Growth Main Goal for Dutch ISVs: Offshore Development the Catalyst

coMakeIT and ICT Update are carrying out their yearly benchmark amongst Independent Software Vendors, and the first results are surprising: achieving growth is one of the main topics on the agenda of the ISV’s.

The economic difficulties seem to have limited effect on software companies. Over 70% of the respondents expect growth in 2013. In many cases, this growth is due to internationalization. Surviving the crisis is not the main concern, although cost savings are important to almost 25% of the respondents.

Over half of the respondents are aiming for growing revenues as their most important goal. Half of the respondents expects to achieve that by launching new products, and over a quarter of the respondents expects growth form the expansion of existing products. Increasing customer satisfaction and innovation are also important. Surprisingly, cloud and mobile are not scoring high on the top priority list.

Highly Qualified Staff 

A major challenge for ISV’s appears to be the availability of qualified developers. This is a serious blocking factor for growth. For many companies this has been the main reason to look abroad for talent. Two well known Dutch ISV’s who have successfully done that are Exact, a Dutch Multinational with their own development center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Planon, with a development center in Hyderabad India, managed by coMakeIT.

Both these companies have benefited greatly from their decision to move abroad. Exact and Planon have both been interviewed about their experiences. The ISV benchmark results and the interview have been combined into an article in the Dutch magazine ICT Update.

The article can be downloaded free of charge (English translation available!).

Click the below button to download the article or the english translation

Download Dutch Article

Download English Article

For the particular case of Planon, we have witnessed continued growth over the past years. Planon has been doing great in sales and the big blocking factor of lack of talent has been overcome ever since Planon chose to start their offshore initiative with coMakeIT.

In parallel, we have seen the offshore team of Planon grow from 8 to 50 employees, and we have seen that both development of standard products and the delivery of services to customers can be done from the offshore development center.

Being a part of such success and being a catalyst for such growth makes us proud!