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How important is location when choosing an app development firm?

Once you make the decision to hire an app development company, one of the first questions that may come to mind is “should I only look at app developers near me?”

Most of our clients have told us a big deciding factor in working with us is our location. I’ve seen companies sacrifice location to cut costs, only to realize months later that the challenges of a remote team end up costing them more in the long run.

Our local clients say that keeping their team nearby makes them more comfortable, gives them greater insight into what’s going on during development, and eliminates a lot of problems they’ve experienced with remote or overseas teams.

Why should I choose an app developer near me?

Local developers save you time

Do you need to schedule a face-to-face meeting with your development team? With distant teams, this can feel like a big effort. Getting everyone in the same room requires coordinating schedules and booking flights, cars, and hotels. It’s a big effort, all to spend a few hours together.

Instead of all of that, what if you could take a quick trip across town and knock out everything in an afternoon? Local software development firms let you do that! It’s common for our local clients to ask for some time to talk and then come by our office same-day. No one needs to book off an entire day for travel. We just get things done.

You have fewer scheduling issues in the same time zone

I live in Nashville, and one of the worst projects I ever worked on required coordinating with a team in Singapore. Everyone was great, but our daily calls were at 10pm. To actually work together for any amount of time, I had to complete change my schedule. I regularly stayed up until 4am just to get some time.

And how do you feel about wait an entire day for an answer to a simple question? With a team on the other side of the world, that lag time is the norm. If I ask a question at 9am, well, I’ll be asleep by the time the team wakes up for work. Alternatively, when I’m working with app developers near me, this issue simply doesn’t exist.

Local development teams minimize lingual or cultural differences

Technical lingo is tough enough. It’s even tougher when you’re dealing with technical lingo in a secondary language. Translations don’t always come across clearly. Language differences are manageable, but communication feels more forced versus speaking to someone in your native tongue.

Additionally, commitments, expectations, and the delivery of bad news are handled very differently in different cultures. For example, with some teams I’ve worked with, it’s socially unacceptable to tell your boss that there’s a problem. When you’re running a deadline-driven project, refusing to acknowledge problems is a nightmare. Imagine planning—and paying for—a huge marketing campaign on a certain date, only to find days before that you won’t have a working product!

Regardless of whether you choose an app developer near you or outsource to a team in another country, it’s important to understand the local culture and how people are expected to behave in professional settings. With a local app development team, you already know the cultural expectations and social protocols.

Direct access to your team

Tangentially related to my earlier point about scheduling meetings: when you have a local team, you have an accessible team. Oftentimes remote teams have a designated project manager that acts as a proxy between you and the developers. When you go with a local software development team, though, you can meet everyone in person.

This direct access has benefits beyond communication and accountability, too! When you meet the people who are working on your project, you can establish a deeper relationship. That rapport helps you drive home the purpose and importance of your project, making the entire team more invested in your success.

It’s easier to brainstorm with app developers near you

While there have been so many advances in remote communication—video conferences, collaborative document editors, project management software, and online whiteboards—there’s no replacement for being in the same room.

Meeting in person to brainstorm gives you more context for what people are thinking and how they feel about your ideas. Watching a person shift uncomfortably in their seat, gesture toward something in the room, or give a knowing glance to someone else in the room gives you a much clearer picture of what they’re thinking than what you’d get through email.

Communication is tighter with local software development companies

Working in the same time zone and being able to quickly arrange calls or in-person meetings is necessary to move quickly. When you’re building a product, your goals and priorities will regularly change. You’ll see a new app release and decide that carefully planned feature you thought you’d love is not that useful once implemented. You’ll talk to potential customers who want unexpected changes to your app. You need the capability to change your team’s priorities quickly and have them actually respond.

When your team is local, you can coordinate changes much more quickly. When you’re working on short release cycles or have a looming deadline, every moment is important. You don’t want your team to continue down the wrong path for a day or more after you choose to pivot.

Staying in touch helps you monitor scope and budget

Part of any good meeting with your app vendor is reviewing and setting expectations. When you meet, you should assess how effective your team has been at meeting commitments since your last meeting. Additionally, you should assess whether you are on track for your overall project timeline.

Meeting more frequently means catching timeline slips quickly before it becomes a huge problem. The most common cause of timeline slips is increased project scope. When discussing ideas with your development team, sometimes they may uncover additional requirements that were not anticipated in their original estimates. By constantly assessing your team’s progress toward milestones or deadlines, you can identify scope increases before they cost you significant time or money.

Local app development firms are more likely to deliver projects on time

Due to the tighter feedback loops and clearer communication you get with a local app development firm, you eliminate many of the inefficiencies and pitfalls that companies experience when building a new product.

You learn more from local app developers

When you’re able to sit in the same office as your app development vendor, you also get to see how the sausage is made. Developers will explain how mobile and web app integrations work. Designers will walk you through their process of going from rough sketches to wire frames to interactive mock-ups. Plus, your account manager will have more opportunities to advise you on what works and doesn’t work for building, releasing, marketing, and supporting your awesome product.

How can I find app developers near me?

When you’re searching for local app development companies, Google is a good place to start. Simply search for “app developers near me” and you will find business listings for companies located near you. Additionally, there are plenty of great vendor directories out there, such as Clutch. Clutch also provides customer reviews and rankings for each vendor.

Are you looking for an app development company in Nashville?

If you’re looking for the best app development agency in Nashville, we’re waiting to speak with you. Contact us and we’ll be in touch as soon as possible.