Selection of Vendor
Selecting the correct vendor among the hordes of available businesses is one of the most important things to do. So proper research is very essential before selecting a vendor. Then compare vendors on various parameters. Don’t just look for a cheaper vendor. As you outsource from offshore, the technical skills of the team become an important matter.
Generally, outsourcing for Information Technology is seen to fail due to the selection of the wrong vendors. Here, the most common mistake that companies make while selecting a vendor is that they look for cheaper vendors and that results in poor quality work.
Cost: Profit is the main driving force behind any organization’s work, whether it is a product-based, service-based, or offshore provider. Negotiating to the limits where a company finds itself at a break-even level may lead the company to earn money from any other way. And that may result in poor quality.
Technical skills: Every offshore company comes with various tech skills and expertise. Therefore, you must first assess your requirements based on the project you are cultivating. And then select a vendor that has expertise in your required domain.
eSparkBiz Approach
eSparkBiz has a very transparent approach while discussing outsourcing of software development services with its clients. Everything, right from the salary of the team, the cost of the project, and even profit share is minutely discussed with the client during the onboarding process. In it, we do not give the chance to negotiate the prices as we originally quote the market’s best price. Although it all depends upon the level of the programmer’s skills, the tech stack used, the size of the team, and the duration of the project. But we make it a point to discuss everything openly and frankly with our clients. As we have a strict hiring process and tight funnels to recruit tech teams, it makes our team the best in the industry.
Issues related to Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual Property Rights and Offshore outsourcing are serious topics of discussion together. Concerningly, there have been numerous cases of IPR thefts and breaches of contract. So now companies going for offshore outsourcing raise many questions regarding Intellectual Property Rights.
- Is my source code safe? What if it is sold to my competitors?
- What if the offshoring company uses my code after making minor changes and produces another product in its name?
- What if the tech team working on my project steals my code and uses it for private purposes?
eSparkBiz Approach
We value our client’s ideas and understand what it takes to dream and shape a project. Keeping this in mind, we equally value the importance of Intellectual property rights. For every project that we undertake, we ensure the signing of an Intellectual Property Rights agreement.
After completing a project, we ensure our tech teams delete every piece of code from our systems. Though this is done after final confirmation from the client. Moreover, we do not provide any ‘REUSABLE LIBRARIES’ as is done by most offshoring companies.
Our client’s source code is protected through a legal agreement. Apart from this, we take numerous measures like email scanning, limited internet access, disabled floppy drives, and CD-writers to ensure there is no breach of data.
Creating Trust with the Internal Team
Maintaining trust and credibility among the internal team while offshoring your projects is another critical thing. As you will never want your internal team to be dejected and play a blame game with the outsourcing team. Unfortunately, this will only bring disadvantages to the team.
Citing the benefits of offshore outsourcing, most businesses are looking to adapt to this model. But in the process, forget about the internal team. Depending too much on the outsourced team may create a sense of dissatisfaction among the employees working internally.
It infuses the feeling of job insecurity among the internal employees and they may not agree to openly co-operate with the outsourced team. Hence, it is always advisable to have a meeting with the internal team and tell them the reason for outsourcing. And if possible, also have a mock Q&A session with them.
eSparkBiz Approach
This is one such problem that may not come initially or before taking up the work. Because the dissatisfaction starts when the work progresses and in the middle of the project. So we take the following proactive steps to solve these issues.
- Onboarding Meetups – We usually welcome our clients and their internal team members to first have an informal session of onboarding. Here all the team members introduce themselves and get a chance to interact with fellow members. Also, the roles and responsibilities of each team member are openly discussed in the onboarding meeting. So that there is no confusion later on.
- Regular meetings among the team members and weekly report sharing.
Management of Offshore Development Team
Offshore software outsourcing is all about managing people and projects simultaneously with utmost efficiency to get the best results.
There are a lot of companies out there providing Software Outsourcing services. But not all can manage the teams and the projects simultaneously. It is simply because efficient management of teams and projects both together is not everyone’s cup of tea. When it comes to efficient management, a well-skilled team, the experience of the team to a top-class project manager, and the vision of the company; everything gets into account.
eSparkBiz Approach
The team and the individual developers, including the project manager, are hired through a special process that includes a practical demonstration of a real-life situation. Post-hiring the team, a special onboarding session is conducted to work on the client’s project. Here the company’s vision is shared with the team to match their vision toward client satisfaction. Also, we instill a sense of responsibility among the team by giving the code ownership for each project. Apart from this, we use the industry-best project management tools to make the team and the PM efficient enough to communicate internally as well as with the client. Besides maintaining transparency through these tools is equally important.
Communication
Companies in search of the best talent go across geographical boundaries to hire software developers. Because of this, most of the team members stay geographically dispersed and in different time zones. And this stands as a crucial communication barrier for software development companies that provide offshoring services.
The Project Manager needs to be very careful while scheduling meetings with clients as he/she has to take into consideration the client’s time zone, team member’s time zone, and his time zone. Emailing may not always work as it has its drawbacks. For an instance, a client asking for a critical change may send an email at noon but it may reach the developer at midnight, which may not always be a feasible option to do.
eSparkBiz Approach
We have made its culture and inculcated it in our work duty to communicate with clients on off-hours. As we place our client’s requirements at the top of our priority list and adapt ourselves according to their requirements. So, as far as possible, we make it a point to schedule our work with the particular client’s time zone on any project.
Approach and Methodology
Not all offshoring services providing companies fulfill every requirement of a client or even their own promises. And this is a major difference between the approaches of various offshoring companies.
Many a time, the Software Outsourcing companies fail to understand and comprehend the requirements and needs of the client, which is one of the basic steps in providing offshoring services.
eSparkBiz Approach
Before jumping directly into product development, we first spend enough time to understand clearly the needs and requirements of the client. Here, each term and product idea is discussed clearly with the team so that no confusion is left. Also, the team asks questions for minute details like regarding the design of the product and tries to deliver the exact output as possible.
Challenges of Retaining Manpower
Software outsourcing has witnessed a massive paradigm shift in recent times. It is noticed that skilled and experienced manpower is swiftly replacing the traditional team and producing 2X results. So, this has led the software outsourcing companies to put in extra efforts to retain the manpower that is skilled, efficient, as well as experienced.
Today, every skilled developer is on the lookout for better opportunities. Hence, this stands as a massive challenge for the offshoring service providers to retain the team. Sometimes, it happens that a client has interacted with a particular team, shared his/her ideas with the team, and suddenly a key member of the team resigns citing better opportunities.
eSparkBiz Approach
While selecting a candidate for a role, we test them for technical compliance and their psychology on continuing the job. Also, we make sure that a candidate stays with us for at least 1.5 years. In case a stubborn candidate gets a better opportunity amid a project, we try to make them stand true to their commitments. And if need be, we also go the extra mile to compensate the amount and consider raising their pay at par with the offer they have to continue and complete the project on time.
Multiple Testing
Software development offshoring services usually require testing at each stage and also in multiple locations. This is because the codes are developed and designed at one location and are implemented and used at another. So this requires testing of codes on both the locations.
Additionally, it is necessary as the codes may run without any bugs on the location of the development but may show errors in the systems where it is to be deployed. Also, there could be some other issues at the place of the deployment that may prevent codes to run efficiently.
eSparkBiz Approach
We ensure the codes are tested severely at our locations and systems as well on the client’s location. For that, we usually do testing on the server provided by the clients. It is done regularly and throughout the development cycle.
Post-Development Support and Services
Any project, whether product-based or service-based, may require support services after they are developed and deployed. Or, there may be slight changes or upgrades requested by the client according to the market needs and demands. But many service providers end their services with the final deployment.
All products or software have a lifetime. Not all can work or provide service for life long. Also, with changes in the market and business requirements, there may be changes required in software too. Here, many offshore service providers turn down clients’ requests for changes required in the services.
eSparkBiz Approach
We believe it is a best practice to keep documentation of everything that is developed on our premises. On successful completion of a project, we hand over the project along with the documentation file to our clients. So that anyone can understand the code structure and make required changes in it as and when needed. Apart from this, we also provide services even after development and try to support for the long term.
Turn down the Deal mid-way
Turning down the deal mid-way through a project development is like a disaster for anyone. No client would like to have such an experience with service providers on board that may turn down the deal at any point due to any discrepancies.
This is one of the darkest sides of software outsourcing. Moreover, the Statistics say that out of every four offshore deals, at least one fails mid-way. Although, there may be numerous reasons for this like communication gaps, clashes between the technical team of client and service providers, poor performance, and many others. Ultimately, this costs both time and money for the client along with a bad experience.
eSparkBiz Approach
As soon as we observe any discrepancy at any stage of a project, we first take steps to find out the reasons for those discrepancies. In this, we try to gather as much information as possible from both sides, i.e., the client as well as the development team. Post analyzing the situation, we try to establish proper communication among the involved team and make efforts to resolve the issue. Under worst circumstances, if the situation becomes worse, then we plan a proper exit schedule with clients in a way that may minimize their losses.
