Looking for a software company in Saudi Arabia — how do I pick between proposals?

Last year in Riyadh, we went with the cheapest quote at 75,000 SAR for our logistics software; the project dragged on for 10 months and they kept nickel-and-diming us with extra invoices. We ended up spending 130,000 SAR anyway. Had we gone with the established firm that quoted 140,000 SAR with a 5-month timeline, we would have gone live 5 months sooner without taking an operational hit.

Make sure the contract is governed by the laws and courts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The other party must have an active Commercial Registration (CR) with software development listed in their activities. Under data protection regulations (PDPL), make sure to include a clause requiring all customer and shipment data to be hosted on servers located within the Kingdom.

Any company promising an ERP-integrated field app with offline support in two months for 65,000 SAR is either trying to patch together an off-the-shelf template without proper customization, or they completely missed the project scope. Just setting up the staging environment and syncing APIs would take that long.

Ask all four bidding companies for contact details of three active client references in Saudi Arabia. Call these contacts yourself and ask: 'Did they deliver on the agreed deadline and how fast did they respond when bugs popped up?' That's where you'll get the real, unvarnished truth.

Edit: asked below, I wrote the answer in the second message.

i'd say definitely visit their office. btw there are tons of shell companies in riyadh that just rent a desk and outsource the whole job to the far east. don't shake hands before having a face-to-face tea with the tech lead.

Make sure to add these items to your comparison table: 1) Free post-launch warranty and maintenance period (should be at least 6 months), 2) Hourly rate for additional development, 3) Responsibility for Android and iOS store approval processes.

On our first project, we became hostages to the agency that built the software because we didn't include a source code handover clause in the contract. They made us wait months and charged exorbitant fees just to add a tiny reporting field. For the second project, we made it a requirement to pull the code to our own repo every week, which was the only way we took back control.

Thanks for writing this, that's the right way. Weekly written progress reports are much more useful than asking for dates.

Just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right. If I were you, I'd go this route.

Three different views emerged, they all complement each other. If acceptance criteria aren't written, when the work is done is open to debate.

If acceptance criteria aren't written, when the work is done is open to debate. If you post the result here, it will help others too.

there's also a measurement aspect to this. btw if code ownership isn't in the contract, you have no bargaining power when leaving.

just leaving this note, it might be useful.

Correct. If acceptance criteria aren't written, when the work is done is open to debate.

That's all sorry if I went on too long.

My question might sound amateurish, sorry about that. anyway in legacy systems the most expensive thing is unknown dependencies.

Proven by experience.

Quick summary for newcomers: Trying to do this alone is the most expensive way.

Implementing a change request process doesn't slow things down, it speeds them up. Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

I'd say don't rush. When we decide without measuring, we always end up in the same place.

That's all, sorry if I went on too long.

I'll try it.

Timely topic. Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

I disagree with you on this point. The biggest time-waster for us was not knowing who had the final say.

Good luck with that.

Sorry, but this doesn't apply in every case. Access credentials should be opened in the company's name, not personal accounts.

Hope this helps.