While your employees are the most qualified engineers for designing and developing your products, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best fit for developing your test systems. Oftentimes, your engineers may not have the necessary hardware and software expertise for designing and developing test systems, or they simply may not have the availability to take on another project.
Instead, a third-party company may be a better fit to help you build a reliable test and measurement solution that can meet your stringent time and budget specifications without sacrificing technical requirements. As experts in developing test systems for third parties, G Systems’ engineers typically hear companies express several common fears when it comes to subcontracting their test system development. But, based on our nearly three decades of experience, we have a variety of tactics to help address all these fears. Let’s take a brief look at each one.
Fear #1: Getting Started with a Third Party is Difficult
One of the most common fears about getting started that we hear is many companies think they need to write extensive requirements documents to hand off to the third party. These writing requirements documents often seem like a daunting process. G Systems has multiple plans in place, ranging from writing the requirements together to agile approaches that do not use traditional requirements documents, that will alleviate this common fear of writing requirements.
Fear #2: A Third-Party Solution will be Expensive and Add Time to the Schedule
When considering the costs of working with a third party versus developing a test system internally, be sure to evaluate all the internal costs including indirect and opportunity costs, training costs, and long-term maintenance costs, to ensure you have an accurate comparison. Regarding timing, it is important to consider that a third party is fully dedicated to test system development and does not need to worry about keeping product development moving in parallel with the test system.
Fear #3: How Can I Be Sure that I Will Receive a High-Quality Test System?
At G Systems, we ensure quality through our excellent track record. We have extensive experience and we bring the wisdom needed to create test systems that assure the highest quality end product at the lowest testing costs. We have a team of tenured, multi-disciplined engineers and technicians who work in a culture of collaboration, proven best practices, and transparency.
Fear #4: We Will Lose Control of the Process
Companies often fear that by passing off work to a third party they will be out of the loop and no longer have control of their system design and development. At G Systems, we know every company is different, so we do not promote a one-size-fits-all approach to client involvement in projects. Instead, we want to ensure our clients feel as involved, or as hands-off, as they want to be. We also believe in open communication and do not want our customers to fear they will be constantly hit with engineering change orders because they suggest a new concept or feature.
Fear #5: The Handoff for the Final Deliverable Will Be Painful
Just like our approach during development where we want our clients to be as hands-on or as hands-off as they would like, when we finish a project, we want to make sure our customers have the level of support they need. We can deliver as much, or as little, post-deployment support as our customers want.
If your company is struggling to develop a test system but reluctant to subcontract development to a third party, we get it. Since we specialize in test system design and development, when working with us, our customers can do what they do best—product development and test execution—and we can do for you what we do best—test system development. Together, we can efficiently build the most reliable and cost-effective test systems to meet all your testing needs.
Download the full white paper, Addressing the Top 5 Fears About Subcontracting Test System Development, to learn more about how we can help you develop your next test system.