A software development partner in Egypt can build the same screens as another bidder and still leave your company with a very different product. The real differences appear when a transaction fails, the business changes a rule, or someone new has to deploy the code. Use your selection process to test how the team handles those moments.
Compare proposals against the same job
Give each bidder a one-page brief with the user, the task, the system it touches and the business outcome. If the goal is faster order approval, show what a typical request looks like and where it gets stuck. Ask the bidder to name the assumptions behind its estimate, including integrations, data migration, testing and launch support. Compare what would be accepted at each milestone before comparing totals in EGP.
Ask to see a difficult path
Give the team an example where the approving manager is absent or a customer changes the order after approval. Ask who can intervene, what the audit trail captures and what the user sees. The answer reveals whether the team understands operations as well as screens.
Make ownership part of the evaluation
Write down who controls the repository, deployment accounts, analytics and credentials, and when access transfers. Ask a bidder to describe how your team would deploy or restore the service if the original developers were unavailable. Separate launch acceptance from ongoing support and identify who owns incidents once the pilot opens to users.
Anonymized scenario: a distributor’s first release
A hypothetical Egyptian distributor gives two suppliers the same workflow. One prices a mobile app and portal. The other scopes approvals, records of manual overrides and a fallback during an accounting outage. The distributor can now ask both to price the same risk and decide whether a paid discovery sprint will resolve the remaining questions.
FAQ
Is the lowest proposal necessarily cheaper?
Compare excluded work, recurring costs and handover first. A missing integration or a poorly defined support period can change what the proposal actually buys.
What should I take to a first meeting?
Bring a sample transaction, the systems it touches and one operational measure you want to improve.
Discuss your brief
Send Code Tank a workflow and two examples of what can go wrong. Use them to define a shortlist test and the scope of discovery.
