How to Find the Right Technology Partners for Your Startup
By: Doreen Burger
Tags: Startup, Technology Companies, Technology, Technology Partner

Every successful business is built on successful partnerships. Particularly in the IT sector, choosing the right technology partner for startups is a big decision. You need to ensure they add value to your business and offer services that will help your business grow.

There are several factors to consider while choosing a technology partner for startups.

What to Look for in Your Technology Partner?

Strong Business Understanding

A suitable tech partner for your business will have plenty of experience helping clients across multiple industries to meet their business goals. They have a strong understanding of their role, which is supporting business agility and reducing costs by modernizing their IT infrastructure and applications. The technology partner you choose should have knowledge and awareness about your business domain, your target audience and know how to help you grow through their expertise.

Working Experience

Entrepreneurs choosing technology partners for their startups tend to look at the cost first. However, the truth is experience matters more than the cost because, with an experienced partner, you can recover your partnership expenses eventually. An experienced tech partner understands how technology engages with existing infrastructure and systems and can provide a firm plan for your business.

To understand the duration and quality of experience a technology firm has, you can research them a little to find out about their past customers and clients and understand the types of successes they have achieved. If you find them on the first page of Google and have a list of completed projects with businesses similar to yours, that is a good sign. Go through their feedback and reviews to get a better understanding of their service offerings and quality.

Also Read: Top 10 Mobile App Development Trends to Watch Out for in 2021

Designing Solutions on a Budget

The technology partner you choose should understand the importance of budgets and costs while building solutions for you. Small businesses and startups usually have a lean budget, so the design needs to be broken into smaller chunks. This way, you can roll out your minimum viable product at least within your budget. As business and audience size increases, the solution can be scaled up to match them.

Deadlines and TAT

A technology partner should get along with your team quickly and turn deliverables around in a shorter time. While screening partners, check how quickly the tech firm developed past projects and solved business problems and how they respond to requests for changes. Also, look into the original project deadline and whether the technology partner adhered to that timeline. What could some of the causes for delay have been? Speedy delivery alone is not the goal. The aim is to understand requests, deliver high-quality outputs and respond to change requests in the shortest time.

Trust and Transparency

It would be best if you had open conversations with your technology partners. This would include conversations about resources, time management, timelines, and business goals. Every tech partner you choose should keep you updated on any changes in timelines or deliverables through status reports. It helps if your tech partner has a simple roadmap of project milestones to aid non-technical clients in understanding how the implementation and different stages will look in the end.

Customer Support

Unexpected downtime and app failure are huge problems in today’s digital-first businesses. This can frustrate customers and negatively impact services and your brand. A technology partner for startups will ensure that they can offer product support even after the development is complete. This includes maintenance services to ensure operations run smoothly, along with analytics that can help you scale up or make strategic decisions. They understand that their solutions need to match the pace of your business.

Considering each of these factors will help you make the right choice for your business.