Confession — we’re guilty of being “fashionably late” - just once in a while ;)

But not when we’re working with our clients to make sure that they’re the coolest kid on the block by being the first to introduce a new product to market.

When you’re developing and launching a digital product, time is of the essence. If you’re late to enter the market, you could lose the competitive advantage of being a first-mover.

Not to mention, a short time-to-market has many benefits:

• You can put your product in the hands of your customers faster and start generating revenue sooner
• You can then improve your cash flow and invest in resources to further improve the product
• You can win a larger market share and generate more sales over the long-run
• You can get feedback sooner to help further improve the product and meet customer expectations
• You can leverage an agile approach to make incremental updates, which helps reduce the risk of developing a product that doesn’t meet market demands
• You can more accurately predict your time, cost, and resource needs when you shorten the time-to-market
• You can stay ahead of your competition, position your brand as a market leader, and build trust with customers
• You can spend less money proving your concept

However, highly-qualified developers with the right skillset aren’t sitting around to wait for your call. Meanwhile, building a high-performing development team of your own can take months (or longer), and comes with a significant ongoing overhead cost. Either way, your new idea isn’t getting any younger.

That’s why companies of any size prefer to work with a digital product agency, so they can have their cake and eat it too: getting the flexibility of using individual developers while taking advantage of the extensive knowledge and continuity of an in-house team.

How Partnering with a Digital Product Agency Reduces Your Time-to-Market

A reputable digital product agency can help you navigate the entire product development process cost-efficiently to bring your idea to life and get it into the hands of your customers as quickly as possible. Here are the reasons why partnering with a digital product agency is the best option:

Time for Hiring and Onboarding

Finding the right developers and team members with specific knowledge and experience takes time. Not only do you need to find developers with the right skillset, but they also need to be the right fit for your existing team. Not to mention, it can take weeks, if not months, to fully onboard each employee.

On the other hand, working with a digital agency gives you access to a full team of professionals who have experience in every aspect of product development so you can hit the ground running from day one. Also, if your project changes direction and requires different expertise, your agency will be able to tap into their broader team of experts to help you pivot promptly without holding up the process.

Seamless End-to-End Process

When you work with a full-service digital product agency, it will manage the entire product development process for you. From product strategy and prototyping to development and revenue generation, you’ll have access to experts with the appropriate skills and experience that can bring your product to market on time and within budget.

Also, these team members follow a proven process and have been successful on numerous products before yours. You can leverage strategies, approaches, and technologies that have worked for many other companies and apply the principles to your products, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

The Right Prototyping Approach

There are many ways to prototype a concept and visualize a solution. From user flows and screen maps to wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes, an experienced digital product agency can recommend the most effective prototype format you can use to get validation from stakeholders and prospective users before committing to the build.

The right prototyping approach can help you validate an idea without investing unnecessary time and resources into a full build-out. This will, in turn, help shorten the development cycle and reduce your time-to-market without compromising the quality and usability of the product.

Feature Prioritization and User Feedback

A value-driven digital product agency ensures that you’re spending your budget most effectively. It will help you prioritize the key features, so you can focus on bringing the right product to the right people as quickly as possible. You’ll be able to optimize the use of your resources by executing a well-designed product roadmap.

Your agency will also provide the structure and process to collect and incorporate user feedback to help you improve the product quickly and focus on what the market wants. This will accelerate the product development cycle — which is one of the best ways to improve efficiency. Not to mention, each new iteration can hit the market sooner with a better chance of meeting customer expectations.

Audience Insights and Monetization

Do you know what we like better than cool digital products? Cool digital products that generate profits!

When you hire individual developers, they only focus on the technical aspects. However, if the concept doesn’t meet market demands, you’d have to go back to the drawing board and rework the product. This will cost you money and waste a lot of precious time that can delay how quickly you can generate revenue.

A digital product agency that incorporates an “audience and revenue” component as an integral part of its process can support your development effort with marketing positioning, product launching, and monetization strategies. You’ll have a much better chance of getting it right the first time as you introduce the product to market — avoiding the unnecessary back-and-forth that’ll delay the time it takes to bring your vision to fruition.

Long-Term Collaboration and Success

While bringing the first iteration of your product to market as quickly as possible is important, successful product development teams work on iteration after iteration and bring new versions to market in rapid cycles. A digital product agency can act as your portfolio partner to provide the continuity you need to sustain the momentum without a bloated internal team.

You can have a dedicated team to build, improve, and grow your full portfolio of digital products or you can augment your internal team at any time with subject matter experts. The flexibility allows you to react to market demands quickly so you can launch the right products or introduce the right features at the right time to sustain the success of your business.

Reduce Time-to-Market with the Right Agency Partner

Having the flexibility, agility, and depth of knowledge to turn your vision into a product and introduce it to the market quickly with a comprehensive strategy is key to success in today’s fast-paced business environment. Whether you’re a startup needing access to the breadth and depth of knowledge of an in-house team only affordable to large companies or an established enterprise seeking to add agility and fresh perspectives to your internal capabilities, partnering with the right product development agency can help you stay innovative and competitive.