It can be said that enterprises nowadays tend to outsource to speed up work efficiency and save a lot of money compared to having to recruit and train their own personnel. This is completely understandable, because when businesses have to embark on finding, recruiting talent and training them according to the company’s rules, maintaining the career path of that talent. This problem is not really simple at all – especially for small businesses or start-ups. While world technology has been growing rapidly, outsourcing a team of professional staff to inherit and promote the values especially Offshore Outsourcing Development. The modern world is one of the keys to success and gain competitive advantages of many small and medium enterprises in the current context.
Obviously, technology is playing a key role in most of the business industries around the globe. In developed countries such as the US, Canada, and Europe, they invented and applied a wide range of High-tech technology as the guideline for the rapid development of the application development industry. It is easy to realize that outsourcing an application development team helps businesses access high-quality products and services at less cost than creating an in-house team.
However, outsourcing is not simple, and there is a lot of evidence that choosing a poor external partner to develop will yield disappointing results or just stop at acceptable levels. Therefore, in order to choose and work effectively with offshore developers among countless application development companies, what should be paid attention to? The following article will outline 5 key steps to partner with offshore development developers as well as the benefits of outsourcing. Let’s take a closer look at these!
What is offshore development?
Offshore development can be understood simply when an enterprise does not set up an IT department by themselves, but instead they outsource an overseas IT team (which may differ from time zone, halfway around the world) to take over the software development project. Theoretically, according to the distance there are different names for this part:
- Onshore outsourcing: when the enterprise hires a local software development company;
- Near-shore outsourcing: is when an enterprise hires a partner in the same time zone, geographic location can be far apart but still in the same time zone;
- Offshore outsourcing: which brings together clients and vendors in distant countries or continents.
However, there is no specific rule for this naming, which is why most service providers introduce themselves as offshore development companies in order to scale up their operations.
What Are the Benefits of Offshore Development Services?
In many ways, working with offshore developers brings many practical benefits that significantly contribute to the business performance of the business. Some of the most notable benefits include the following:
- Access to advanced technology: In order for offshore development companies to attract customers, apart from having a high reputation in the market, they must continuously improve and update modern technologies and technologies. They have the foundation of many projects that are relevant to the project you are interested in, they leverage successful projects quickly and avoid unnecessary risks. An excellent IT foundation is the golden key to driving any software project to success.
- Experience: through many projects, offshore development companies have their own secrets of success, they have a team of professional engineers who are proficient in most of the existing software technologies, working situations. It is different from geographical location or time zone, so it is easy to solve arising problems quickly.
- Optimize work: When you are a business owner, you definitely do not want to spend too much time at any one stage. Instead of dealing with problems that arise in the application development process, you can confidently assign offshore developers. Daily business operations are still under control with no parts being overloaded.
- Faster launch times: the right time when a product appears on the market determines the success or failure of the products. A professional offshore company will have a customized solution suitable for your business and develop a detailed development roadmap to ensure your product launches at the right time.
- Relative cost: the cost factor is always a difficult problem for enterprises. Compared to hiring the industry’s leading experts in internal service, outsourcing is completely economical. In this way, you can choose a partner that is more suitable for financial capabilities as well as ensuring efficiency and flexibility in upgrading or reducing investment costs for application development.
How to Choose an Outsourcing Company?
Choosing a perfect offshore partner can be difficult, especially as there are many offshore companies around the world nowadays. That is why you should keep these key points in mind to choose a suitable partner.
- Communication and Workflow: Communication is a key factor, your outsourcing partner is required to communicate fluently in English or a predefined common language. In addition, the working processes of the two parties must be consistent and similar throughout the cooperation.
- Absolute security: the development of technology also brings many disadvantages to businesses, ensuring that network security is strictly applied. Make sure that the offshore company you choose uses the best security and is regularly updated to ensure that data and products do not leak out.
- Competence and quality: read and check all references, including: portfolio, completed project portfolio, past and present client lists. Thereby, it is preliminarily assessed the capacity of a potential partner.
- Multidisciplinary Services: The best outsourcing companies specializing in multiple disciplines will be able to handle your project from a holistic and highly experienced approach.
5 steps to concern before partnering with Offshore developers
The better prepared you are, the better results you will be able to achieve.
- Researching information: after reviewing the competency profile of the partner, the business should make sure that the offshore developers you hire will understand the organizational chart, the operation of the business, both parties understand. Each other thoroughly will bring a good resonance effect to the cooperation process.
- Defining goals: setting goals from the beginning with offshore partners, outlining a detailed plan for each stage, determining completion time for each short-term goal, regularly checking the completion progress. become a target to promptly solve problems.
- List of needs: each project will have different technology requirements, different human resources, different expertise and different specialists. It is advisable to clarify and test the partner’s service models to see the compatibility between the two parties and adjust accordingly.
- Information and communication channels: businesses should have at least 1 face-to-face meeting between offshore partners and enterprise to discuss the overall plan before embarking on the project, there is an online communication channel to connect and exchange information when needed. Communication is also one of the important factors for perfect cooperation. Regular status meetings help to know the progress of the project, unresolved issues and team difficulties.
- Visiting the offshore location: it is good to visit the offshore location and meet all the people who will work directly with you to help you better understand people and their ways of working. This also encourages the spirit of working and learning exchange for onsite team staff. However, in the state of the COVID-19 pandemic still raging to date, this is difficult to apply – or impossible perhaps. Better yet, always proactively catch up with team members through smart meeting tools so you can chat and talk in the most comfortable and clear way.
Summary
Shortly, in order to work effectively with an offshore partner in a foreign country, communication is the most important factor. The key issue is how the businesses can ensure daily business operations and still coordinate well the offshore development team effectively even thousands of miles away. A professional offshore company will cooperate well with businesses to maintain project progress as well as with high-tech technology, they help promote business efficiency of the business in the most optimal way.
Writer: Thanh Pham (Bruce), CEO, Saigon Technology Solutions Vietnam
Email: thanh.pham@saigontechnology.
