As head of our Product Strategy and Development practice here at York IE, I get one question from prospective clients all the time:
“How are you different from outsourced development shops?”
Clients have switched to York IE after experiencing common troubles with outsourced dev resources: a lack of clear communication, uncertainty around cost and overly transactional work that missed the big picture.
Why? Because we’ve developed a new type of dev experience for growing technology companies. We combine strategic technology advisory with world-class developer talent, helping you with everything from roadmap strategy to user experience design to cloud architecture to mobile apps. The end results are high-quality dev work, fewer communication headaches and a holistic, sustainable way to address your product needs.
Don’t just take our word for it; Jeff Pollock is one of our loyal customers. He’s the CEO of Idencia, which partnered with York IE to build its manufacturing tech platform:
“By working with York IE, we immediately realized over $4,000 per month in savings on our cloud bills and have a path to save even more with projects underway,” Pollock said. “By working with an expert SaaS strategist, backed by a scalable team of experienced full-stack developers, York IE helps us meet customers’ needs and grow our business faster.”
Let’s examine five things that set us apart from traditional outsourced dev resources:
1. The York IE India team works full-time — and is fully ingrained in our culture.
Most of our Product Strategy and Development team is based in the York IE office in Ahmedabad, India. We’re proud to have a growing team of over 100 full-time employees, all of whom speak fluent English.
We don’t hire short-term help for your project, and we don’t simply “throw things over the wall” to our team members in India. These 100-plus employees are fully part of the team; they join our monthly all-hands calls, participate in internal Slack channels and write blog posts on our website.
The head of York IE India, Kalrav Parsana, has helped organize guilds that work across functions. Our front-end and back-end engineers, quality assurance specialists and product managers are constantly collaborating and sharing cross-functional knowledge so they can continuously improve.
The entire development team embraces a video-on culture, and they will often join calls with your team so they have context directly from the source. We’re all about embedding ourselves in your company so we can share in your successes.
If you’re worried about the time difference, don’t be! We typically hold meetings through noon Eastern with many of our clients.
2. Every client is assigned a U.S.-based, senior-level product strategist.
Our squad structure is a big selling point.
Overseeing every project is one of our senior-level product strategists based in our Manchester, N.H. office. Evan York and Janet Wittenberg are seasoned professionals who’ve spent decades successfully building SaaS products for companies big and small. Our product strategists are key points of contact throughout your engagement. They’re here to communicate requirement changes, escalate necessary items and help you navigate any challenges.
In addition to our developers, your squad may benefit from fractional product management, UI/UX design and QA expertise, which are often later-stage considerations.
3. Our pricing and packaging are more advantageous for SaaS roadmaps.
SaaS development is all about constant iteration: something we’ve reflected in our pricing and packaging.
Most of our clients employ our services via a monthly retainer. We’re here to be your partner in maintaining your growing feature set and iterating for your users.
The fixed monthly retainer allows us to bring more flexibility and apply our learnings to evolve your scope. This is especially useful in an agile project development environment. We’ll stick to the highest-priority items on the roadmap, but we’re also able to pivot to new tasks that are uncovered as we work.
This structure also helps with budgeting. You’ll have more certainty in your monthly bill, rather than relying on an outsourced shop that charges you on an hourly or per-task basis.
4. We play the long game.
Speaking of quick fixes, we believe your development partner should provide much more.
I’ve heard clients voice frustration with the overly task-oriented nature of other dev resources. They’ll often hear things like “You asked for XYZ, so that’s what I did.” What they’re missing is an eye on the bigger picture.
We try to conduct our process with a holistic approach. Our team executes what you need, not just what you say.
For example, we strongly believe in the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Our teams take the time to code the infrastructure as well as the software. This helps ensure the stability and efficiency of future development, makes releases go smoother and reduces manual changes that cause issues.
The longer we partner together, the more we can sink our teeth into projects and use our institutional knowledge to keep improving.
5. We have additional resources to help you strategize for company growth.
Perhaps the best part about working with York IE is that we’re more than just a product development agency; we’re a strategic growth and investment firm. In addition to product expertise, we offer Advisory as a Service across marketing communications, finance, go-to-market and more. This strategic guidance is key for integration points, milestones and product launches.
Our cross-functional services give us a more holistic approach to building your app or website. Your company can certainly engage our services across these functions, but we’re also happy to simply tap our team members for questions and guidance on your behalf.
York IE is here to be your strategic growth partner. We’re proud to offer product development services that transcend the traditional dev resources at your disposal. Set up a chat with our team today to learn how we can help you build products that move your business forward.
