The Best Kept Secret in App Development Outsourcing

Where to look for an IT outsourcing partner: India? Eastern Europe? Costa Rica?  They all have received their fair share of attention. But if you are serious about top talent, cultural alignment, geographic proximity and cost, you haven’t done your due diligently if you haven’t looked closely at Uruguay.

Outsourcing to Uruguay?

Many North Americans who aren’t avid soccer fans might not be able to peg Uruguay, or its capital of Montevideo on a map. However, the country is one of the most progressive and stable in The Americas. Also, it is not only a leader in human development and global education indexes, but has a thriving technology sector. It accommodates both global outsourcing giants and innovative startups that rival the best in Silicon Valley.

Uruguay’s education system is world class and has been turning out graduates ready to compete globally for some time. Since 2007, the government’s Plan Ceibal has promised a laptop and internet access for every child and teacher. The educational system promotes and supports English competency. Besides, the universities are high quality.

Smart people are nice, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into the complete toolkit necessary to provide global level IT services. Is the tech infrastructure in place?  Global IT Giant Tata Consultancy Services thinks so, making Montevideo the home of its CMMi level 5 certified Global Development Center in 2002. Sabre Solutions, the company famous for running and supporting the airline and hospitality industry’s reservation and booking systems selected Uruguay as an operational center with over 850 multilingual employees, as did Merril Lynch.

In 2004, Sabre made a decision to establish a global center for customer service excellence. We looked at a number of options and eventually selected Uruguay which had a thriving community of technology talent. We’re all incredibly proud to see how the Montevideo center has become a world leader in customer care, and a competitive differentiator for Sabre”, said Tom Klein, CEO and President of Sabre Corporation.

Agile centric IT world: location matters

It is more important than ever that collaborative teams are literally in sync for periodic Scrum meetings. Also, for maximum performance face to face visits are often be necessary. Again, Uruguay beats out other global regions with daily nonstop flights to and from the United States. Very different from the multi-day, multi-thousand-dollar flights options to Asia or Eastern Europe. The cultural similarity shared between The Americas is another important advantage for the team cohesiveness necessary for Agile development. You can expect team members to be honest and upfront about project progress, and to speak up and share ideas proactively.

Uruguay’s cost, when measured in terms of productivity, is also extremely competitive. The country’s close working relationship with the United States, and friendly ties with other countries in the region, its advanced infrastructure and modern lifestyle and its abundance of IT talent make Uruguay worth taking a look at for software development, outsourcing, or shared services. If you wanna know more, take a look at this other post that goes deeper regarding Uruguay and its opportunities.

Building an effective product

Developing a successful app can be challenging: for +10 years we have been building mobile & web apps from Latin America to the world. You can also get some insights about creating an effective product from our eBook below. Get to know our main tips for developing a digital product without wasting time & money.