Debunking Common Myths about Offshoring (Part 1)

Offshoring is a common business practice popular since the 2000s and the Global IT industry is the major contributor in this process. However, due to the ongoing global crisis, many companies who haven’t tried this before are planning to outsource their projects to various offshore service providers. This situation confuses the decision-makers of the offshoring company as there are many myths associated with the offshore service providers which delay the decision-making.

Today with this article I would like to discuss some common myths and try to provide my point of view on them so that the readers can understand them with clarity.

Myth 1: Working with an Offshore leads to losing control over the Project.  

This is the most common myth which makes the companies avoid offshoring. Most of the companies who haven’t tried outsourcing before feel that offshoring will lead to a loss of control over the project.

This is not true as most of the vendors work according to the clients’ specifications. Most of the projects comprise a specific section of SOP’s specifically clarifying the communication and review protocols. The clients can plan the accessibility, specifications, and communications by themselves to ensure active involvement during the development phases of the project. This way the clients can have ideal control over the project which is similar to having an in-house team.

Nowadays the offshoring teams involve the clients to a far larger extent as much as the clients want it. There are many task management and updating tools readily available to be used. The communications have got so advanced that anyone can connect globally in real-time to ensure active information share and reviews.

At Fortune Infosys, we provide dedicated software developers as an individual resource or a group of developers as a team. Working with this model with us, you have all the controls over the project and developers similar to your in-house setup. With the use of communication tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, etc., clients can easily be involved throughout the development or maintenance of projects.

Myth 2: Working with Offshoring teams lowers the quality of the product/projects. 

Most people feel that working with an offshore team leads to lower quality projects and products compared to in-house development. This idea comes to their mind, as most of the offshore companies are from developing countries like India where due to currency conversion the cost of projects is normally lower than the cost of executing the project in-house. With low cost, it is expected that the quality of deliveries will be hampered.

However, the quality of the projects depends upon the developers and offshore company that you work with not the offshoring as a process. Whenever you plan to hire developers for the offshore team you need to ensure if the developers are well equipped and plan a hiring process that makes sure you get the best team members working on your projects. The best way to ensure that is to sign up the right offshore service provider that understands your quality requirements

Companies like Fortune Infosys find the most suitable developers for the project and ensures all the resources are hired according to the specifications of the client. Fortune Infosys ensures the developers to be hired are clear with their roles and pass through the hiring process preferred by its clients. Moreover, our project manager constantly checks work performed by our developers in terms of output as well as code review. There is no additional cost for the work performed by our project manager as it’s part of our quality service model.

Myth 3: Offshoring leads to various issues due to the Language and Cultural barriers of the service providers.

Many of the companies planning to work with offshore companies are afraid of language and cultural barriers. These issues can be easily resolved by hiring offshore team members who are proficient in the English language. The team members shall be experienced in working with global clients.

To ensure that factor companies like Fortune Infosys make sure that the resources hired are well-rated internally in their English communication skills. They normally find highly experienced developers with a good amount of experience working with international clients. They also work hard on the training and development of the skillset of the resources to eliminate the cultural gaps.

Myth 4: Time-Zone Difference creates problems in collaboration.

The time differences due to the geography of the development team may lead to collaboration issues.

However, this time difference can play advantageous in many cases. E.g., When the work is on pause in the USA, it is active in a country like India. This actually allows a 24-hour operation for the clients.

The collaboration problems can be solved by commonly deciding on overlapping working windows for both teams. These working windows can be decided mutually among both teams to catch up regularly to discuss and plan the project from time to time.

The majority of companies including Fortune Infosys provides some common hours to have proper communication and daily scrum meetings between client and offshore team. At Fortune Infosys, we even have an option that developers can work as per the client’s time zone.

I hope that with this article I could demystify some of the common myths. I am also putting up another article next week that will debunk some more common myths.

However, if you want to know more in detail you can book a one-to-one complimentary session with me where I can share more about the offshoring industry and various value propositions you can achieve by working with Fortune Infosys.

You can drop an email at info@fortuneinfosys.com or call directly at +17329934151