Full Control Over Your Product with Proprietary Technology and In-house Team
In today’s competitive landscape, having full control over the development and roadmap of a product is crucial for success. The standard of building, especially for XR, is to outsource development to external teams and rely on technology developed by other companies. This by itself is not wrong, but it can bring difficulties when it comes to truly shaping the product according to certain goals and vision.
With an external team and off-the-shelf solutions, the product has to be aligned with other clients and priorities of the vendors. While convenient, it means ceding control over much of the product’s key features and functionality. In contrast, an in-house team focuses only on company’s needs. Every aspect of the design, from the user experience to the technical implementation, can be tailored to perfectly fit the company’s own purpose. And by developing proprietary technology from the ground up, restrictions from external SDKs or APIs can also be largely avoided.
In this article, we’ll explore how all these factors play out design and features of the XR product and how to keep ahead of the competition.
Freedom in Product Design and Development
A full autonomy in determining the design and features of an XR product is crucial to realizing the vision and gaining a competitive edge. Having an in-house development team is an empowering move for the company to make any design decision the management sees fit for optimizing the product. Every feature, interface and functionality flows from the company’s strategic priorities. The product roadmap is shaped entirely by goals for product-market fit, user experience and business outcomes.
An in-house setting allows for more freedom to experiment and pursue riskier or unconventional ideas. If an innovative new feature has the potential to benefit the product, the team can implement it efficiently. They understand the company’s specific needs and unique context for the feature. The result is an XR product tailored exactly to the company’s goals — small details, visual styles, and interactions all reflect that. The ownership is realized with no external constraints on either design or direction.
Agility in Product Roadmap and Iteration
For an XR platform, being able to quickly adapt the product roadmap and iterate on new features is essential to meet the rapid pace of innovation in the XR field. The team provides the ultimate agility in responding to shifts in priorities, customer feedback and market changes. As the team works exclusively to realize the company’s XR vision, they can pivot the product roadmap and accelerate any key initiatives immediately.
Roadmap adjustments usually take weeks or months to implement through outsourcing. The in-house team understands the nuances and technical dependencies within the product, and can optimize workflows for rapid iteration. Release schedules are determined solely by company priorities, so updates can be shipped according to the strategic timeline, irrespective of an external vendor’s capacity.
If customer research reveals an important gap in the platform’s functionality, the team can get to work right away prototyping solutions. They have full visibility into technical constraints and dependencies, whereas an external vendor would need time to evaluate feasibility. The time spent on this can be capitalized on new insights.
Securing Data and Ownership
For any technology product, but especially one collecting sensitive data like in this case, ensuring security and ownership of customer information is paramount. By developing the platform yourself, or more, by running the platform by the proprietary engine, the company defines and implements all security measures within the software architecture. No external vendors have access to configure or adjust security, giving a peace of mind that only trusted and trained engineers are managing credentials, encryption, access controls and other protections.
Likewise, all data collected through the product use — from user info and preferences to usage analytics — remains completely within proprietary IT infrastructure. No data is shared with or accessible by third parties, eliminating risks of leaks or unauthorized access. All customer data is utilized according to one set of privacy standards. By using proprietary technologies that are unique to your company, it is ensured that the intellectual property — including patents, codebase and algorithms — stays protected.
Cost Savings Long-Term
While initially investing in building an in-house team comes with higher upfront expenditures, the long-term cost structure significantly favors internal development. Primarily, by avoiding the perpetual licensing fees, contractor expenses and technology refresh costs associated with outsourcing software development.
Once the dedicated engineering resources are established, the ongoing costs to maintain and expand the XR product comprise mainly employee salaries and general IT infrastructure — both of which benefit from economies of scale the longer the product exists. In contrast, outsourcing deals with external vendors usually involve licensing models that continuously increase costs as the customer base and product functionality grows.
Additionally, the in-house team becomes more productive and efficient over time as engineers gain expertise in the company’s specific XR use cases and requirements. New hires are onboarded more quickly by experienced team members, further driving down the fully-burdened cost of software development. External vendors, on the other hand, continuously have to relearn aspects of the domain and product with every new project.
In the long run, these factors add up to significantly lower total cost of ownership for the XR platform. While a larger initial investment, it enables the internal resources to deliver more innovation and agility at a lower overall expense structure, maximizing the value from the investment.
Conclusion
These benefits coalesce around one central theme: ownership. By taking full ownership of developing the XR product — from the ground up, end-to-end — the driver’s seat is occupied by the internal staff to truly optimize the platform for the company’s goals. No external dependencies means no limitations on innovation or execution based on another party’s priorities.
If granting that level of influence and command over the most critical facets of your product — from customer experience to competitive differentiation — is a strategic imperative, then building the platform with an in-house team and proprietary technology should be a top consideration. The total control, freedom and flexibility it provides may be indispensable in realizing the company’s vision for how XR can transform business.
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