With businesses going global, product companies are facing stiff competition due to rapidly changing consumer needs and continuous technology advancements. This has led them to launch new products with advanced features more frequently. While this helps in maximizing revenue, the quick product launch cycles have significantly shortened the product development lifecycle. As a result, companies are finding it extremely difficult to maintain or increase revenue from their mature products.
Sustaining older products has become a major challenge for product companies. Nearly 40% of product investments are focused on sustenance and support, and up to 30% of operating expenses for mature product lines are spent on customer retention and service. This is a significant cost burden for any product company and consumes valuable bandwidth from the core engineering team, which could otherwise be focused on new product development. Overall, this creates a Catch-22 situation for organizations.
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Considering industry trends and the rapidly evolving product development ecosystem, many senior executives are now turning to outsourcing for their product sustenance and support functions. Outsourcing is no longer just a cost-saving measure — it has become a strategic business decision that addresses time-to-market challenges and engineering talent shortages. For any product company, launching at the right time is critical, and outsourcing helps ensure that goal.
Although outsourcing has numerous advantages, here are some key reasons why senior executives consider outsourcing their product sustenance and support operations:
1. Retaining Technical Talent
Startups and enterprises often struggle to retain technical talent, especially engineers working on product sustenance. Outsourcing helps overcome this challenge by delegating sustenance and support work to expert partners, allowing internal teams to focus on innovation.
2. Focus on Innovation
Product companies prefer dedicating time to new product development and innovation rather than support functions. From an ROI perspective, new product development delivers better returns. Hence, outsourcing mature product support allows in-house teams to focus on driving innovation.
3. Improving the Bottom Line
By outsourcing sustenance and support activities, organizations can save up to 20–25% of their total expenses. These savings can then be redirected toward innovation and new product initiatives, ultimately improving profit margins and overall business growth.
4. Strategic Business Model
Modern product companies view outsourcing partners not merely as cost-reduction centers but as strategic collaborators. Such partnerships help complement product development initiatives and ensure consistent delivery excellence. Companies seek partners with a service-oriented mindset, mature yet flexible delivery models, and proven frameworks that drive continuous improvement.
5. Customer Support
Managing teams for both product development and multi-region support can be challenging. Hence, companies prefer outsourcing partners who can analyze support needs, set up effective ticketing systems, reduce average handling time, and maintain 100% SLA compliance.
These points are based on industry research and practical experience. While there can be many factors influencing the decision to outsource or retain sustenance functions internally, product companies that choose to outsource should seek partners who take complete ownership of product sustenance and support services — ensuring quality, reliability, and innovation.
