They will tell you that their mission is to take excellence in support and customer experience to the next level. They will promise and that will have words like scalability and agility in that. But does that work for you?
We know you must have gone through enough projects over time so to be able to understand and list out the areas that you should focus on before you take on a new vendor or switch from one to another.
What exactly do you look for while selecting a vendor?
Size
Does the size of an organization really matter? You might get hold of a local 10 people company where they wholeheartedly work for your project. They are enthusiastic, hardworking and waiting for opportunities from someone like you. You can hire them for trying out a long term project as a test case.
Generally you meet the CEO, he shows you the office, you meet the team they explain you things with jargons you probably miss, but then you get a mail from the 300 people company you had been working with who come in a quite expensive and are mostly impersonal. They use their standard email formats and it takes a lot of time to get things done.
And then you find the ones that come in between these both, they have more than a few people to work with, they are structured and they know their bit. Mostly it's these kinds of companies that seems to work with the most companies looking to get their work done.
Experience
How much work a company has done can give you a rough idea of the experience they have, the number of years is mostly a secondary factor. A case study or examples of the work they have done can show you actually what they are capable of.
Their websites might show you content that speaks volumes about the work they have done, but always for sure look into the previous experience and profiles of developers. Work out with them to run a test, do they go ahead and walk the extra mile?
References
Who has the company worked for? Do they have the kind of expertise you are looking for?
Talk to someone from a former project they have worked on, know about the team you are evaluating about. They will of course come with recommendations and references, check with them
Location
With project management tools and remote options becoming easier and of a lower cost than onsite ones, you should seriously consider hiring a remote team.
No resource drainage and a lot of revenue gets saved that you can put into better use. You do not have to worry about proving laptops or tea or coffee or sharing office space.
Management
How the company or the team that you would work with can make or break your project. Communication is the key to anything good.
While productive and quality work is a very necessary element when you outsource a part of your project, management of that work goes hand in hand.
Employees
Happy employees will have a lot less to complain and where positivity is high so is productivity, work will get done faster and changes will happen quicker.
Find out how the employees are rated, how they are treated, will give you an idea about how your project will be handed. It is nothing extraordinarily different in there.
Open Source Contribution Score
If your company deals in open source or you are into using FOSS, make sure to check their contributions. That speaks volumes.
May be at times experience might fall short of what you were expecting but if they score a goal here, it is of worth to give it a shot.
How does the industry speak of them?
Mostly companies who deal and work with FOSS need to have an online presence in the community, there are companies who are spoken highly of because they know the value of collaboration.
They give back, and they have a diverse range of tasks added to their profile as a badge of honour. Generally there will be founders who speak fondly about them and founding companies who showcase their tasks. What more to be vouched by the very people who own something that they work in.
With every vendor you will find it works like the Yin-Yang, there will be something good in the bad and something bad in the good. Your focus should always be work, but of course you will need to find what is worth compromising for. Check out if you still have doubts. Do not miss the next, we get into the nitty gritties of CMS for your website, cuz its all about content!
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