Article: Offshoring for Success - Part 1
by Asif Nawaz. Published on November 25, 2009.
If you've had any form of involvement with the software development industry, you'll know that offshoring and outsourcing are very hot but debated topics. As somebody who has been involved in this industry for over a decade, I have successfully avoided this debate and discussion. Furthermore, I've tried my level best to steer away all such discussions; being involved in the actual process is something I only dreamt of when I had nightmares.
Unfortunately, though, living in the UK, outsourcing is a reality and a very active part of business. The US had its fair share of outsourcing and offshoring blunders between 2001 and 2006, where companies spent thousands and millions trying to build cheap development teams and software houses in India, Pakistan and China. However, after having come to the realisation that managing staff in these countries, coupled with the generally low quality of work, was a mammoth task that was not worth the saving in the long run, many (not all) companies pulled out of the outsourcing and offshoring arena. The businesses that outsource to these countries now from the US have a very strong and firm understanding of the local cultures and work ethic, and they're very selective about the American bred management team that will tackle these offshoring operations. If the team isn't right, it's almost always cheaper to get the work done in the US.
Yet there are other development companies in the US who have turned to Eastern Europe. Ukraine, Serbia and Romania have taken the lead in developing budget restricted applications in Europe, but with the ever narrowing gap between the Euro and Sterling, many British companies are becoming wary of the fact that Eastern Europe may become a fast fading option. What then, is the alternative?
Do you pay the excessive taxes and salaries to UK developers, or do you continue to compromise quality by outsourcing to the Indian sub-continent?
Being the owner of a high-quality, very selective development firm in London, I have refused to compromise on quality. So many of our customers (including some who haven't made it from the potential to customer arena) have expressed their satisfaction in terms of service, project management, transparency and communication and our professional attitude. Yet all of them have continued to voice the opinion that we cost more than the competition. My simple answer has always been that we promise quality: our work is done by UK developers and a trusted team in Eastern Europe, and we simply cannot compete with Indian sub-continent development teams on low-quality or pricing. That's not our motto.
Last month, however, I was approached by a friend and colleague who suggested that I at least consider the idea of building a team in either India or Pakistan. His simple take on the matter was that if the market demands low quality for low pricing, why don't you give them that option? Another client specifically came to us with a request saying that he was willing to pay a project management fee at UK rates if we managed a development team based between India and Pakistan. I've been very picky in choosing our customers since we launched the VAFTA brand almost two years ago. I've also been very lucky that we've always found customers who are willing to pay for quality and good service; yet I've also known that we alienate a pretty big share of the market by being so picky.
So, low and behold, we took on the project management initiative, whereby we're managing developers based in India and Pakistan on our project management system. It's all part of growing as a business, and as we've started to manage this foreign talent, we've dipped deeper into the offshoring arena, where instead of outsourcing, we're putting together in-house development teams that mix with our flavours here in the UK. Of course, rather than risking this with our clients, we're testing our offshore setup with internal projects. The result, if we do this right, is that we'll have a very powerful mix of options for our customers. If you're short on time and need quality assured within that restricted timescale, we've got a team in Eastern Europe that, I can say with confidence, will do a better job than anyone on earth.
If, like the majority of the market in the UK, you're looking to build a state of the art application but aren't on a time crunch and have a very restrictive budget, well, we'll be able to do that too. That doesn't mean we will compromise on quality. You'll still deal with us here in the UK and we'll keep the same level of transparency going; it's just that we understand the skillsets we possess in Europe and in the Indian sub-continent, so we'll give you realistic timelines.
In the next part of this article, I'll be writing more on how our offshoring initiative is coming along. I have no doubt that we're going to be successful, but since so many companies venture into this arena and fail, I have taken it upon myself on documenting how we will be successful, and how this will bring great advantages for some of our existing and new customers.
