How to Accelerate Your IT Budget During Economic Uncertainty
With economic uncertainty on the horizon, teams face a two-pronged challenge of shrinking IT budgets and a global talent shortage. This leaves critical roles unfulfilled in many IT departments as organizations don’t have the funding to compete for top candidates against major players in Silicon Valley.
Other organizations may just be struggling to keep the lights on, or execute against their product roadmap.
More than ever, engineering teams need to make their department budgets go farther. How can they maximize their investments, and gain a competitive advantage during a difficult time?
Here are four ways to accelerate your IT budget:
1. Explore Global Talent
With remote work here to stay, organizations should consider widening their talent pools beyond traditional borders.
Most tech companies have already invested in remote infrastructure and policies for existing employees. It’s easier than ever to take advantage of untapped nearshore or offshore talent.
Offshore software development services are typically more cost-effective, so CTOs and tech executives can use a smaller portion of their budget to fill critical development roles. Additionally, offshore teams can flex to your needs and ramp-up quickly, reducing the time and resources needed to hire internally.
2. Invest in Automation
An initial investment in automation has compounding benefits. It saves time, money, and resources by reducing manual labor and allowing development teams to focus on higher-value work rather than repetitive tasks.
Automation is particularly advantageous in DevOps and QA testing, reducing time to release new products or versions while increasing quality of the software.
Critically, automation also reduces burn-out among the development team during a time when attrition is high.
While not every organization will be positioned to make this investment, those who are struggling to fill critical roles should consider ways to increase efficiency and ease the burden on your existing team.
3. Adopt MVP Software Development Models
Many organizations may be looking to maintain existing products instead of releasing new ones; however, those that manage to produce new products during economic uncertainty may stand out when competitors halt innovation to save funds.
An MVP software development model produces a functional software product without a broad set of features.
MVPs allow teams to develop a product quickly and receive feedback and/or “fail fast” before investing a ton of time and resources into a fully polished product.
This approach enables organizations to build up an audience before a full release, increasing chances of success without high costs.
For a quick overview of the MVP development model, check out this video:
4. Strengthen Your Data Pipeline
Investing in AI technology can be expensive, and many software companies may hesitate to adopt emerging technologies during uncertainty.
That said, they can prepare their data foundation so that future AI technology can be implemented smoothly.
Beyond AI, a robust data pipeline will lead to better analysis that can reveal critical insights on business performance.
During times of economic uncertainty, information gleaned from your data can help you determine which approaches have the best risk/reward ratio.
Economic uncertainty has no easy answers, but software companies can make strategic moves that increase their chances of coming out on top as headwinds settle.
While maintaining the status quo can be tempting, the approaches listed here will help set up organizations for longterm growth, with minimal risk and tightened budgets.
To learn more about how to leverage global talent and these development best practices, talk to the KMS team.
