4 Must-Know Items If You’re Thinking About Outsourcing

Outsourcing isn’t just sending work to a secondary team of developers. It’s collaboration between your onsite team and the outsourced team. It’s difficult to get started especially when you need to choose your team, find the right “fit” for your teammates, and consequently set balance between both groups.

Outsourcing becomes an option for a software development company for different reasons including limited budgets, lack of talent, and lack of developers with expertise in a specific technology. Some companies find outsourcing inefficient. However, it’s all about finding the right partner for you. Outsourcing software development has become more common and easier than years before thanks to globalization and the boom of the internet. However, finding an outsourcing partner is not as simple as it seems if you are looking for for cultural alignment, geographic proximity and cost in addition to top talent.

Outsourcing can greatly improve your efficiency, productivity and reduces overall development costs. Before you search for the right team, here are some items to consider first:

Take Advantage of a Global Marketplace

The Internet has given organizations the ability to build teams across the globe. You don’t need to restrict your team to local developers specifically when the level of expertise your company requires is difficult to find and very expensive. You can take advantage of the global marketplace that allows you to select  the best development team not only for your culture and budget, but also for your projects.

When selecting a team, it is very important to consider their technical expertise, as well as their experience in working on different projects. It is highly recommended to choose a team located within your time zone and business hours.Outsourcing to several countries in similar time zones, would eliminate the need for late night or early morning meetings due to differences between schedules.

Get Expert Programming

Just because by hiring developers in other countries you get more cost effective rates than in the US, it doesn’t meant their quality is low. You will be able to find some of the best developers around the globe.

For companies with a strict IT budget, the right outsourced team can assign developers to your project and stay within your cost estimates, while adding the expertise you were missing. These developers work with your schedule, so they can still work as if they were local to you.

Take a close look at English Competency & Team Stability

Good and fluent communication is key for success.

• It is crucial to be able to communicate with every member of the team, from developers to UX/UI designers, and even with the administration staff. Therefore, it’s important to make sure they all speak your language. You can test their level of English, from the very beginning during your recruitment process.
• It is a must to build a stable team if you are looking for a long term partnership. A good way to find that out, might be by asking about how often developers usually leave the company or change from one project to another.
• It’s a good idea to find out about their hiring speed, in case your project requires a bigger team and you need them to recruit new programmers. Don’t forget about the talent pool in the country, if education is good and the IT sector is supported and promoted by the government, your partner will find it easier to hire developers that fit its culture, requirements and your needs.

Make sure you chose the right partner.

The right partner includes good location, a favorable business environment and a close timezone.

If you are serious about the three aspects mentioned before, you may want to look for South American countries, like Uruguay and Colombia. Advantages include:

• A stable economy and reliable political environment are two very important factors to consider when choosing a place to outsource your software initiatives.
• In today’s AGILE-centric IT world, location matters. It is more important than ever that collaborative teams are literally in sync for periodic SCRUM meetings, and for maximum performance face to face visits, which will often be necessary.  Travelling within similar time zones is easier for both developers and clients. It avoids multi-day and multi-thousand-dollar affairs that flights to Asia or Eastern Europe would require.
• A close timezone improves communication and collaboration. Response times are reduced between teams, therefore, the project output tends to increase.

We hope this helps you to select your next outsourcing team. UruIT has 10 years of experience developing web and mobile apps for US companies through outsourcing services. If you have more doubts to ask, don’t hesitate in contacting us.