If you even started thinking about hiring an external team to develop your software product, it is hardly to believe you haven’t met several objections to the business outsourcing process.
Many of these are just the ones that once went viral and are not omnipresent today. Some are coming and going out of fashion as the market environment dictates. And some are, well, simply not applicable anymore.
Statement #1 Communication with the outsourced teams suffers
You can hear: It will be nearly impossible to keep the communication flow between the all the members of the team when they never met in person.
Reality: Yes, it is normal to have precautions and to be nervous when your team members may be more than 1000 km away from each other and/or from you. However, 2020 taught as (among other things) that if the well established communication processes are already in place, the adaptation flow is much smoother.
“Technology now allows people to connect anytime, anywhere, to anyone in the world, from almost any device. This is dramatically changing the way people work, facilitating 24/7 collaboration with colleagues who are dispersed across time zones, countries and continents.“
Michael Dell
CEO and Chairman of Dell Technologies
In other words, if you already have a well versed communication process in your internal team, adding and including new members is basically frictionless. Especially having in mind that the developers all around the world most often follow the best practices of communication systems. The only difference may be which system they have most experience with.
Statement #2 Cutting cost is the only reason for reaching out to outsourcing development companies
Reality: Let’s be honest, it would definitely be a stretch if we would go on and say it is not a bit factor. But it certainly is not the only one. And it fluctuates depending on the environment dynamics.
Namely, according to Deloitte’s Global Outsourcing Survey, in 2016 outsourcing as a tool for cost effectiveness was in top three. The other two included enabling focus on the core business and solving capacity issues. Much less percentage, but still in significant range, went to enhancing service quality and accessing the intellectual capital.
Source: Deloitte
Then in 2018 survey, the key goals were shared among several points. And there was a certain focus switch from reducing operating costs to enabling speed to market. One of the important factors was faster scaling, user experience was ranked high as well, and last but not the least, achieving competitive advantage.
When results from 2020 came along, naturally, due to all uncertainties that struck the economic environments globally, the cost reduction has spiked in importance. Interestingly, according to the same survey over half of the interviewees pointed at cost reduction as a primary reason for outsourcing. Yet again, despite the high numbers, it certainly was not the only relevant factors on the list. Flexibility, speed to market, and access to the broader talent pool followed this time.
Statement #3 You can’t monitor remote employees
Reality: Of course, you will not be able to watch them go in and out of the office. But, these days and with most tech companies following Agile methodologies, sprints, flexible working hours, maybe it can hardly be called a necessity.
Furthermore, old-school micromanagement is not good neither for you, neither for the team. Designing the product, the roadmap and the milestone will be enough, and then simply assign the task to the developer and let them build it.
For that to be accomplished, a development team who respects your trust and the set goals is a must. Which bring us back to selecting an outsourcing partner that will meet all the criteria you agreed, and the stress about their productivity will be off the table.
Statement #4 Outsourcing produces poor products
Reality: Poor products may be launched from time to time. Yet it hardly has to do anything whether the product development was outsourced or not. Geography itself does not play any role here.
One of the reasons that this misconception is still widely present is the fact that some regions offer services at lower prices than others. Of course, there should be a red flag raised at drastically lower cost compared to some other partners or local environment. But the closer look at the economy of the region you are interested to outsource to can offer more than enough insights.
What is more, with the developers who take standardized tests in the pre-screening process, the interview flow with your staff can easily bust this myth. Sure, there will be profiles that are not a match either as a team fit or as a tech fit, but they will not make it to the final round and they will not have a chance to start the onboarding, let alone work on a product itself.
In conclusion, if you outsource a product development to a competent company which suggested to you the profiles of highly skilled developers, you will get a good product features no matter where they are geographically.
