How to choose the right Software Outsourcing Partner (Part 2)

Continuing on from our previous post, which introduced the basic factors behind choosing the right outsourcing partner, here we’ll expand on those factors and provide additional tips and advice.

First of all, you’re going to have to ask yourself –Why exactly am I outsourcing?

A good question, no? Why exactly are you outsourcing?Well, from our experience, it’s probably because you’re in need of additional R&D resources and for various reasons you cannot / do not want to hire them internally. Major reasons we’ve typically encountered include:

Budget constraints – these can certainly play their part, and adding employees to the payroll might just add one gray hair too many to your COO’s head…

Lack of available internal resources – this is often a major reason for looking for an outsourcing partner, especially for non-core activities.

Urgency – another major factor, as many teams / departments do not have the time and/or resources available to recruit new employees from scratch.

Hence your research into hiring an outsourcing partner.

Next up, you should ask yourself this: What do I really need to look for when considering outsourcing companies?

There are a number of factors that you should consider when hiring an outsourcing company… First up, we would highly recommend you check their experience and reputation (for example, check for customer references and ideally, any case studies of previous projects). In addition, ensuring the outsource company is covered for risks and liabilities is no trivial matter – because what happens when things go wrong?

Other factors we’d highly recommend you consider:

Professionalism

Transparency

Communication and interaction

Taking a look at that last point, our experience tells us those two elements of communication and interaction are often critical, and also often depend on 1) the outsource company’s proximity to your organization, and 2) potential language and culture barriers.

There may be some financial advantages to hiring internationally, but the benefits of having your outsourcing partner in the same country cannot be underestimated. Having them in the same country means less travel time and expenses, and also means there are no language issues and typically no culture barriers. This may seem trivial, but trying to get your message across effectively while simultaneously ensuring that no-one is offended or loses face is no small matter…

Being located in the north of Israel, Galil Software is actually considered by the majority of our customers to be a complete extension of their R&D. This results in a huge productivity bonus for many of our customers, as well as a high level of satisfaction, as they no longer have to worry about international outsourced staff and can communicate directly in Hebrew, as and when required.

The last important factor we recommend considering is productivity. The big question you need to ask, of course, is: What kind of productivity can you expect from the outsource partner employees (compared with that of your own employees?).

Besides the professional capabilities, there are additional factors that determine the level of productivity from an outsourcing company, including:  interpersonal skills, language barriers, time zone differences, and cultural gaps – all very important contributors to productivity.

Galil customers measure our activity constantly and, based on their measurements, we can safely say that out productivity levels are similar to that of internal R&D resources.

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So now you know what to look for when choosing an outsourcing company – when can we expect your call? 🙂