The right product strategy is the cornerstone to success in the business of software products. The companies, often called independent software providers, serve specific technology markets or application markets, as the case may be. Engineering the right product and managing the product through the various phases of its lifecycle; managing the dual risks: marketing risk and development risk; delivering the products faster to the market and the retaining the capacity to innovate ensure the economic returns and the market influence.

An excerpt from a recent Forrester Research's report The End of Product Development by Tom Grant states: “Technology companies labor for months or years on new products, only to find that customers are disappointed with the results. Product managers can take their companies through the transition from traditional product development to value development, a radically different approach that makes customers and providers alike happier with the results.”

Does outsourcing help allay this situation? Can an outsourced product-development partner take away the product engineering overhead and provide the capacity to innovate?

Says Gordon Brooks, CEO, Symphony Services, “Product development demands a lot more innovation than regular IT.” A lot of innovation happens during the stage of product engineering, some of which are not directly visible in the end product, adds Brooks.

We look at three recent cases of product development in the field of commercial application software to understand the value proposition of  the Outsourced Product Development (OPD).

Enabling Growth
The U.K.-based Torex Retail Holdings sells solutions for the retail industry. With customers like Harrods, Selfridges, Argos, and Tesco amongst others, Torex is targeting the worldwide retail segment. Says Graeme Cooksley, President and Chief Operating Officer, Torex, “Right now we have about 100 large customers worldwide but the potential is there to grow five-fold but we need the capacity to support this growth.” As a product provider, from a resource perspective, Torex needed to ramp up product development and a partnership with Palo Alto-based Symphony Services, an OPD company seemed appropriate. Under the multiyear partnership deal, Symphony works closely with Torex to drive product development and quality assurance initiatives focused on delivering innovative retail software solutions to market.

Symphony’s dedicated product-development team in India extends the capability and scalability of Torex’s global development teams. Together, the integrated groups will initially focus on development and quality assurance initiatives associated with the company’s flagship product line Torex Retail-J-POS, a modern, integrated and Web-enabled suite of in-store and central applications for medium and large retailers. Acting as a virtual extension of Torex’s development group, Symphony will also support select Torex end-customer service initiatives.

Right now, Torex and Symphony teams are working on version 2 of Retail-J and expects to release it by August this year. The Symphony team  has seventy people currently and the number is growing. According to Cooksley, it gives Torex a lot more productivity per dollar. It’s not so much about cost saving but about the speed at which products are delivered. Says Cooksley, “It takes time to get 100 people in the U.K. than to get 100 people in India, which is where the speed comes in.” This kind of speed is essential to handle a new and matured market like the U.S. with an increased portfolio of solutions.