When working with IT teams, there are several options you can select depending on your needs. When choosing between with an offshore or onshore team, several factors should be considered. Onshore IT teams have many strategic advantages over off shore team. These include:
Locality: One of the best benefits of working with an onshore team is their proximity to your business. This alone has many tertiary benefits that speed up projects and improve productivity. With physical proximity, onshore IT teams can collaborate with your team daily. They are able to visit your headquarters, work in the same time zone as you and facilitate quicker and smoother communication.
Cultural fit: This is a vastly underestimated benefit when working with onshore teams. Onshore teams Follow a very similar culture to yours, which means you observe the same holidays, speak the same language and more. It can be a complicated to work with an offshore team that you have no cultural awareness of. This can lead to miscommunication and frustrations that could result in the delay of projects.
Real-time communication: Onshore teams are familiar with the communication methods you utilize and are generally very easy to reach via phone, email or any other medium. With real-time communication with your onshore team, you can alert them of any important project updates or news. This allows you to be available and respond quickly to the needs of your projects.
Retainment: If you enjoyed working with an onshore IT team or developer, it’s likely that you will have the opportunity to establish a long term relationship. Many software development companies will allow you to hire a select set of developers at the end of the contract. This provides proven employees who are up to speed on your technology.
Another option would be to turn to an offshore IT team. This type of team also has many benefits to your company or organization.
Cost-effective: this allows you to hire dedicated offshore developers at reasonable and affordable rates, which in the end, is going to maximize profits. Apart from the monthly savings on operational overhead, you will see it being on set up cost in capital expenditure.
Flexibility and scalability: Failing to measure the success of products can be disastrous for a small business. In a situation like this, most Companies prefer to hire developers and leave project management responsibilities to their offshore outsourcing partner. Once you have finalized a team, you will get the chance to select developers, designers, and the team leader. This type of flexibility will give an organization total freedom to make their development process more transparent and hassle free for you.
Time zone differences: although this can’t be viewed as a benefit or a drawback, there definitely are benefits to being in a different time zone than your team. For example, if you were outsourcing to India, companies would be able to utilize the time zone difference to their advantage and provide 24/7/365 support. If you are worried about an issue that may arise at the end of the business day, your offshore team would be able to help you resolve that issue before you got to work the next day.
Shared responsibility: nobody can underestimate the risk factors involved in the development of software. Both parties will be able to agree on terms and conditions, in the impact and risk management is shared among them while outsourcing. Sharing not only leverage is the delivery of services across business units, but also represents a sharing of accountability and responsibilities between shared services organization and its customers.
There are obviously benefits and drawbacks to either option, so you just need to find the one that best fits your company or organization. No matter what, it’s going to benefit you and give your company the best chance to succeed.
