Offshore Software Development: Tips to Building a Successful Long-Term Partnership

Offshore software development partnership is an opportunity for businesses to reduce costs, improve quality, and solve issues. Establishing business partnerships can be challenging, but it is immensely beneficial when done successfully. By winning the trust of partners – and vice-versa – one can meet his business goals successfully. Dedication and consistent quality work are two integral aspects of creating a successful and long-term partnership with an offshore software development firm.

Factors like cultural barriers, language differences, and different priorities are the main areas of concern when maintaining a business partnership. This blog covers some effective tips to overcome this problem and illustrates what makes Unified Infotech the ideal software development partner.

How to Build a Successful Partnership with a Software Development Firm?

Assess the Value of a Potential Business Partnership

Analyzing the value of a potential business partnership with an offshore software development firm is important. 

Extensive research is vital in this regard. You must consider industry experience. A software development company with vast industry knowledge may possess a network of contacts and insider information about customers. 

Additionally, review a potential business partner’s history and reputation. If they have a history of instability or unethical practices, it can be a big problem later. Reputational damage can ruin all the hard work you have done till now. 

You must evaluate the advantages while deciding on the prospective collaboration with an offshore software developer. Conducting a SWOT analysis allows you to compare their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your own. Additionally, a cost-benefit analysis can help estimate potential revenue, expenses, risks, and returns associated with the partnership. 

The purpose is to verify a potential offshore software development firm’s reliability, credibility, and suitability for your business expansion. Ascertain each partner’s value and potential contribution to achieving your objectives. You would want to develop a long-lasting business partnership for a rich and rewarding experience.

Conduct In-depth Market Research

Engage in extensive market research to identify potential software development partners. Look for a developer with full-stack knowledge and also determine the most suitable cooperation and pricing models for your project.

Essential Technical Skills

Hire a custom software developer with full-stack expertise. A proficient full-stack programmer fully understands all facets of a software product, encompassing the front-end, back-end, network, database, and hardware components.  An exceptional software developer should be able to devise solutions for challenges that may arise at any stage of the software development process.

Outsourcing Cooperation Models

Let’s explore the various collaboration models offered by most outsourcing vendors:

Dedicated Team

This model involves a long-term agreement between the client and the service provider. The provider supplies software development professionals who possess the required experience and skill sets. The client can either oversee the team themselves or designate the project manager provided by the service provider to handle communications. This model is ideal when the project scope is not well-defined, and requirements can change during development. The main aim is to assemble a team that compensates for any expertise gaps and collaborates seamlessly as an extension of your own workforce.

Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation is a form of outsourcing that lets you add exceptionally skilled developers to your team without the lengthy hiring process and additional expenses associated with full-time staff recruitment. By following the staff augmentation approach, you can fill specific gaps within your team or establish an entire dedicated team.

Companies often favor IT staff augmentation as a cost-effective means to develop top-notch software, especially when internal resources are limited. For instance, if there is a need for a single DevOps engineer to establish a CI/CD pipeline. The staff augmentation model is also well-suited for businesses requiring a few specialists to support their projects.

Project-Based Model

This model involves your development partner taking charge of the entire development process, following your specifications. You provide the software development team with the requirements, and they handle the development process, delivering the final product as per your schedule and specifications. The project-based model offers two key advantages: access to skilled resources and enhanced flexibility and scalability.

Outsourcing Pricing Models

Most offshore software development firms operate using either the fixed-price or the Time and Material (T&M) models. Let’s delve into these pricing models:

Fixed-Price Model

The service provider establishes a fixed rate for a specific project in the fixed-price model. This option suits businesses with well-defined and precise requirements and small to medium-sized projects. However, there is a higher risk of budget overruns if the project scope changes significantly.

Time and Material (T&M) Model

This model involves billing the project owner based on hourly labor costs and the price of materials utilized. Hourly rates, equipment costs, subcontractor markups, and material expenses are typically agreed upon in advance. This pricing model offers greater flexibility compared to the fixed-price model.

Offshoring software development has its drawbacks, such as language and cultural barriers and challenges with managing a remote team across different time zones. Fortunately, partnering with a reputed software development company can help mitigate these drawbacks, particularly if they have extensive experience delivering effective business-oriented solutions.

Establish a Mutual Value System

It’s important to understand the organizational culture of the offshore firm to establish a value system that will guide both in-house and offshore teams. Both these teams may have different values. It makes sense to know them all. Clearly convey your organization’s principles and values before hiring a software developer. Conducting workshops for both teams can also be fruitful. There need to be some common values, for instance:

• Purpose

Core values provide a purpose to the team members. A purpose motivates them to deliver better results and is important for their satisfaction. 

• Agility

The teams must quickly adapt to dynamic development processes and evolving requirements. 

• People-Centric

There must be a friendly workplace atmosphere where employees are treated equally and with respect. 

Ensure Open and Transparent Communication

There needs to be an emphasis on open and transparent communication to build a lasting professional relationship with an offshore software development company. 

A good introduction is important. The development team must know about the key stakeholders. Also, everyone should be aware of who’s responsible for what. This can solve many complex issues that business partners tend to face and help decide on the right tone of communication. 

The business partners and their representatives should meet in person before kick starting the project. A long video call would be equally valuable and relevant in this modern age. It would make things easier for both parties as they clear any doubt and start the development work on a positive note.

Foster a Mutual Sense of Compassion

Fostering a mutual sense of compassion is difficult. A lot of businesses fail to understand the connection between compassion and software development. 

Small and medium-level businesses tend to have tighter budgets. They want highly-spirited and passionate development teams that stay fully committed throughout the development process until delivery.  To foster a mutual sense of compassion and high spirit between the two teams, you can take the following steps:

• Align both offshore software development and in-house teams on business goals and future milestones. This may not contribute to designing custom software, but it helps in a different way. It incorporates a sense of inclusiveness and belonging, which is beneficial toward fulfilling the larger goal – business growth. 
• Identify any potential problems early on. Resolving them quickly or at the start of the development process can help in different ways. For instance, one can prevent delays and reduce the overall cost of the software development project. 
• Organize get-togethers to spend time with everyone involved in the project. It helps you understand whether everyone feels motivated and the issues they’re facing. Additionally, you can provide them with incentives as an acknowledgment of their contributions, thereby motivating them to work harder.

Build Trust

A business partnership is only successful if it’s built on trust. Get to know the offshore software development company members at the start. Treating the development team as your partner will help build a relationship of mutual respect. This motivates the offshore team to give their best and help accomplish goals. Thus, their capabilities and experiences make them a major asset to your enterprise. 

You need to follow a couple of things to establish trust. For instance, allow them to work more freely and without excessive supervision from your end. Maintain transparency in financial matters of the software development project and clear doubts through open discussions. Additionally, accept the fact that the partnership may not always go as expected. In that case, iron out the issues together to ensure a fruitful business partnership.

Be Clear about Common Goals and Vision

A business organization and its software development partner make for a collaborative team. They need to understand the common goals to devise effective strategies and attain success together. Think of your offshore software development partner as a collaborator for the common gain.

The focus also needs to be on a shared vision, where the custom software provider and its business partner benefit as a team. Shared visions allow for better cooperation, which in turn results in much more productive performance. Let’s say you emphasize being eco-friendly as an enterprise. If your business partner also cares about being environmentally responsible, the enthusiasm to collaborate will only grow. 

These are some proven ways to build a successful business partnership. But is a long-term partnership with an offshore software development firm really worth it? Let’s find out!

3 Reasons to Invest in Offshore Custom Software Development

As per Accelerance, the global software outsourcing revenue is projected to reach $145 billion by 2027. In fact, the same report states that software development will remain the most outsourced IT function in 2023. 

There are multiple benefits to working with the best custom software design and development companies. This blog has covered some key reasons to team up with an offshore business for custom software engineering.

Access to a Large Talent Pool

Offshoring enables you to work with talented professionals with diverse expertise and experience. You can therefore tap into a global talent pool and get a competent software engineering partner for your unique business requirements. It ensures an output of the highest quality and overall project success. 

On the other hand, traditional in-house hiring can restrict your options to only local candidates who cannot handle complex software development projects.

Flexibility in Scaling

With offshoring, you can seamlessly adapt to your changing business requirements. Rope in custom software development experts as your project expands and end the offshore business partnership after the team delivers the product. 

Modern entrepreneurs love this flexible team-building approach, as they can optimally use the resources throughout the software development lifecycle. 

Consistent Productivity Levels

Maintaining a consistent productivity level with an in-house team can be challenging. You can resolve this by hiring a software application development company. A competent offshore development team precisely understands the client’s requirements and works accordingly. This is one of the biggest benefits of choosing them.  To ensure consistency across the project lifecycle, the developers must:

• Create a certain amount of code
• Adapt a specific code style and technical conventions
• Optimize designs
• Promote code reusability
• Automate repetitive tasks

Unified Infotech has extensive experience as a custom business software development company. We have catered to clients globally and across 15+ industry verticals.

What Makes Unified Infotech Your Ideal Software Development Partner?

We engineer custom software solutions that give your business a competitive edge. Our well-defined development methodology, process transparency, and consistency make us the right fit for your software development project. Read on to learn more about us.

Consulting

Our team will guide you through the process of digitizing operations and streamlining workflows to meet your business objectives. We will help you choose the ideal custom software solutions for accelerated business growth. 

Proactivity

We work towards reducing operational overheads. While most software developers wait for clear instructions from the client, we proactively communicate and engage with the client, working towards monitoring the progress of the software development project and guiding them throughout the process. 

Best Practices

Unified Infotech follows the best engineering process to develop top-notch software products. We emphasize the best industry practices and CMMI Level 3 protocols to create all our products through a highly-established set of protocols. 

Accountability

We hold ourselves accountable for delivering custom software solutions and take every measure to provide them with the best results. For us, a portfolio full of success stories matters more than a list of random projects.

Conclusion

A successful long-term partnership with an agile offshore software development company is a result of a mutual value system, trust, open and transparent communication, and clarity of goals. Choose Unified Infotech as your software development and consulting partner. We deliver the best outcomes and enhance business performance through custom-engineered software solutions.