Product development is facing a fundamental challenge. Most companies are under pressure to bring new products to market more and more quickly, and companies in many sectors must work harder to ensure that they address the needs of ever-narrower customer segments.

These pressures are particularly acute in fast-paced markets, such as those for high-tech, manufacturing, energy, medical, transportation and consumer goods. In a competitive market with complex products that require large investments and long development times- Product development is a risk that needs to be managed efficiently.

Issues in Offshore Development

While offshore development centers have become competitive necessity for mature ISVs, doing it without an experienced partner is fraught with risks. The challenges of establishing the core administrative, physical, communication and operational infrastructure itself can be overwhelming before productive work can start.

Ramping down local operation and ramping up offshore operation requires careful planning and execution. Lack of prior experience in managing this delicate transition can create insurmountable challenges. Once the operation is established managing attrition and adding new skills can be daily a challenge. If a couple of key resources are lost, the whole operation can be jeopardized and benefits can vanish quickly due to loss of productivity.

Even after products are successfully launched through an offshore development center, there are other problems. Older versions need to be supported and new versions need to be developed, customers demand tailored solutions requiring custom development. Expanding the market requires porting to different databases, application servers, from J2EE to .NET and open source stacks can not be ignored.

How Uberall's Product Development Practice Can Help
Uberall PDO is a true global product outsourcing firm with customers in United States, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific

Through its unique Intellectual Asset Practice, Uberall brings a strategic mindset to PDO helping leading companies worldwide to improved and sustainable profit and competitive advantage.

We dig deep into the product, its application, current and future user mindset, reasons that can outlive product life-time and sustain value for customers and numbers, as the basis for creating profitable solutions.

We then align the strategic imperatives with a new approach to product development. An "Information based' product development approach improves the efficiency of the entire development process, from generating ideas to launching products. This approach allows us keep our customer's product options open longer than most of their rivals thus protecting IP and increasing value. At the same time, it allows us to create high quality products, quickly and efficiently.