Why Does Your Business Need Software Development Consultancy?

Many startup businesses fail at the software development stage. This is a common issue for companies that want to increase their online presence and provide users with software services but lack experience in the software industry.

They can choose software development consultancy to mitigate risks. Still, not all businesses understand the true potential of software development consulting services and the benefits they can offer.

We wrote this article to answer these questions and explain the main reasons and benefits of applying software development and consultancy on demand.

Software Development Consultancy Explained

Let’s start with the definition itself.

Software development consultancy services assume finding reliable tech experts familiar with your field for advisory and support during the whole software development lifecycle or its certain stages.

Commonly, IT consulting services are offered by different software development companies with broad experience in the IT field. Software consultancy services can be offered by:

• Chief Technology Officers (CTO) on demand
• Outsourcing development companies
• Senior and C-level developers

Each case offers similar benefits, such as general advisory, support during project planning, choosing the correct tech stack, and guiding the development team. However, depending on the selected approach, all preceding services also provide unique solutions.

For instance, a CTO on demand can help with project estimation during the discovery phase and can be a part-time partner, paid and engaged only if needed. At the same time, outsourcing technology partners aim at software development and consultancy, i.e., they offer support for software engineering in addition to general IT consulting.

Finally, senior and C-level specialists usually share advanced knowledge, increasing the team's awareness of the tasks. They are commonly used as tech/team leads during software development.

So, what are the other benefits of software development consultancy services, what common issues can they handle, and when should you invest in custom software consultancy?

Key Benefits of Software Development Consultancy for Businesses

There are many advantages and reasons to use software development consulting. Some of them are obvious, and some are not. Still, we can name a shortlist of key benefits of bespoke software consultancy, including:

• Improved Software Quality and Performance
• Faster Project Completion
• Earlier Risk Identification
• Improved Decision-Making
• Cost Optimization

Improved Software Quality and Performance

First of all, cooperation with independent IT consultants helps to ensure the highest software quality and performance.

To simplify it, when you find a bespoke software consultancy specialist, you will discuss your ideas and expectations from the project, clarifying technical requirements. Then, the IT consultant considers which tech stack is the most suitable to meet your expectations.

Independent software development consultants can also be dedicated, meaning they can directly advise in-house or other software engineers during the software development lifecycle. As a result, they can assist engineers, review code units, suggest solutions to face and handle errors or other challenges, etc.

Software quality and performance are among the core responsibilities of bespoke software consultancy: apart from telling businesses what and how to develop to succeed, software consultants also must ensure the quality of such developed solutions.

Faster Project Completion

Custom software consultancy also helps to boost project completion significantly.

Having a field expert on board helps predict potential bottlenecks or other challenges before they occur. First, independent IT consulting can help avoid delays or other inefficiency. It also helps to track progress and speed up decision-making by involving an expert's vast software development experience.

To sum up, custom software development consultants positively impact the development pace by advising the project team on decision-making and predicting the common mistakes or challenges that can or will occur later.

Frankly, it is hard to highlight particular examples when talking generally. However, if we specify the task, for instance, custom CRM development, you can get decent expertise on task prioritization, must-haves, and extra features to integrate for better results.

Besides, if you hire a software consultant, knowing the specifics of your project, you must look for advisors with proven experience in your industry AND software type. Thus, your software development consultants can cover the whole development lifecycle easily, bringing more insights and benefits and helping to automate numerous processes or even avoid unneeded steps.

Earlier Risk Identification

Once again, you must ensure your software development consultancy provider knows your niche and project specifics. This is the core factor that will define the efficiency of your cooperation.

Most software consulting services clients have little or no experience in the chosen software field. As a result, the first and most crucial benefit such services offer - is the previous experience in technologies and software.

It is not a secret that making the proper and efficient decisions on the topic you are familiar with is much easier. Judging from their previous experience, software development consultants can prevent you from making many mistakes and warn you about the potential risks before making any decision.

To rephrase, apart from offering ways to streamline the processes or ensure the quality of the results, custom software consultancy allows companies to identify and prevent risks in the early stages, saving precious time and resources.

Improved Decision-Making

One of the core reasons and benefits of involving custom software development consultants is improving decision-making during development.

Don’t forget: these experts are here to advise you during the project, not to develop it instead of you. It is the core difference between IT consulting and custom software product development services.

Thus, your central resource and benefit in such cooperation is the advisory, not the actual development.

On the one hand, it creates certain inconveniences and uncertainty, such as paying some experts for consulting instead of extending your team with experienced developers who will also participate in the development.

However, this feature of software development consultancy also suggests an advantage: working with software consultants involves not only advisory on development but can also be applied to other project-related aspects, including business analysis or consulting on other business processes and aspects.

For instance, your IT consulting company can examine and analyze other existing software systems and services to identify what can be improved, streamlined, and automated, providing your team with a detailed report and advisory on implementing changes.

Cost Optimization

Last, software consultancy services help with cost optimization, cutting expenses, and reducing the cost of custom software development. This statement might seem contradictory, knowing the prices for such services.

However, enlisting field experts on your side helps you avoid other spending by optimizing and automating various business processes, choosing the most efficient and suitable technologies, and avoiding countless mistakes.

From a long-term perspective, businesses can save time AND money during development, increasing their chances of success and ensuring the best software quality and efficiency possible.

As a result, in the worst case, spending on software development consultancy will be covered by savings during development. In the best scenario, though, you will save more time and resources than you spend on IT consulting.

Common Business Problems Solved by Software Development Consulting

To illustrate the benefits of cooperating with software consulting companies, let’s consider some of the most common business problems software consulting solves. The shortlist of business challenges covered by software development consulting includes:

• Inefficient business processes
• Lack of scalability and flexibility in existing systems
• Poor data management and difficulties in decision-making
• Challenges in adapting to new technologies
• Unclear software strategy and vision

Inefficient Business Processes

As mentioned before, software consultants analyze your business before assisting you with a project.

The first reason is to plan and design further advisory, meeting the business needs and expectations. However, while examining your business processes, they might (and most likely will) identify aspects that can be improved or automated.

Therefore, another important feature of software consulting is helping clients improve and streamline business processes to achieve the best possible performance.

Process automation doesn’t always include integrating CI/CD pipelines or optimizing similarly. The variety of possible solutions is much broader. It can include suggestions like AI business integrations for advanced data analysis or customer support, integrating existing third-party CRM and similar management systems, or even developing one from scratch, depending on the business specifics and needs.

Lack of Scalability and Flexibility in Existing Systems

Another reason for hiring software consultants is the need to optimize existing systems.

Once again, when hiring such advisors, you can be sure they will evaluate your existing solutions and related business processes. Still, cooperating with consulting companies doesn’t require starting new software development projects.

You can use such services to scale or improve existing software. Such cooperation prioritizes enhancing existing systems and IT infrastructure and will require in-depth examination.

Apart from obvious reasons like boosting software systems' performance or choosing features for further scaling, software development consultants can offer more radical solutions, like redesigning the system’s architecture or migrating to the cloud.

Such complex and resource-intensive solutions are used when the existing system lacks the capacity for further functionality scaling, cannot satisfy future business requirements, can’t handle new processes, or is incompatible with third-party services.

A software consulting company must perform in-depth analysis, pinpoint crucial challenges, and devise solutions to fulfill the tasks to find the best approach to satisfying the demands.

Still, the solutions for improved scalability and flexibility of existing systems can significantly vary, depending on the overall context and tasks.

Difficulty in Decision-Making Due to Poor Data Management

Let’s mention decision-making once again.

The truth is that custom software consultancy specializes in more than advising on demand. Apart from sharing their experience and offering consultations, such IT specialists ensure that you have enough knowledge and proper instruments to make decisions independently.

In other words, they won’t make the decisions for you but will advise you on which will be the most efficient and proper approach to each software-related issue. Additionally, they help create an efficient system capable of dealing with big data, analyzing and visualizing it for convenience.

Based on our experience in software consulting, most businesses need help with decision-making due to poor or absent data management and processing practices. Therefore, investing in data analytics solutions is worth ensuring further independence and seamless decisions.

One of the easiest ways to set up a well-organized decision-making environment is to build a custom dashboard for real-time reporting and data visualization. Moreover, it can be enhanced even more by integrating innovative solutions like artificial intelligence (AI). Such integration can boost the process of making decisions even more, providing business companies with insights and recommendations.

Difficulty Adapting to New Technologies

Software development consultancy can also help with new and innovative technologies like AI and machine learning (ML), supporting and advising businesses on existing solutions, which can be used for business optimization and automation.

Even tech giants with rich experience in software development might lack specific expertise in new-age technologies. The best example is Google, which still struggles with generative AI.

So, turning to software development companies for advice about emerging technologies is a widespread phenomenon. Outsourcing companies commonly have a lot of experience in multiple niches and fields and expertise in working with innovations and new technologies like AI, ML, Blockchain, and others.

Thus, consider hiring a tech partner for software development consulting if you want to integrate new software features, services, and technologies without experience. As a result, you can get valuable advice on how to incorporate new solutions and will get a step-by-step mentorship to ensure the success of such integrations.

It can include support in setting up personalized content recommendations using AI for marketplaces, integrating advanced chatbots for improved customer support services, and setting up a new blockchain. Long story short, don't hesitate to ask for expert consultations when stepping into an unknown field or software solutions.

Unclear Software Strategy and Vision

Finally, software development consultancy is a powerful solution for cases lacking software development strategy and vision.

As we already mentioned, one of the most influential services of tech consultants - is their field experience. Thanks to this, they can be involved in designing long-term software strategies for companies as they take their first steps in software development.

Regarding business specifics, whether a fresh startup or a company trying to create unique software solutions for existing products and services, each can benefit from cooperating with more experienced software developers.

Having such experts on board ensures realistic road mapping and deadlines, proper project estimation, and strategic planning for further software scaling and improvement.

Remember: Proper project discovery and planning are responsible for at least 50% of your success.

When Should You Invest in Software Development Consultancy?

Let's discuss when you might need software development and consultancy services. Long story short, the most common cases when businesses require software development and consultancy include:

• Launching a New Product
• Expanding or Scaling Your Business
• Struggling with Technology Choices
• Need for Digital Transformation

Launching a New Product

The first and most obvious scenario for applying for bespoke software consultancy is preparation for launching a new product.

In such cases, you are most likely representing a startup company that aims to create new software solutions with little or no experience in software development.

Yet, at this stage, you must also choose one of the most common types of consulting services and whom you are looking for. You can also combine various cooperation types. For example, you can benefit from having a senior developer on board as team/tech lead, managing and assisting the team during development, or even involving such specialists in planning.

Still, you should consider CTO on-demand services for project estimation and planning due to more profound experience in other fields like business analysis and software awareness. Such experts specialize in various tasks and processes, especially unrelated to the software lifecycle. They can help ensure that your software meets the business demands and expectations, creating a well-designed roadmap to stay on track and meet the deadlines.

Finally, cooperating with outsourced software development companies is the ultimate solution that satisfies all the previous processes and provides your business with full-fledged teams of software engineers. This helps to cut the expected time and save costs, meeting the software project demands and developing it for you.

Expanding or Scaling Your Business

Another reason for choosing software development consulting is the expansion of your business and used software.

When a business scales, it demands software solutions to scale, increasing the functionality of used systems, built-in services, functional capabilities, etc.

Such scenarios are common for companies with existing software solutions, so they also have experience working with software. However, software scaling and development are very different tasks, requiring various skills, experience, and knowledge.

Thus, even experienced businesses might require third-party involvement to consult on ways to scale business software.

Struggling with Technology Choices

Software consultancy services are regularly used by all businesses to make correct tech choices.

To rephrase, IT advisory is an excellent solution for companies considering integrating innovative technologies or new services they haven’t dealt with before.

For illustration, suppose you want to create a conversational AI for customer service but don’t know how or which AI model would be the best: should you develop such AI on your own, or is it possible to use existing artificial intelligence?

The easiest and most efficient way to answer these questions is to contact software consulting companies. Tech partners with proven experience in desired technologies and software solutions will simplify this choice and help you find the best way to embody your ideas.

Need for Digital Transformation

Finally, software development consultancy is a must-have service for companies planning full-fledged digital transformation.

Digital transformation is a severe and highly complex process that requires many resources and demands the highest level of software expertise. Yet, each modern business will eventually face the need for such transformation.

There are plenty of ways to ensure a successful digital transformation, yet the most effective is to choose software development consultancy services. Experienced software teams can plan the migration of IT architecture and infrastructure and choose the most optimal way to perform each of the transformation steps.