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“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin
While fortune 500 companies have embraced offshoring incredibly, small businesses still wonder whether or not to pick it – consequently, failing to survive in today’s Digital Darwinian world.
Let’s look at some statistics first –
- 56% of startups outsourced their software development task to either a freelancer or a software development company.
- Out of which, 48% were happy with the results, and 24% were unhappy.
Do you know why?
Because the majority of the businesses end up choosing fraudulent companies resulting in weak enterprise security measures, data breaches, poor management, communication barriers, and much more.
To avoid all such risks, you need to choose a legitimate offshore vendor by researching their portfolio, client base, and previously developed projects. Let’s check out what happens when you select a risk-smart enterprise for the better growth of your business.
Reducing Risks with Offshore Software Development
Offshoring, with lots of benefits to enterprises, also comes with a few adverse effects. Smart enterprises, being aware of potential risks, partner with a reliable offshoring company to build the right strategy mitigating the risks.
Given below are the ways that will guide you about how to avoid or reduce risks with offshore software development:
1. Select A Suitable Offshoring Destination
While recruiting an offshore software development team, you must be aware of cultural differences. Though it seems a minor issue, it harms the workflow.
The first thing to keep in mind is hiring offshore development services from a country where you mutually adjust with the time zone. The difference in time zone is probably going to be a hindrance to effective communication.
The second is cultural differences. It’s imperative to establish good communication with your remote team. Communication channels are of no use if you aren’t well-versed with what you want to convey. Thus, the better communication skills your remote team has, the more you’ll save time in management and processes.
Third, take care of the country’s legal norms, for example, whether they allow working with outsiders or if there are any restrictions on working with other countries. It is worth checking that the country’s government supports the IT industry and then only proceed.
Last but not least, make sure the outsourcing enterprise you choose has a convenient travel association with your country. Thus, allowing possible real-time communication with the team and helping you organize an easy business trip if needed.
2. Consider the Size of an Offshoring Enterprise
Always choose a company that is the right fit for your business needs. Often, selecting large companies with a wide range of services and talent might not be able to give you the attention you require. On the other hand, big offshore enterprises have more complicated processes and management when outsourcing. Their services are costly as compared to small or medium-sized offshore companies.
On the other hand, choosing a small company with fewer resources that cannot provide you the exact technical support your project needs might lead to project failure or losing clients. Since every company wants their vendors to be their top priority, you must go with a small or medium-sized vendor. They have lower costs with extra flexibility in their development processes.
But remember not to settle on those small companies that don’t have the exact team or technical expertise you require for your business.
Research their portfolios and client feedback to get assurance regarding the experience in providing similar services you want. Such companies will consistently deliver you the dedicated resource or a team to fulfill your project requirement and help you scale with altering team sizes as per the project’s need.
3. Relevant Technological Expertise
Choosing the outsourcing company for offshoring with no technological expertise is risky.
So, firstly, shortlist at least the five best outsourcing companies based on your project requirement, considering the technical skills you need. And, then start your R&D on all while comparing each other in terms of services they offer, domain expertise, price range, perks, and approaches they follow.
Once this is complete, you need to ensure the following things:
- Go through the portfolios of their previously completed projects, client’s feedback or reviews on their profiles, and the clutch.
- Check their case studies for how they overcome challenges by offering certain technological solutions
Vett talent profiles when considering vendors. Try and consider managed services over code sweatshops. - Check whether they know how to implement refactoring by not depending on old codes and reusing them to make them more efficient.
- Willingness to learn about emerging technologies to implement the right technology to write codes, build powerful frameworks or libraries in your project, resulting in a seamless customer experience.
By doing this, you get a clear idea about the technological skills and experience of a team.
4. Seamless Communication & Collaboration
Offshore Software development is often considered risky by ‘outsourcing novices’ particularly when there is a communication barrier between the vendor and the client.
Thus, it is rather crucial to build up a seamless communication system with your offshore software development team to meet outsourcing project expectations. After all, seamless communication is considered the critical component of a powerful team and would help you ensure hassle-free project delivery.
You need to follow the following things to avoid future risks and improve your understanding of the business processes for a successful business.
- Mode of communication: Make sure your offshore team makes use of both synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous include instant or direct chat using Zoom, Hangout, Skype, or Phone audio/video calling or facetime. It helps both parties understand the project, development processes, or the implemented solutions better. Whereas, Asynchronous includes indirect chat via emails, text messages, or chat. It helps trace records of every communication, especially when dealing with offshore teams.
- Collaborative tools: Business owners or the team must choose the right collaborative tool for streamlined communication. Various tools like Asana, Jira, Slack, Basecamp allow you to share your ideas or requirements and organize a process to track the project and individual’s performance.
In this way, you can avoid disarray, track the project progress, manage multifunctional teams through daily/weekly meetings, discuss ideas, check updates or results, and identify issues.
Wrap Up
Offshoring comes with certain benefits and challenges. However, all the risks associated with offshoring are easily manageable when you choose the right offshore software development partner to collaborate and create a definitive process for progress.
The above-written blog is all about understanding the risks associated with offshoring and how to mitigate them to be Risk-Smart when offshoring for better growth. We hope the blog turns out to be helpful for you. For any query or feedback, feel free to share in the comment section below!
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