directions, replace features, and involve users throughout development.
Fixed Price
This type of contract establishes an exact cost estimate for IT services before the project begins and remains unchanged throughout the software development lifecycle. It is efficient when requirements, specifications, and costs are highly predictable. This model provides business owners with a clear understanding of the total project cost and eliminates any additional service fees during development.
Outsourcing SaaS development: Featured success stories
Here are several success stories to illustrate the benefits of outsourcing SaaS development:
1. Reducing time to market of SaaS solution for marketing automation
Code Worldwide helps its customers re-invent their marketing through technology and data. They provide adZU OS-a SaaS web solution for marketing automation used by more than 10,000 businesses in 113 countries. The client aimed to boost the scalability of their platform, manage an expanding client base, and facilitate integration with key technology platforms.
Our experts focused on improving performance and scalability, helping to optimize the platform by improving database queries and front-end refactoring. Additionally, our engineers efficiently coordinated the integration and release process for the adZU platform, managing multiple development teams across five different locations dedicated to its development.
N-iX has helped Code Worldwide to:
- Support a large number of tenants;
- Reduce time to market by improving the CI/CD process;
- Drive quality first approach by release flow ownership (N-iX teams are release owners for the whole product of 10 teams);
- Use the integration of the SAFe approach into the development pipeline.
N-iX professionals support the system, establish effective communication between services, and ensure stability.
2. Ensuring high SaaS security for the US-based manufacturer
Fluke Corporation is a company that manufactures, distributes, and services electronic test tools and software for condition monitoring. The client needed better visibility into asset conditions and to ensure the high performance, customization, and scalability of their solutions.
Together with N-iX, the client increased equipment uptime, reduced maintenance costs, and ensured high-security standards for Fluke SaaS applications. N-iX applied best practices in security architecture to SaaS applications in this project.
N-iX software engineers are engaged in improving the system's usability by incorporating the best UX/UI practices. Our engineers have provided DevOps expertise and helped enhance software development processes with CI/CD and the Git flow branching model.
Our team has helped the client to:
- Improve asset maintenance;
- Significantly decrease maintenance costs;
- Guarantee security and reliability of applications in the cloud;
- Meet high scalability and customization goals.
Why should you choose N-iX as your SaaS development outsourcing partner?
- With its profound cloud expertise, N-iX can help you implement software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) business models;
- Our team of 400 cloud experts has in-depth knowledge of microservices, DevOps, and Agile software development;
- The company offers different engagement models (Dedicated Development Team, T&M, and Fixed Price), so you can choose the one most suited to your business needs.
- N-iX is a partner to three leading cloud providers: an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, a Microsoft Solutions Partner, and a Google Cloud Platform Partner.
