Offshore IT outsourcing is not new to businesses in Europe and North America. It started small with some visionary companies taking great pains to smoothen the process. Once the process was proven and economic benefits started to flow, in droves other companies and joined the offshore outsourcing bandwagon.
Over the years, the process has transformed from purely providing technical resources to higher accountability on outcomes and recently on adding innovation and business value. Outsourcing companies have also realized the importance of cultivating a relationship as much as enforcing accountability for enhancing the value addition.
As technology gets more complicated and the technical resources be highly skilled, having a reliable offshore partner has become a critical success factor for business. Hence, the largest and most famous IT companies may not be the right choice for every business.
For mid-sized businesses, seeking priority attention to their projects, partnering with a larger offshoring company may not lead to best outcomes. Typically for large offshoring companies have bigger clients and are focused on serving the needs of these bigger clients as their priority. This may lead to starvation of highly skilled resources to mid-sized firms. The kind of support and sponsorship from the top management team may also be lukewarm. Since it is quite natural for an offshoring company to focus on high-value clients, there is significant benefit in hiring an offshoring partner who is committed to serving the needs of your business than their mere size.
While offshoring companies have skills in a variety of areas. It is quite normal for some firms to be good in some technologies or functional areas. A smart choice will be to assess the strengths of different shortlisted firms and select firms that closely matches your requirements.
One key aspect of making an offshoring contract a success is to establish a culture fit. The company management needs to find a comfort level with the offshoring partner's top management as well as the offshoring assignment leadership team.
There are many technical matters and Information technology-related evaluations that need not be shared with any competent IT leadership team. The focus of this article was to cover some sensible and common-sense matters that will help in ensuring the offshoring contract leads to successful outcomes. Your needs may be technical and hence the most desired outcome expected should be business benefits from the technology partnership. It is important not to neglect this overall goal, while working with vendor evaluation.
There could be an objective and subjective assessment that needs to be conducted for making the correct decision. The effort required to do this evaluation may be higher, but it will give many benefits that outweigh the efforts by selecting the right IT offshore outsourcing firm for your business. Thereafter, a sensible approach to manage the relationship with performance accountability for a long-term work partnership for your competitive advantage!
