There are hundreds to thousands of offshore software development companies around the world. How do you find the right one that offers the technology and domain knowledge you need within your budget? Picking up randomly a software company might be easy. Yet, finding the ideal offshore partner, who understands your business and can help you to achieve the best outcomes, can be the most challenging task ever. Selecting the wrong offshore partner may lead to wasting time, financial resources. And more than that, you might get low-quality results and gain more frustration.
To help you make the right decision, S3Corp provides you the following tips on how to choose the right offshore software development company. One way or another, there will be some key aspects and processes that you need to consider before committing to a partnership with a software development company.
KEY CRITERIA FOR CHOOSING AN OFFSHORE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY
Defining What Do You Expect
It is an essential part, but most of the company forgets. They rush to look for the partner without knowing what they want to achieve. Hence, they might get nowhere in the development journey.
Before you start to look for an offshore software development partner, you need to sit down and discuss with your business team to define the goals and what you want to gain from the offshoring partner. The outcome of the discussion might be an outline for the specific expectations and the details.
Whether you want to establish short-term or long-term goals, it might always include the detail of existing issues, your internal resources, budget, team-size, offshore models, technology or skill sets, etc. This preparation will help you identify the potential partners and be aware of how suitable the offshore software company is for your business goals.
Moreover, the comprehensible goal will help your IT outsourcing provider bring the best software solutions at a reasonable cost. With professional teams, they can help you to achieve your business needs and goals.
Even though this is an important part, the reliable offshore software development partners, who have built a strong foundation in the business view through various projects, can give you the IT-consulting and find the best way to help you gain more benefits.
However, in general, you will still be the host. By carefully preparing the proposal, it will provide you and your partner a crystal-clear view of your expectations and goals. And other things might come after to make your goals come true.
Software Development Experience And Expertise
The specific goals will be the map to show you what you need. The experience of the offshore software development company is one of those. That means you need to research to know their portfolios or what they have done before. By doing this, you will understand their abilities, past successes, domain knowledge.
These will help you narrow down the lists of potential partners and figure out the right company for your project.
Where do you find it?
- Referencing from colleagues and acquaintances.
- Asking directly from the company.
- Searching from the details of software development case studies on the company's website.
These case studies will show you whether their ability can solve your problems and deliver high-quality products or not.
Besides the experience of the company, their technical expertise will be another part you need to consider. One of the advantages of partnering with an offshore software development company is that you can access the pool of technological expertise and leverage it for your best outcomes. Based on your needs and requirements, you will know what technology stacks you need and what the potential partners might offer, and their capability to do it.
Hence, you have to do some more research on the company's standards and their technological stacks.
Cost-effectiveness
One way or another, outsourcing software development is always about cost optimization. Hence, you should choose a flexible offshore software development company that provides different pricing models and helps you choose the one that fits your goals. In this way, you will get access to the best possible talent for your business. Beyond that, you can gain the most affordable price depending on your business needs.
Just in case you do not know the pricing models, there are three popular types in offshore software development firms.
- The fixed-price model: it works best for small or medium projects with explicit requirements
- The dedicated development team model: It means you hire offshore developers entirely focused on your project.
- The Time & Material model (T&M models): It means you need an expert on a project temporarily.
Each of those is suitable for different business needs. And the reliable offshore software development partner will help you figure out the best model that fits your business requirements.
Even though the offshore software vendors might offer you attractive prices, you should not compromise the quality. Meaning to say low-prices should not be the primary determinant for choosing a vendor. Quality always should be your priority. The ideal offshore partner will not only offer competitive prices but also ensure quality software projects.
Security policy
Depending on the type of project, sometimes partnering with a third-party software company means you have to share some copyright information and your user data. Hence, you might need some standards and regulations to protect your data. Most reliable offshore software companies always establish their security policy. This policy ensures that the data will not be in trouble.
Hence, before reaching out and committing to the partnership with the potential offshore software company, you should double-check whether the company has the security policies and standards that fit your cybersecurity demands or not. This one will ensure the safety and security of your confidential information.
Here are some popular procedures and policies that most reliable companies would have and comply with these standards:
- The international security standards like ISO 27001:2013, PCI DSS, ISO 9001:2015, HIPAA, NIST, OWASP, etc.
- The NDA agreements.
- The recent internal and external audits following the security standards and policies.
- The strict password security policy and strict security in a working place.
- The contract that provides a plan for the transition database materials and systems, etc.
Agile development processes
Besides the mentioned aspect, the development methodology is another one that might determine the success of your project. Scrum, Agile, Waterfall are applied to various projects and become popular development methodologies.
The complexity of projects has brought many companies to choose the Agile Development Methodology. Because it creates flexibility during the development process.
Agile methodologies have been well-known as the most effective. Some key features of this methodology will be:
- Deliver new features quickly and regularly
- Adapting, introducing changes and new features in a short time.
- Improved quality by constant testing and detecting and fixing defects at an early stage of development.
- Reduced costs and time predictability. Agile allows the development team to estimate how long it will take to develop a feature. Beyond, it can help you predict the cost-spend due to the fixed number of working hours in each sprint.
Their client reviews and testimonials
If you have no experience in offshoring software, you should take the client reviews and testimonials of the potential partners.
You might need to get extensive research to choose the right one for your needs. You can ask for referrals and recommendations from friends, colleagues, acquaintances, or those who have experienced the services and partnered with your potential partner. It is a secure source because they did have experience with the services and the company. Hence, they know which one is reliable for software development outsourcing.
Asides from that, you may need to look over the social media or the internet (for instance, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Clutch, Upwork), or even look at the testimonials from their websites. You can surf around your LinkedIn network. You might find someone who is the CEO of the software development company or your friend who experienced offshore outsourcing, then ask them for recommendations or give their opinions.
Communication And Culture
Communication is always the vital aspect impacting your results. If your offshore development team misunderstands your point of view or your requirements, you might need time to fix it, even paying the extra costs for the relating issues.
In reverse, if the development team has good communication skills, the development processes will run smoothly and more successfully.
Therefore, before committing to the partnership with the software development company, you should ensure that they can facilitate the communication processes and communication tools in which both side-you and the software company-can understand each other and clarify the ideas/requirements.
The frequency of meetings or daily communication through tools (for example, Skype, Slack, Zoom) might help both sides. This constant communication will ensure that both sides can minimize miscommunications along with the process. More than that, it will make the collaborations among the stakeholders more efficient. Hence, your project can progress as scheduled.
Culture might be another part that you need to consider when choosing the offshore development vendor. The different mindsets can impact the final results of the project.
However, the different points of view can clarify during the communication process. Most of the reliable offshore software development companies have succeeded with various projects. And they have worked with multiple clients around the world. Hence, they have built a strong business viewpoint that can fill the gap of different cultures.
QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN CHOOSING OFFSHORE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PARTNER
To help you choose the right offshore software development company that fits your finances and your business needs, S3Corp. suggests the following questions based on the criteria above to figure out which one you can collaborate with:
- What is their strong domain knowledge? Can they provide the required technology stacks? The right company will be the one that has a strong business view. They can provide the skilled resources across the software development life cycle, even providing the specialized skills to handle multiple release cycles.
- Can they offer any quality references? How can they prove their credibility and trustworthiness? How about their quality of services? Who are their customers and partners?
- What collaboration tools or project management tools do they use during the project? What are their management capabilities? How do they handle the communications? How strong are their English skills if you are using English for collaboration? How do they communicate during the development process? Whether it is the daily meeting or twice a week?
- Do they have any experience on a similar project? Do they understand your business needs and even future needs-if any? What is their experience working with Startups/SMBs/Enterprises?
- Supposing you get challenges and issues, how do they handle when these things happen? Ask them for the solutions.
- How about their on-time delivery capabilities? How do they ensure the software quality, whether they use manual tests or automated tests? Which methodologies are they applying? Whether can it be flexible to your project? Will it be easy to scale up or down the development team size?
WHERE TO FIND THE BEST OFFSHORE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY?
There are many criteria for choosing a software outsourcing destination. The following aspects are the most common considering points: Geographical location, Talented pool of developers, Technology stacks, Billing rates, Time zone difference, Well education system, Level of digital adoption, IT infrastructure, etc...According to these criteria, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia are the regions for offshore software development. These regions are the hottest spots to find an offshore programming development company.
Offshore Development in Asia
Asia is a well-known offshore development destination for many businesses. The following are the leading outsourcing destinations for searching for a reliable offshore software company: India, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Among that, India, China are well-known as the most popular outsourcing destinations in the world. Besides those, Vietnam software outsourcing is another emerging destination in the software outsourcing industry in recent decades.
Why Asia? Asia offshore development helps you to access the enormous talent pool. There would be around 7M developers on this continent. This number could even be larger than the rest of the world combined.
The relatively low rate is also an impressive point for those companies who are looking for cost-effectiveness. The average hourly rate in Asia would come to around $25. This rate is lower than in many other regions. Besides that, Asia also are applying STEM learning which helps to churn out the number of high-quality software developers. They are all well-trained and well-experienced in the IT field that can meet your needs. Moreover, the variety of software services across all industries and updating the latest software development technology has brought the Asian to become the most attractive offshore destination, especially for companies from North America and Western Europe.
Offshore Development in Latin America
Recently, Latin American are gaining more reputed around the world in the software development industry. Many US-based companies have chosen this continent as offshore software destinations. Here are the top offshore development in the region: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Latin America offshore development can offer lots of highly skilled talents. It is the result of heavy investments in tech education and IT infrastructure from the national government.
The average hourly rate in Latin American will be around $45. Depending on the experience and the qualification of the developer, this rate can be lesser or higher. Due to the geography, Latin American offshore development have an advantage of similar time zones. Hence, it became a convenient offshore outsourcing destination for most US companies.
Offshore Development in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is an emerging offshore development destination. Many companies approach this region due to the cost-effective and high-quality developers. Applying STEM learning allows Eastern European to generate more skilled software developers who know the most advanced software development technology stacks and how to use them in projects.
The hourly offshore development rates will come around $33. This hourly rate may be higher than in other regions like Asia and Africa. However, comparing with North America, Latin America, and Western Europe, Eastern Europe is still lower.
The following are the top ones to establish the offshore development team: Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania, Czech Republic, Belarus, Estonia.
Conclusion
Choosing the ideal offshore software development company among the thousands of companies might not be as easy as it sounds. Yet, the above tips can be a useful 'map' for you. These tips will help you know what you want and what to look out for in a software company, and beyond, which factors need to double-check before committing to the partnership with the offshore companies.
Hence, you can choose the ideal vendor for your software development project or your applications development projects. However, above all, you should ensure that the selected company understands your business needs and can provide the expertise that fits your project demand. They can ensure you get the proper techniques or technologies and the flexible models to achieve your goals while the project still meets all regulatory standards set by your industry.
And it's all about how we do at S3Corp. As a leading offshore software development company, we desire to provide the most effective development team possible for clients while ensuring the entire process is flexible to help clients achieve their business goals.
If you are ready to stand out from your competitors and to establish your offshore development team, then we are here. Book a free consultation with our business team.
