Outsourcing vs. Embedded Resources: Which is the better option?

If you’re developing technology for the pharmaceutical industry, it’s likely you’re trying to balance delivery of a substantial product roadmap against a tight budget and a competitive market for hiring new designers and developers. It’s no wonder that so many companies are looking for outsourced resources to accelerate product development timelines. The question is, how do you choose the best option when it comes to outsourced resources?

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Given the pressure on budgets it is a common misconception that outsourcing to overseas agencies is the fastest, most cost-effective way to meet project timelines. However, this is often not the case, and there are very few CTOs that will give a glowing recommendation for this approach. In reality, nuom is frequently called in to rescue projects that have fallen behind timelines or failed to deliver altogether.

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Despite the promise made, all too often these outsourcing agencies are simply engineering houses with very little (if any) experience in the pharmaceutical industry. They use an outdated model of throwing resources at the problem without truly understanding the underlying objectives or potential issues that must be accounted for. There is very little opportunity for meaningful conversation and also very little control of the outcome once the project has started.

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The result is companies that take this approach may get a solution, potentially quickly, but at the end of the day they take longer to get to a final product because there are so many iterations, so much back and forth, and so many people have to get involved (which is incredibly frustrating on all fronts).

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So how is working with an embedded team different?

When you outsource to an external team the project is a contract, with little control and little meaningful conversation. Embedded resource takes an entirely different approach by bringing in resource to work closely with you as part of your team, whether that is entirely virtual or spending time working in-house alongside your team, it leads to a deeper understanding and a lot less back and forth as the project progresses.

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“nuom resources spent time working in our offices, integrating with the development team, which was an efficient and effective way of working.”

Daljit Cheema

Founder and CEO, Pharmaseal

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The nuom model is to provide a complete product team with the skills to deliver against the roadmap. This includes engineers, designers, and project/product managers who are experienced in the pharmaceutical industry, and all used to working together to deliver using our proven design process, Pace.

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“Bringing in a team that understands interaction design, how to work with a piece of software, how to build something where you can break a problem down into discrete parts, or how to design for a broad population – having that skill on top of the domain knowledge we had within the organization provided a whole new level of polish and much more clarity to the end-user.”

Gavin Birchnall

BD Solutions Consultant, Exco InTouch

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This mix of team members is critical, having an experienced product manager to drive the project forward, keep the team (from nuom and the inhouse product team) focused, and ensure project objectives are met. It is also really important to include designers as part of the overall team, rather than just expecting them to ‘work their magic’ at the beginning or end of the program.

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“Historically in this industry new ideas typically become developer-led, so although the end-product may be very practical unfortunately it causes confusion to the end-user and may introduce more problems than it solves.”

Gavin Birchnall

BD Solutions Consultant, Exco InTouch

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The other important factor is the process that is taken. Many outsourcing solutions follow an old thought process of ‘more engineers are better’, when actually it’s the process that creates the better, more efficient solution. We work closely with your inhouse team following the Pace process to rapidly identify key requirements, agree objectives for the application, and create high fidelity prototypes within just a few weeks - which accelerates product development timelines significantly.

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False economies

There is a misconception that it’s more expensive to use a local, experienced agency and that outsourcing overseas will be faster and cheaper. This hypothesis falls down on two levels; firstly, it does not take into account the cost of endless iterations when you don’t get it right first time, and secondly, with modern design processes agency fees are often comparable – and you get the benefit of industry experienced teams without a long, expensive recruitment process!

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So, next time you need to source external resource to build a new development that will be at core of your business, think carefully. Are you going to entrust this important product, that you need quickly, cheaply, efficiently out to somewhere where you have so little control? Or are you going to choose a dedicated team that can be embedded as part of your inhouse team to deliver your mission-critical program?

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“It was a collaboration. We felt supported, like we were one team.”

Target MyHives Product Owner