Given the fact that our economy is now considered in global terms, it is of course inevitable that the IT industry has been swept up in globalisation at large. Technological advances are the very cause and enablers of a globalised marketplace, and so when seeking experienced personnel and labour to carry out almost any digital project that a business may have at hand, it is no longer a case of flicking through the Yellow Pages to find someone local or even domestic, but rather taking to the web waves to search a global pool of talent and find the best fit.
It is one of the wonders and the beauties of the modern age that a company, say, in the UK, can now have ready access to the employment of some of the highest-skilled and experienced IT engineers in the likes of Eastern Europe at a few clicks of a button.
But, what is more, not only is offshoring operations such as software and app development to locations afar a simple process, as the industry has evolved, it has now become a reliable, highly professional and cost-effective solution for enterprises the world over.
We covered in our last blog exactly why outsourcing development to Eastern Europe favours fortune, but now we want to reveal exactly how and where all that favourable fortune can be gained.
How to save thousands offshoring development
There are many, many entrepreneurs all over the globe who have praised the merits of outsourcing overseas development, and what ties nearly all the success stories together are the cost savings that are inevitably incurred.
So let's drill down now into where these costs are saved, and exactly how the practice of offshoring can be exploited to the commissioning business's overall financial fortitude.
Labour
One of the greatest and most immediately measurable areas where savings can be made is of course in the price of labour. Labour arbitrage is perhaps the most attractive factor of overseas outsourcing.
Put very simply, in the globalised labour marketplace, companies can hire the services of a foreign development company sometimes at the fraction of the cost of what they could do domestically. There are risks, of course, and the saying “you get what you pay for” is a cliche for a reason.
However, in 2016, the risk of ending up with substandard developers delivering substandard products is increasingly becoming minimalised – provided, of course, that the commissioning business looks to the right offshore locations to outsource the work. Since offshoring has become more and more common, those development houses offering their services abroad are forced to stay competitive – on quality, expertise, communications and delivery, as well as price.
Eastern Europe is one such location that is constantly delivering on all of these fronts. The country produces highly-skilled developers that hail from some the world's top universities. The work that they do is of impeccable standard and efficiency, the culture gap is small, the geography favourable – and all of this at comparatively low-costs to those found elsewhere in the developed world.
Short-term commitment benefits
One of the most overlooked and perhaps even underrated advantage of outsourcing development overseas is found in the fact that companies are able to hire in an expert on a short-term basis. This negates the need to commit to the long-term hiring of an in-house professional, and paying all the associated costs that come with it.
The nature of development means that a single project can often require one engineer with a particular skillset at the start of the project, but, a couple of months down the line, will require the services of someone else with a different set of skills.
Outsourcing naturally combats this issue. When businesses look to offshore companies for skilled development engineers, these people are hired in on a short-term contract to complete the work, with no long-term commitment required or even expected. And the great thing is that the right developer for the right job can be very easily pinpointed and parachuted in where needed, and then way given for the next developer to take over, who will similarly perform the required work and then be removed completely from the payroll. It's a system that benefits all parties, but ultimately saves the commissioning business thousands in the long term.
Time savings
Another overlooked cost-saving benefit of outsourcing overseas is found in the time that is inevitably saved in development. When a company hires in-house, there is a very real risk of office distractions – lunch breaks, office chit-chat, commuting – which creates a hugely detrimental environment for developers.
By contrast, when the development is carried out by someone working from a distant location, invariably the work gets completed more promptly and more accurately. This, in turn, translates into further cost savings down the road as less billable time will be taken up correcting errors that may well have been avoided.
Final word
Development will always cost a company money, but offshoring to a reliable and highly-skilled location like Eastern Europe will save thousands. This additional money can either be used simply to keep business debts low, or otherwise re-invested back into the project to create something even better with additional functionality that would not have been achievable with the same budget if spent domestically.
The benefits of saving on development costs can therefore be viewed in two ways: you can either have an equally good product at a fraction of the cost, or a supercharged product without spending a penny more.
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