In the last 20 years, the global workforce has matured, and location constraints are no longer a factor for hiring the right resource. This has led to offshoring to become a much more viable option. However, an organization should evaluate their motivation and readiness for offshoring. The factors that should influence the evaluation should be
1. Cost Competitiveness
The operations cost is a key motivator for organizations to consider offshoring. If your costs are higher than your competition or if you have pressure on your bottom line, you should evaluate offshoring as an option. For the same technical skill set, offshore resources will be significant cost-competitive. This would be especially true for locations that have developed significant expertise and a resource base for specific skills.
2. Global expansion & support
Once organizations start to grow globally, the support mechanism needs to expand to the new geographies. Having a support model that helps your customers as soon as they have a need could be critical for success in greenfield territories. It is important to put the support model in place along with the expansion rather than be an afterthought. Offshoring provides an efficient option to provide global IT support.
3. Process focus
For organizations to scale, it is imperative to put processes in place to utilize processes rather than individual brilliance. Offshore organizations are very mature in their software processes since this is core to their business. Process focus is key to be able to predict the quality of your products. Look at offshoring as a mechanism to focus on strengthening your IT processes
4. Focus on Core business
Organizations needing to focus on the core business would want to utilize software development and support as a service. This helps an organization to focus on the core competencies of the business while letting an offshore partner cater to the software services need. If managing IT is taking your focus away from your core business, it’s a good indicator that you should be outsourcing your IT and time to look at offshoring as an option.
5. Scaling resource needs
Organizations in a growth mode would frequently have a need to scale up on the resource needs and then scale down post completion of a specific project. Organizations struggle to source these resources internally and instead of focusing on hiring these resources internally, organizations should look at the right offshoring model to help them execute while focusing on the business growth
If one or more factors are true in your case, you should evaluate if global sourcing or offshoring is an option that could help mitigate some of these issues. If you do not have experience in global sourcing or offshoring, you should get professional help from a global sourcing organization.
Covalnz Advisory services is a consulting firm that works for Small and Medium businesses to help find the right IT partners to source globally.