10 Commandments for Choosing an Electronic Design Services

Whether you are a start-up or an established company, choosing an electronic design service is a major decision. High-quality electronic design service entails complex set of skills, tools, and experience. You would need to discover, identify, interview and analyze various design services companies in order to choose the one that fits perfectly to your project.

There are 1000+ companies that offer electronic design services. Thus, it’s important to perform a thorough review. Forget about ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to electronic design services, roll up your sleeves and invest the time to choose the right electronic design company.

Here are some topics to consider when choosing an electronic design services:

1. How experienced are they in developing electronics?

The first point for selecting a potential electronic development service would be to review the company’s overall experience as well as the specific experience of the electronic engineers. Electronic engineers should have skills in hardware design, tools, technologies etc. An ideal scenario is when the electronic design company has done similar industry work and has developed similar electronic products before.

2. Is the budget suitable and meet targets?

Look for an electronic design services that can provide quality work while staying within your budget. Perhaps this means you choose a smaller electronic design services team, because they generally have lower overhead. Electronic development pricing comes in all shapes and sizes, and it’s largely dependent on project parameters: project size, complexity, integration and test.

3. How much experience they have with your industry and business needs?

An electronic design services with demonstrated experience with other projects in your industry is vital. To provide you with the best service, they would need to understand industry-specific requirements, trends and technologies – as well as finding ways to keep your electronic design competitive and compatible to future trends.

4. Do they have a quality system to assure bug free designs?

Testing and verifying the electronic design on both in the lab and in real life is imperative throughout the product design lifecycle. Hardware developers should be conducting compatibility, performance and other type testing during development to ensure you receive a bug free design. An experienced design company should have quality processes (ISO9001 for example) or other type of procedures to follow.

5. Is it easy to communicate with the Electronic design company?

It’s not that easy to recognize and it is often underestimated. But your interaction with an electronic design company is all about communication. Both technical and commercial messages are being sent back and forth — do you really understand each other? Is the electronic design services company open and honest in their communication? Are they responsive? This can play a critical factor thought-out the electronic design project especially in hard and critical times.

6. What do you get at the end of the project?

Receiving a bug-free electronic product that is 100% meeting your spec — is your primary goal. But there are other deliverables that you should be receiving. They are also negotiable. It’s super important that you receive the source files alongside the documentation and drawings. Depending on your product roadmap, you may also be considering receiving the any related files that could help you modify and product to support future versions.

7. Ask for reference customers right away

Selecting an electronic design services could be a long and tedious process. One of the evaluations point you should not skip is to interview reference customers. It could be that you have shortlisted the vendors but to increase the confidence level, ask for reference customers and talk to them about their previous experience with the selected vendors. You might be surprised with your findings.

8. Are they willing to provide long term support for fix bug and updates

Some vendors offer long term support and maintenance. That’s is of course, a big plus as you don’t know what will happened a year from now. This is another topic to discuss with the electronic design services company to make sure they are aligned with your future plans.

9. How good are they to protect your IP

There are chances that your company’s secret source will be part on the electronic design, and now you are planning to outsource the design to an electronic design services company.  This means you would need to check how good the company is in terms of keeping your intellectual property safe and secured.

10. Start early because this can take some time

The process of finding and selecting an electronic design house can take some time. Therefore, it’s advised to start 2-3 months before the kick off day. This will give you enough time to make an educated decision with no time pressure. Be sure to start looking at HardwareBee vendor directory for Electronic design services companies.