Outsourcing and Offshoring. A blessing or a curse?
Why outsourcing and offshoring?
Many companies face with lacking of relevant resources for the urgent project. That may be caused by inaccurate planning, fast business growth, dismissal of people or, lets say, apocalypses… In all cases, business owners or technical leads try to find the way out from this situation. Someone needs to save a project and keep a customer happy. So, they decide to hire new employees or outsource a project. Projects may be outsourced either within the country or abroad. As you prefer.
Challenges!
First of all hiring is quite time consuming (depending on the country, of course). In Germany, for example, it will take about at least 4–5 months to find the skilled team member with a good experience and references. As a matter of fact, Germany has a grave problem with availability of IT specialists. Like front-end, back end software developers, software architects, etc. Thus, it usually takes much time to relocate the right IT specialist to Germany.
So if there is a project that must be launched yesterday and a Tech Lead spontaneously decided to move to Palma de Mallorca for living, well you are in trouble.
Secondly, if you heard from one friend of you that he has successfully outsourced his lovely Mobile application to Eastern European company, the idea of outsourcing comes to your mind. But the challenge is where to find this ideal, relevant, smart, flexible business partner? You can google and get in touch with random companies and spend 1 month on communication.
Well, imagine that you have chosen this the one and only software development company. The following problems may appear:
- misunderstanding/ language barriers;
- providers do not understand the processes that your company use;
- because of constant catch up on processes the development goes very slowly, etc.
That is much easier to outsource the whole project. Moreover, it is easier to do mostly when the project is new and outsourcing team will be fully responsible for the delivery of project. On the other hand, if you need a dedicated team that will work together with your team, thenmisalignment, deliberate delivery time appear more often.
Advantages!
Sure there are a lot of benefits that a company may face while outsourcing.
- “Renting”. As stated above, a company “hires” a team for a short period. It does not take any responsibility for resources. They simply hire for a while! When the project is done, you don’t need to keep employees. It is done!
- “Availability”. Secondly, you can start/ proceed with project development right away. And not wait until a new tech lead gets his work permit and visa and finally comes to the office.
- “Cost”. It is also worth mentioning, in some countries like Poland, Belarus, Bulgaria, etc educated labor force is quite cheap. Developers from there have high level of expertise and they cost less. Thus, many business owners from Europe and USA outsource to Eastern Europe and cut costs. Moreover, they get high quality code as an outcome.
- “Minimize Risk”. When partners signed contracts, parties agree on sharing risks on a project. As providers usually specialize on outsourcing, they have solid experience in risk mitigation. Shifting some risks to outsourcing partners brings more guarantees on successful product launch.
How to find the Golden Medium?
TrustyQuote has interviewed many Business and Product Owners so far. Based on their pains and gains we consider the factors mentioned above while involving interested software development providers. trustyQuote guarantees that the processes and methodologies (SCRUM, Waterfall, etc) used on providers’ side are the same as a customer uses. Thus, providers have to prove the relevant certificates and badges.
To avoid language barriers providers’ team members should pass interview in a chosen by a customer language.
Summarizing everything together, trustyQuote eases the process of finding the right resources for the project while solving main pains of customers, i.g. misunderstanding, spending much time on research, misalignment, etc.
If you have a wish to outsource a project please fill this form.
In case if you want to participate in tender and develop your business further register your company here.