A creative, transparent, and ingenious IoT development partner can deliver a successful product faster and more efficiently than building an in-house IoT development team from scratch.
IoT has taken the main stage in technology development over the past years. The advancement of technology and the ever-changing business requirements have accelerated the widespread adoption of IoT across various industrial verticals. It is predicted that there will be 9 billion connected devices across the globe in 2024. This widespread adoption has pushed the companies to inevitably outsource IoT product development to external partners to assist with their workflows.
Finding the right development partner can be very challenging, yet it plays a very important role in determining the quality of the product and its performance. This article expands on providing pointers on how to select the right IoT product development partner.
Key factors to look for in an IoT development partner
Selecting the right product development company could be beneficial in various ways but is a very demanding task as well. Below are some of the important factors to look for while selecting an IoT development partner for a firm.
Expertise in IoT field
The most important factor to consider when selecting a development partner is to ensure if they have the necessary resources and expertise in the field to carry out the development process. Preferably, an IoT product development firm must be experienced in at least two of the below areas:-
- Mechanical engineering
- Electronics engineering
- Software and cloud development
- IoT protocols for wireless connectivity
- IoT protocols for data transmission.
- Big data storage, processing, and analytics
- IoT security
While one may understand the IoT architecture, no company can practically have expertise in all the layers of IoT stack, but they should have the mastery in at least a couple of disciplines and then have their own partner network to work on the other disciplines on a subcontracting basis.
Market reviews
These days, many websites provide reviews about companies. The development partner must have a good track record of delivering high-quality products. The reviews for companies can also be found in the testimonials section of their website. The clients/ customers can also be contacted to know about the services of a company.
Testing approach and flexibility
IoT product development firms must carry out testing in a robust and automated environment rather than customized environments. The development partner must also possess the right tools and team of developers to test and maintain the application. Even when the application is scaled up, the development partner must be capable of maintaining and managing all the complex tasks.
It is also very important to maintain a good relationship with development partners and ensure that they are on the same page. This will be very helpful in making necessary changes to the product during the development stages without any fuss. Also, the company must be transparent in explaining its budget and customer requirements. This will enable the development partner to arrive at a solution that is best suited to the company while satisfying the customers’ needs.
Taking ownership of end-to-end development
The development partner must be able to carry out the whole of the development process. Either it is software-related or hardware-related, the development firm must have the right teams, tools, and technology to accomplish the development process.
The development firm must also develop products by implementing various security protocols. Ensuring security in an IoT product is highly essential as it involves a network of various devices and servers; and prevents the IoT network from cyberattack and data leakages.
High-end infrastructure
While selecting the end-to-end IoT development company, it is essential to ensure that they incorporate new IoT technologies, ideas, and tools to carry out the development process easily. As the development company takes care of product development right from initial stages to deployment and maintenance, it is advisable to evaluate their infrastructure and discuss the requirements to ensure if they can help with the development process with their available resources.
To make the process of finding the best product development firm easier, marketplaces like Clutch, Libelium, and Ioterra offer various ways to find the ideal development partner. They offer a set of questions to understand the company requirements. Based on the collected information, a matching algorithm recommends multiple development firms best suited for fulfilling the project requirements. Businesses can then shortlist the firms they like to go ahead with their RFP process. By using IoT marketplaces to choose the right product development process, the time invested will typically be reduced to half.
Advantages of outsourcing development services
As IoT products are a combination of hardware and software, developing such products with the in-house team would require the necessary expertise, tools, technologies, and funds to fulfill the requirements. But outsourcing services from product development firms have various advantages such as being cost-effective as the company only has to pay for the one-time services and also reduces time-to-market as the product is developed by experts in respective fields.
Outsourcing also helps in improvising the existing product as the product is reviewed by people with deeper knowledge in the field of IoT. Whilst the entire development process is being handled by the development partner, companies can focus on increasing their organization’s capabilities by focusing on other important areas such as marketing and operations.
The right IoT development partner can take care of the entire development process while adapting themselves to the ever-changing businesses or customer requirements and expectations. A creative, transparent, and ingenious IoT development partner can deliver a successful product faster and more efficiently than building an in-house IoT development team from scratch.
