As the demand for highly-talented software developers and technical professionals has increased over the past three decades, companies have responded by revving up their hiring efforts and by seeking top talent in the technical world. However, these same hiring managers quickly realized that staffing a full-time technical services team is a very time-intensive and expensive undertaking—one that runs the risk of falling short in its goal of hiring the best talent in the industry and that fails to take into account the rapidly changing nature of the field. But hiring a software outsourcing services company can help to solve that problem.
Given their workload and ever-increasing list of responsibilities, it is almost impossible for internal hiring managers to accomplish all of the tasks that they are assigned. Human resources is expected to find and appeal to the top talent in the technical industry, while also keeping costs down and building an agile team capable of working on a wide variety of technical issues and projects.
The Benefits of Software Outsourcing
Because skilled information technology workers have become so integral to the success of modern businesses and competition for these workers continues to increase, software outsourcing has become an attractive option for overburdened management. The benefits are numerous: outsourcing development services can save time and money, help your company attract the top talent in the industry, minimize risk and simultaneously improve product quality, and maintain a flexible staff and budget that is prepared to respond to the challenges of the future.
Hire the best employees
One of the main benefits associated with outsourcing development services is that you can find highly experienced and sought-after software developers and other tech employees without sifting through a stack of thousands of applications for a single open position. While the world’s largest tech companies, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Salesforce, have long had a vice-grip on the Western Hemisphere’s technical talent pool, even they are beginning to take note of the increased demand for these workers. Savvy outsourcing companies know this and secure the best software developers in Latin America early in their college careers, something which most business simply cannot do.
The best companies in the software outsourcing and recruitment industry set themselves apart by sourcing the top talent in the industry, predicting and solving their client’s problems before they happen, and becoming an invaluable part of your business’s long-term strategy. When assessing potential software outsourcing companies, it is vital that you evaluate their ability to hire the industry’s top talent. This can be done by looking through their client list for companies with impressive hiring reputations (Google, Apple, etc), by asking for details about their hiring process, and by asking for testimonials or contact information from past clients.
Cost Savings
Cost savings is the most common explanation provided by management to explain their decision to outsource development services. Hiring a new employee is an expensive, time-intensive, and risky undertaking. The Society for Human Resource Management has estimated that it costs between $20,000 or more to hire and train a new employee up to company standards. Costs can be even higher for a high-pay, difficult software development role—assuming that a strong candidate can even be found for the right salary.
This is an incredibly expensive undertaking with no guarantee of success; both the company and the employee can decide to end their employment at any time. The cost and risk associated with hiring highly-skilled technical employees makes nearshore outsourcing an attractive option for savvy managers. By working with an outsourcing firm in Latin America, business owners and managers can save money and invest that surplus into a revenue-generating role.
Time Savings
Another fantastic benefit derived from working with offshore development companies is the huge amount of time saved by management. Independent estimates agree that it takes more than 30 business days, or a month and a half, to fill an open position in the technology industry in the United States. However, if you are a manager who depends on the work of your technical team, a month and a half is far too long to go without a competent software developer. This is where software outsourcing services can help.
Software Outsourcing Companies have an advantage in this situation because they have a large cadre of talented software developers ready to begin working on your project at a moment’s notice. The ability to hire temporary workers with no delay is an invaluable tool in management’s arsenal. You can ensure that employee turnover (or something as simple as an extended hospital stay or pregnancy leave) does not cripple your team and stall your projects. Furthermore, you can help your team break through bottlenecks and complete side projects without hiring full-time employees and limiting your flexibility in the future.
Same Time Zone
Working with an outsourced development team in the same time zone as your office also offers tremendous advantages to both management and your in-house software development team. Traditional outsourcing development services are located often located in South and East Asia, regions of the world far away from the United States. While working with an outsourcing service in this region of the world offers a variety of benefits—namely talented software developers, cheap prices, and a willingness to work longer hours than many American employees—it comes with a unique set of problems as well.
The main problem associated with working with an Asian outsourcing company is the time difference. It can be incredibly difficult to coordinate tasks in real-time and to work efficiently when half of your team lives in a different time zone and is sleeping while you are at work. By working with a Latin American nearshore outsourcing company like BairesDev, you ensure that your team is working and fully engaged at the same time. This also makes things like real-time communication much easier, and allows you to schedule meetings and other events during normal business hours.
Stay Lean
While most companies are pouring time and resources into hiring a strong, internal technical services team, forward-thinking companies understand their staff must remain lean and agile in order to respond to emergencies and new initiatives while also keeping costs down. This is why software outsourcing is such an important resource for already overburdened management: it allows managers to respond to new developments, like the need to update software, respond to an emergency, or complete a short-term project—without on-boarding and training a new-hire.
Hiring and retaining a new employee is a massive undertaking. It involves management, your entire technical team, human resources, and more. The best software outsourcing companies will help you avoid this hassle and focus on your real priorities by offering an array of outsourcing services for you to lean-on during emergencies or when launching new projects. Just as importantly, you can disband your outsourced team and eliminate those costs once their work is no longer needed. This helps startups and established businesses alike stay lean and efficient.
Minimize Risk
There are two main risks associated with developing a new piece of software: 1) your software will miss the mark and fail to resonate with your target audience, and 2) your team is not equipped to complete this new, unfamiliar project with their current knowledge and resources. The first risk can be mitigated by seeking customer input from the very first stages of development. In addition, the introduction of a minimum viable product can also help you identify problems and create solutions before too much time and money has been invested in the project.
The second risk is more difficult to remedy. Companies work with a small group of highly-talented software developers to handle everyday technical needs. However, if you are seeking to innovate and bring a completely new product to market, it is vital that you bring on-board experienced professionals, with significant experience in this particular niche, to assist in development and provide their hard-earned advice. Offshore development companies help you bring this hard-to-find talent onto your team without the long, arduous hiring process and with no long-term commitment to these highly-paid professionals. These external team members make sure that you have the right expertise at your disposal and ensure that you do not invest time and money into a piece of software that is fundamentally flawed.
Improve Product Quality
One of the most important benefits witnessed from software outsourcing is the introduction of new perspectives. Groupthink is a very real and common phenomenon that impacts the work of software development teams. Groupthink, which is defined by the desire to maintain conformity within a group and to minimize disruption, can hamper the ability to think outside of the box and to produce a customer-centric final product. It is vitally important that managers identify groupthink early on and introduce solutions to disrupt their team’s thinking.
Bringing in external developers, without prior connections in the group or attachments to your current product, is one of the best ways of introducing new perspectives and eliminating misconceptions. A new, external team member just may be the difference between producing a piece of software that your company loves and your customers hate versus creating an effective piece of software that is beloved by all. Furthermore, your Latin American software outsourcing team can help expand your internal capabilities, allowing for more thorough testing by your development staff and feedback on your minimum viable product from your customers.
Faster Project Completion
What determines when a product goes to market? For most development teams, the amount and quality of available resources dictates their capabilities and schedule. When assigned a new project from upper management, the average technical manager will look at their current resources and workload to determine what they can deliver and when. However, working within current constraints can increase the time it takes to bring a product to market and can allow your competitors to catch up and release their product to the public first.
Outsourcing development services allows you to avoid the constraints that your current resources place on you. Managers with external development teams can create their own schedules and can force their project deadlines to meet the demands of the market, not the other way around. The best software outsourcing companies will work with you to craft your own reality: you can explain the challenges you face and your resource constraints, and they can help you meet your goals by providing you with the outsourced resources necessary to meet you deadline and be the first to market with your idea.
