Why should you opt for an external engineering company? Due to the benefits of outsourcing electronic design services. These can be less expensive, more efficient, and better than in-house engineering. Why is it so, and what are the other advantages of outsourcing? Find it out in this article!
The Benefits of Outsourcing Electronic Design
So, why is outsourcing a viable option for electronic design services? It all goes down to the benefits. Let’s take a look at them now.
Lower Costs (Short Term)
Firstly, outsourcing electronic design benefits your company by generating lower costs. In principle, it’s significantly less expensive in the short term: you pay for the teams’ effort, they design and develop the solution, and that’s it. For in-house development, you would need to continuously pay salaries or make significantly more considerable equipment investments.
Yes, if you need constant development for 2-3, or even 5 years, outsourcing will be more expensive. But, if it’s a one-off project, or you are going to produce small quantities (AKA: your equipment and machinery would take years to generate a return on investment), you’ll save thousands of dollars by outsourcing electronic design.
Faster Time-to-Market
Do you feel bound by a deadline? Perhaps you need to outpace the competitors? That’s when you’ll benefit from outsourcing electronic design services! In general, they are faster, since multiple experienced engineers work on your project, and your project only. However, you can also partially outsource a team—get some external experts and align them with your current workforce to speed the process up.
Access to Talent and Equipment
If you rely only on your in-house equipment and talent, you’re limited by it. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t good, but realistically speaking: how many engineers can you hire?
On the other hand, a specialized engineering company will have large engineering teams, with diverse experience and specialties. This means that they can provide you with knowledge in areas you wouldn’t be able to cover on your own.
The same goes for equipment—such a company has multiple solutions in place to carry out various projects. You, on the other hand, are limited by your existing infrastructure, which might work for the most common electronics you develop, but might just not be enough for the one game-changer you have in mind.
Compliance and Security
Outsourcing electronic development services might be better from a cybersecurity & compliance perspective. Your engineers, if hired specifically for the job, might not have sufficient experience in your industry; hence, they struggle to maintain compliance or build enough cybersecurity for the risks in your niche. On the other hand, an experienced engineering company will know exactly what your electronics need to have to get quality certifications and maintain compliance with the regulatory requirements.
Specialist vs. Generalist
Finally, if you outsource, you hire specialists. We don’t mean specialists in electronics development, but rather in its specific elements, such as:
- PCB design,
- firmware development,
- electronics testing,
- and other.
On the other hand, when you hire an in-house engineer, they become generalists—individuals with decent knowledge in all these fields but without in-depth expertise on specific parts of the process, which might be reflected in the final product’s quality.
Conclusion
Outsourcing electronic design services offers multiple benefits for your business. Nevertheless, it’s not always a good option. To extract the true value, you need to work with companies that focus on communication and try to tailor their services to your goals. Otherwise, the quality might suffer and many of the benefits won’t be applicable anymore.
Need help designing electronics? Contact us at Conclusive Engineering!