Outsourcing is a practice undertaken by businesses to reduce costs. While this a widely accepted benefit of outsourcing non-core company operations, some company owners and managers are still sceptical about making a move; this is understandable, especially for business owners that are uncertain about pricing and don't know how to navigate uncharted territory.
In the software world, outsourcing support is a plausible yet arguable decision by top management. How can you ensure that your third-party vendor provides a smooth initial software audit that will prepare you to keep your operations running effectively? Read on to find out.
Challenges of Outsourcing Support
There are several reasons why companies remain sceptical about outsourcing software support.
Lack of Understanding Outsourced Support
The first step to outsourcing software support is understanding what it entails. The degree of support you need to outsource largely affects your costs and the transfer process. We recommend booking a pre-audit and audit with ScaleFocus to understand how our software support can assist you. Software support varies per business and may include tasks such as:
Managing self-help information of user webpages, mobile apps, and chatbots.
Managing passwords and authentication.
Managing operational issues with databases, code, and software architecture.
Fix patches, issue updates, perform vulnerability checks, and make regulatory updates.
Uncertainty In the Transfer Phase
Transferring processes from your in-house team to an outsourced vendor, if done incorrectly, can affect operations and service delivery. Knowledge acquisition and intense training by the outsourced team is vital to ensure that customers enjoy seamless processes while interacting with your business.
What's more, the lack of clear schedules and plans affects business performance. Scheduled and phased handovers yield better results because they allow you and the new vendor to analyse each phase for potential problems and fix them before they grow.
Unclear Cost Expectations
Uncertain cost expectations from the onset of the transfer are a recipe for disaster. You need clear definitions of roles to be outsourced and a specific cost you can budget. Vague descriptions of the outsourced services breed mistrust and anger, which may be redirected to your clients.
Fear of Sharing Knowledge
Opening your company to a third-party is a true source of fear for many businesses. Outsourcing could mean sharing your modes of operation, intellectual property, and confidential information. You need assurance that the vendor is informed, secure, and able to protect your business secrets.
Step 1: Pre-Audit
Having assessed your fears and worries about outsourcing, you need a partner that takes you through each phase correctly. ScaleFocus starts your journey to outsourced software support with a pre-audit, which begins with a one-hour survey.
Why a pre-audit? You're still on the fence about outsourcing your software support and would like a quote and a deeper dive into the services you're paying for. The pre-audit analyses your business to give you a reasonable cost estimate and timeframe required to switch to outsourced services.
We also give you a plan for the transfer of services and schedules to provide you with a fair estimate of the transfer period. This way, you can quit worrying about a long, strenuous, and unprofitable transfer period. We also prepare a plan for handover and support phases to ensure a smooth transition.
We use our experience with other businesses to prepare a template that estimates how we can provide adequate software support.
Step 2: Audit
Once you accept our software support services, we move into the official audit. We work closely with you, the management, and the IT team to understand your business, operations, processes, and services to clients. We confirm deployment, logins, and monitoring tools in place to ensure that we provide the best customer support.
When planned correctly, the software audit process is fast and successful. We aim to keep our audits below one month to ensure a fast, efficient, and successful handover. Once we ascertain the details, we roll out the official knowledge transfer to our staff and software support for your clients.
Step 3: Applying Improvements
Auditing your software helps shows you the realities of your software's performance. An audit uncovers any functionality glitches and areas in need of improvement. Once you discover issues with your software, you can make the necessary patches and improve business operations.
We audit the software and provide a report of all problems that need solutions for a smooth transition. Once we remedy any issues, we can provide exemplary software support, including maintenance and upgrades.
During the audit, you can expect the following:
Software architectural analysis: We analyze the architecture of the software to check:
Robustness: Can the software handle errors and debugging?
Modifiability: Can you make changes to the software or adapt it to a new environment?
Scalability: Can you increase or decrease capacity and resources with current needs?
Portability: Can you use the software in a broad range of environments?
Source code review: we analyze the code to ensure it provides feedback
Check and limit security risks
Check for mistakes
Ensure the code is readable
What Should You Expect?
Outsourcing your software support is an opportunity to enjoy exemplary services from experts without hiring them and managing their wages and benefits. What's more, you can pay for the services you request, rather than getting billed for random services. This makes your budgeting and financial planning more manageable because you know what costs to expect in terms of software support.
What's more, outsourcing your software support to a reputable company, such as Scalefocus provides quality assurance. As your business partners, we only provide software we are sure of and give recommendations we have tried and tested. Our experience with various software in the market has exposed us to various problems and provided us with the necessary knowledge to handle various software support issues.
At Scalefocus we focus on providing the best software support possible, which begins with gaining your trust. We help you understand the benefits of outsourcing software support and partner with you to give your customers and employees the software experience they deserve. Reach out to us for more information.