Applications define every aspect of how an organization engages customers, empowers employees, innovates, delivers value to customers, and maintains a competitive advantage. With digital transformation top of mind for most enterprises, applications are business strategies manifested as software solutions.
When done right, Application Services is the rocket fuel that powers growth, efficiency, and scalability.
How Do You Pick the Right Application Services Provider?
With so many vendors positioning themselves as the best application services provider, how do you evaluate marketing hype versus business value?
Choosing the right Application Services partner can make or break your digital transformation journey. That’s why we’ve compiled this framework to help IT leaders and technology buyers make informed decisions when selecting an Application Services partner. You’ll learn what questions to ask potential vendors, what services to look for, and why Hexaware is one of the best Application Services providers.
Let’s get started.
Why Is Choosing The Right Application Services Provider Important?
The right application services partner will:
- Help you optimize your application portfolio
- Enable better performance, reliability, and uptime
- Support your efforts to modernize legacy apps
- Help lower your total cost of ownership through effective app support, maintenance, and automation
- Take a step back and provide advisory-led guidance to help you anticipate and react to changing business needs
Application Services They Should Offer
Now that you know why you should care about selecting the right partner, let’s review the services you should expect from any Application Services provider.
Enterprise Architecture Consulting
Business and Technology strategy advisory to review your existing application portfolio, identify redundancies, gaps, and help you architect a long-term application roadmap.
Application Development
Application build and development services ranging from greenfield development to enhancing existing apps with modern technologies and frameworks.
Application Rationalization and Modernization
Review existing applications to understand what to keep, fix, retire, replace, or migrate. Application rationalization is key to reducing technical debt.
Application Support and Maintenance
Ongoing day 2 production support to ensure your applications are up, running, patched, and compliant.
Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing
Quality services to ensure your applications are functioning as expected and provide a great end-user experience.
Security and Compliance
Integrate security and compliance standards into your application development lifecycle. With applications running business operations, there are often regulatory requirements that must be baked in from the start.
Key Criteria All Application Services Providers Should Be Evaluated On
Domain Experience and Technical Expertise
The ideal Application Services partner will have extensive domain expertise across a variety of industries, as well as technical breadth and depth.
Experience matters when it comes to providing advisory-led guidance around complex application ecosystems, modern technologies, and integration to enterprise applications. Look for Application Services providers that have demonstrated success in application modernization services, as most enterprises have tech debt they plan to address.
Stay away from vendors who:
- Only have experience in your industry (look for providers with broad expertise)
- Have limited “in-house” experience and only offer customized services. This approach isn’t scalable and often leads to inconsistent results
- Act as order-takers. Strong Application Service providers take a consultative, customer success-driven approach
Advisory-Driven
The best technology vendors aren’t order-takers. A great Application Services partner takes pride in being your consultant. They ask the right questions and understand your unique business needs before recommending a strategic roadmap.
This application services consulting approach puts businesses first and ensures technology decisions are made with the bigger business objectives in mind.
What to look for in a vendor:
- Application and technology consulting-led approach
- Advice and guidance around roadmap and technology choices
- Focused on business outcomes
Recommended solutions are tailored to your unique business needs (not cookie-cutter).
Comprehensive Range of Services
Your Application Services provider should be able to handle every aspect of your application development lifecycle. From the initial strategy and road-mapping, to development, testing, and deployment, to ongoing maintenance and support.
Look for providers who offer a comprehensive suite of services rather than vendors with fragmented capabilities.
Innovative Tools and Accelerators
Applications are complex. Look for vendors that have developed proprietary tools, accelerators, and technologies that allow them to deliver projects faster and with higher quality.
For example, Hexaware has RapidX®, Amaze®, and Tensai®. RapidX™ supports Gen AI-driven Application Development, Amaze® helps you automate your cloud migration projects, and Tensai® helps with programmable infrastructure management.
Modern Delivery Framework
Whether it’s agile, waterfall, or a hybrid approach, your Application Services vendor should have a proven framework for delivering results on every project. Look for vendors with clearly defined processes and a repeatable, consistent framework across projects.
Built-In Security, Compliance, and Risk Management
Security is top of mind for most application development projects. Make sure the Application Services vendor you choose has processes in place to embed security and compliance at every stage of the application development lifecycle.
Client References and Success Stories
Steer clear of Application Services vendors that only show you marketing collateral. Any reputable technology provider will have a portfolio of client success stories that they are willing to share.
Dig deep on vendor claims. What exactly did they do for that client? Did they deliver on performance improvements? Were they able to scale cost-effectively? What was the client’s journey like? Did that solution really solve the client’s problem? Did they encounter any setbacks? You get the idea.
Look for case studies that highlight tangible business outcomes related to what you’re trying to accomplish.
Cost and Flexible Engagement Models
At the end of the day, this is a business decision. Just because a vendor has the best suite of services doesn’t mean you should work with them. Price and transparency play a big role in your selection process.
A good Application Services provider will offer flexible engagement models—such as outcome-based, time & materials, and hybrid—to help you scale up or down as needed.
Questions To Ask Every Application Services Provider
Here are some critical questions you should ask when interviewing application services vendors:
- How would you assess our current application portfolio and what recommendations would you make?
- How do you assess our current application portfolio and recommend improvements?
- What frameworks do you use for development and delivery?
- Can you share examples of modernization projects you’ve led?
- How do you manage performance, support, and SLAs post-deployment?
- What security and compliance practices do you follow?
- How will your consulting approach help align solutions with our business goals?
These questions help reveal depth, readiness, and cultural fit.
Modern Challenges In Application Services and The Role Of An Expert Provider
Legacy Applications
Every organization has legacy applications it would like to move away from. But monolithic, outdated applications slow you down, increase operating costs, and can create security vulnerabilities.
An Application Services vendor should be able to help you with your modernization strategy. This could include helping you with cloud migration, developing APIs, or rewriting key components to modern architectures.
Keeping Up with Digital Transformation
Innovation in technology doesn’t stop. In fact, with emerging technologies like AI and automation driving major shifts in how we develop software, your Application Services provider should be investing in new innovations now more than ever.
Look for providers that are integrating next-gen technologies, such as Generative AI, into their application development and testing processes.
Security
Applications are often the target of security breaches. It’s critical that you partner with an Application Services provider that has robust security processes in place. Security should be integrated into every phase of the application lifecycle.
Why Hexaware is Considered One of the Top Application Services Providers
When evaluating contenders for the title of best Application Services provider, Hexaware stands out for multiple reasons rooted in expertise, innovation, and business alignment:
Here’s why Hexaware is one of the best Application Services providers:
- We’re globally recognized for our Application Services and application transformation capabilities
- Hexaware offers end-to-end Application Services — from consulting and strategy to development and modernization to app support and maintenance, and QA testing.
- Our award-winning proprietary accelerators and tools like RapidX®, Amaze®, and Tensai® help organizations achieve business outcomes faster and with greater operational excellence
- Hexaware has a Modern Application Delivery Framework (MADF) that ensures predictable and repeatable results on every engagement
- Hexaware takes a consultative, advisory-led approach with every customer. We don’t believe in selling clients technology they don’t need. Our experts will work with you to determine what technology solutions make sense for your unique business needs
- Hexaware is a global technology services company. We partner with enterprises around the world across most industry verticals
Conclusion
Whether you’re building new applications from scratch or looking to enhance and rationalize your existing application portfolio, partnering with a third-party Application Services provider can help you scale faster and more efficiently.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to selecting the right partner, asking the right questions, doing your homework on vendor claims, and getting references directly from clients will help you gain important context on each Application Services vendor you consider.
We hope our guide will help you determine what qualities to look for when selecting an Application Services provider. Happy vendor hunting!
