How Dexory’s in house vs outsourcing approach is powering scalable growth, driving a competitive edge

DexoryView is now deployed in warehouses across the globe, delivering real-time stock visibility, 99.9% inventory accuracy and enhanced operational efficiency to industries from logistics and retail to food and pharmaceuticals. 

However, scaling this new technology from an initial prototype to a worldwide success in less than 2 years was only possible due to Dexory’s full stack philosophy and strategic blend of in house and outsource development.

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In house vs outsourcing

Scaling new technology in a cost-efficient way without compromising quality or performance is the age-old conundrum facing startups as they scale their business. This triggers the debate of whether product development and manufacturing should be completed in house or outsourced to external parties. 

The in house route offers a myriad of advantages. It allows companies to retain complete control over their R&D, ensuring any updates are anchored around the needs of the customer and delivered to the highest standard. Less dependency on suppliers means development can be more agile, resulting in rapid iterations and faster turnaround times, especially for full stack companies. Then there’s the benefit of security as sensitive intellectual property stays within the organisation.

However, in house development does require significant time and investment to upgrade production processes, scale teams and adopt new skills. 

Outsourcing on the other hand can be a cost-effective solution for less complex development and batch production. Instead of designing individual components from scratch, companies can leverage the expertise of suppliers to modify parts to meet specification whilst taking advantage of larger manufacturing facilities to produce standard parts.

Although, relying on suppliers can extend lead times, slowing overall development. This combined with less control, potential IP and security risks and integration challenges is why companies typically only outsource the design and manufacture of non-critical components.

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Dexory’s hybrid approach

The DexoryView platform blends complex AI-driven software with a fully autonomous robot to deliver intuitive analytics to warehouse managers and operators. This synchronisation of sophisticated software and hardware is the secret to Dexory’s success, however, comes with significant development challenges.

‘Developing such new technology meant that there were very few options on the market that suited our specific requirements,’ says Adrian Neigota, CTO at Dexory. ‘Our platform is unique because it combines data capture, electronics, autonomous navigation, mechanical design and digital twin computation all wrapped up in one proprietary software package. Merging so many disciplines together made it difficult to augment off the shelf hardware and software to the extent we needed.’

‘Also, once you depend on somebody else’s technology, then it’s their job to fix problems and iron out issues,’ adds Negoita. ‘We wanted to retain full control over development to build the best platform in the world.’ 

‘That’s why we decided to take a hybrid approach, and develop most of the software in house, but outsource some hardware such as standard sensors,’ explains Oana Jinga, Co-Founder & Chief Commercial and Product Officer at Dexory. ‘But for more specific hardware upgrades, we design, manufacture and test these in house until we are confident we know what we want, and then we engage suppliers.’

‘This actually saves us a lot of time,’ continues Jinga. ‘We can complete those initial iterations and design parts ready for production within a day, whereas collaborating with external suppliers would take weeks. It also gives us an idea of costs, because we have already manufactured it ourselves. In this way, we can achieve some control over the cost and quality of outsourcing, so when parts come back, they can be incorporated into the product with minimal issues.’

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When it comes to software development, the time spent adapting off the shelf code and integrating with hardware can be better spent writing the code from scratch. Particularly as Dexory needed to precisely program the sensors to capture the exact data necessary to build representative digital twin models. 

‘When we first started out as BotsAndUs back in 2015, we quickly realised that to build a solution that would revolutionise the industry, we needed a clean slate,’ explains Negoita. ‘From there, we have continuously built on top of this original platform, adding new capabilities which has naturally led us down the route of in house development.’

‘This was compounded when we realised how outdated and cumbersome conventional Warehouse Management Systems [WMS] were,’ adds Negoita. ‘Initially we thought we could piggyback on WMS’s but these text-based systems couldn’t even produce imagery. Whereas we wanted to provide an interactive real-time digital twin model of the warehouse that staff could easily interrogate to quickly identify problems.’

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The importance of investing in production processes

The key to leveraging the benefits of in house development is to invest in production systems. New tools need to be purchased, production lines need to be updated and staff need to be equipped with new specialized skills and knowledge.

‘Over the years we have spent millions on upgrading our facilities at our base in Oxford,’ reveals Andrei. ‘We are now spread across multiple warehouses, reorganised our manufacturing lines, expanded the electrical production workshops as well as in house machining and have dedicated quality control rooms.’

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‘Most impressive though, is our robot testing area,’ continues Danescu. ‘We have replicated several aisles of a warehouse which our prototype robots continuously scan. This allows us to test updates, new object detection scenarios as well as the interaction between robots as they pass each other.’ 

‘Our relentless drive for development partnered with strategic investment in our production processes ensures that we productionize technology efficiently,’ concludes Danescu. ‘This has allowed us to scale effectively whilst still delivering a high quality and reliable product to our customers in a very short timeframe.’