IT Outsourcing has been on top of mind of many projects and businesses. Companies that don’t have a strategic focus on technology development are choosing IT Outsourcing as a grow-and-thrive approach in the digital transformation age.
IT Outsourcing may be a strategic approach for opportunities and improvement of any company. As well as a way to minimize the cost barrier when implementing technology in their operations. Sound interesting? So let’s get started with the complete guide on how to hire an IT outsourcing team for your business.
1. What is IT Outsourcing?
The term “IT outsourcing” refers to hiring a third-party company or agency to manage its IT needs.
Examples of IT needs that can be outsourced:
- Custom software development: Build software customized to a client’s specific business or process requirements.
- Software testing: Provides stand-alone and integrated testing services based on the client’s business objectives for quality assurance.
- Cloud computing: Provides computer system resources such as storage and processing capacity at a reduced cost to improve business agility and minimize IT complexity.
- Mobile and web development: Develops websites or native mobile applications to enhance brand experiences and increase customer engagement.
- Support and maintenance: Provides help to internal web ops teams through 24-hour monitoring, issue mitigation, and devoted upkeep.
- Fintech software: Provides fintech services to help organizations function more effectively with fewer risks, enhanced traceability, and increased cybersecurity.
- Data science: Uses big data and stream processing technologies and computer approaches to help solve issues and uncover hidden patterns in data.
- IoT: Develops and implements large-scale IoT commercial and public projects such as smart buildings, sensors, parking solutions and traffic management.
- UI and UX design: Creates user-friendly designs for business systems, online portals, and mobile apps.
- MVPs (Minimum Viable Products): Converts conceptions into MVPs using the technologies needed to test and evaluate them. Company owners may then use this information to make the best decisions possible for their particular value proposition and business strategy.
There are several reasons to outsource your IT activities, but the most important one is to save money. Additionally, you’ll be able to concentrate on more important aspects of your business’s growth while the outsourcing partner takes care of the tedious work.
You can read this article to learn more about IT Outsourcing: IT OUTSOURCING FROM A TO Z: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW IN 2022
2. Is IT Outsourcing A Better Option Than In-house Hiring?
Yes, that’s what we’d say. When you hire an in-house team, you must keep in mind these notes to grow your business:
- Try to keep conflicts amongst team members to a minimum. According to Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman, this is the reason why 65 percent of businesses fail.
- Get things done as fast as possible. In the long run, the sooner the product reaches consumers, the better for the company.
- Pay a fair price for what you get. Investors are more likely to put money into a firm after viewing an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that can demonstrate the viability of your business concept. As a result, when designing the MVP, it’s critical to stay within the allocated budget (which is often not too large).
- Maintain a high level of quality. Keep an eye on the speed, pricing, and quality of your MVP.
- Reduce costs by making use of remote work (particularly during the COVID-19 epidemic, when everyone works from home).
That’s a lot of work, right? It is, in fact. However, if you hire an IT outsourcing team, you may take advantage of all of the above challenges to generate an MVP that will impress customers.
Related article: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT MANAGERS: IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCING?
3. Why Should I Choose IT Outsourcing?
IT outsourcing is preferred by businesses for the following reasons:
3.1. Cost-reduction
According to Quartz, 37% of businesses fail due to a lack of funding. Hiring an IT outsourcing team, on the other hand, reduces your risk of running into this problem. A portion of your money will be saved since you won’t have to pay for things like office rent, employee salaries, insurance benefits, vacations, or recruiting expenses.
Instead, you’ll use the cash to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which is the most important step in the process. In addition, developers in offshore nations charge considerably lower prices than their counterparts in the United States and Western Europe because of the lower cost of living. Hiring a devoted developer in Vietnam can be two to three times less expensive than hiring one in the United States.
Check the IT Outsourcing Rate in 2022 here: IT Outsourcing Rates: Overview and Global Report By Regions in 2022
3.2. Time-saving But Still Efficient
If you’re looking to cut expenses and speed up the development process, an IT outsourcing team might be an excellent option. In addition, since each outsourced developer has their talents already in place, you won’t have to spend time training new staff with a dedicated development team. The IT outsourcing company will take care of all the routine project management and HR duties for you. This means you’ll be able to focus more on the strategic tasks.
3.3. Global Talent Reach
Outsourcing your IT needs offers you access to a wider range of skills. Developers in California, for example, comprise a large portion of the workforce for the tech giants. It’s considerably more difficult to acquire engineers for small businesses in the United States since established companies have already taken them.
3.4. Flexibility
Scaling your internal team and adapting the technological stack to the current stage and scope of the project will be difficult. However, if you work with an IT outsourcing team, you can easily relocate the outsourced developers across projects because they are adaptable.
Hiring developers from other countries can help your business run more smoothly. A fun fact is that, IT outsourcing teams made Skype, Slack, Github, and many others.
4. How To Start Hiring An IT Outsourcing Team?
If you’re looking for an IT outsourcing team, how and where should you go to find the right one? Here’s a checklist of things to look for in an outsourcing company:
4.1. Create a clear job description
If you’re looking for a developer, make sure you’ve covered all the required skills and functionalities of your project needs.
4.2. Carefully check the outsourcing team’s track record
Check out their Clutch score, check if they have a LinkedIn page, and see who their previous clients are. Try to get in touch with any of their former clients and ask about their performances. Your CTO should also be involved in the hiring process to ensure all the technical requirements. Don’t be afraid to consult an IT expert to help you with your decision.
4.3. Learn more about the IT outsourcing team’s workflow
Ask them questions about their processes and how they communicate with clients. Ask whether they have the ability to expand their team throughout the course of a project or hire additional developers. Before signing a contract with a remote IT outsourcing team, it’s a good idea to find out if the company’s workflow is compatible with yours. Don’t forget about the NDA (non-disclosure agreement); you can even ask for the NDA signing during the interview process.
4.4. Cheaper is not always better
Focus on cost-effective solutions. You may actually be paying more in the long run since someone else will have to rebuild the code that was badly produced by the cheap services. Don’t be afraid to check out the developer’s GitHub or Stack Overflow accounts to make sure the code is up to snuff.
4.5. Check if the remote team agrees with anything you’re offering or if they’d rather negotiate.
If the developer or IT outsourcing company claims that they can meet all of your needs, it’s a red flag. It shows that they haven’t done enough research to see if they can meet your expectations with their own skill sets. Each IT outsourcing company specializes in a certain skill set, and none of them can handle whatever you want.
4.6. Find an effective project management tool
Offshore outsourcing is now much more convenient thanks to communication tools. Make use of tools like Slack, Jira, and Trello to keep track of the projects.
4.7. Be proactive
When dealing with an IT outsourcing team, proactivity is very important. If your remote team members are up and working while you are sleeping, try to be one step ahead of the following day’s duties. So that you may wake up knowing that everything is still going as planned.
5. A Complete Guide To Manage IT Outsourcing Team
5.1. Decide what you want to outsource.
Outsourcing isn’t as straightforward as you may assume. Hiring someone from outside your company requires careful assessment of what needs to be outsourced in order to keep costs low and security tight.
When considering IT outsourcing, keep in mind that the ultimate aim is to minimize costs. When it comes to outsourcing, the key here is how to do so without affecting the company’s operations or strategic services.
5.2. Determine which tasks to delegate to third parties.
There is more to outsourcing than meets the eye. Outsourcing must be thoroughly examined and assessed to ensure low costs and stringent security before it is implemented to assure adoption and execution.
The ultimate purpose of outsourcing, which is to lower costs, must always be kept in view. When it comes to outsourcing, the key here is how to do so without affecting the company’s operations or strategic services.
Your operation should be divided into two parts, one is a commodity system and the other is a strategic system. We used the term “commodity” to describe the actions that keep you going but do not separate you from your competitors in the market.
Separating your company operations in this way can help you see more clearly which tasks may be outsourced to a low-cost provider and which cannot.
5.3. Choose your IT outsourcing company
The contract length is a special thing in IT outsourcing. In other industries, outsourcing contracts might run for years, but in the IT business, contracts will be flexible.
Consider asking for separate bids for each service to reduce the power of suppliers when selecting a vendor for your project. You’ve already reduced the danger of relying only on suppliers by doing this.
On the other side, you should not assume that an IT outsourcing team would outperform the company’s own IT staff. Instead, the in-house team should be permitted to compete with the outsourced team in order to bring the best practices.
To make an informed decision on an IT Outsourcing provider, your company should gather a team of IT experts to analyze each contract’s proposed bids. They can maintain an unbiased view of the service, helping business operations because of their extensive technical knowledge and a good understanding of the company’s objectives.
Related article: [2022 UPDATE] TOP 10 OFFSHORE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS IN VIETNAM
5.4. Make clear of your company’s objectives
Although this may not be at the top of your priority list, clarifying your core value proposition and business goals is essential for a successful partnership with the IT outsourcing company.
This does not require long-term training sessions or massive document exchanges. It’s all about sharing the most essential aspects of your business, such as your operations, your strategy, and your human resources.
Outsourcers will be able to align their approach to your business goals once you’ve made your objectives clear to them. An agreement between the two parties may go a long way toward increasing the value that both your organization and the IT outsourcing company receive.
For IT Outsourcing, you need to pay a lot of attention to how you define your business and software idea. At the outset of the project, you need to figure out what it can accomplish, who it’s intended for, and how efficient you want it to be. Being on the same page regarding shared interests and beliefs may lead to a solid collaboration between you and the IT outsourcing company.
5.5. Ensure that everyone is following the same plan
When it comes to IT Outsourcing, your organization will benefit greatly if you are attentive, but it doesn’t mean that your company’s ideals, goals, or anything else large-scale are aligned.
In reality, it’s all about how you work, how you process, how you test, and how you deliver. Create a plan that includes step-by-step instructions to guarantee that the two parties have a well-designed workflow.
Some of the biggest names in the IT business have been using this strategy for years. All of your needs can be met consistently if you have a well-organized guide.
IT Outsourcing providers from around the world may not be able to communicate with you in English when you’re working on outsourcing your projects.
Creating wireframes, annotated diagrams, and other visual aids in addition to the textual documentation and requirements is therefore highly encouraged. The IT outsourcing team has a better chance of achieving what you want if you provide detailed instructions beforehand.
5.6. Effectively deal with the time-zone difference
Working in different time zones can be extremely inconvenient and time-consuming in this situation. For this, you should be aware of the time difference and plan meetings that are convenient for both you and your business partner(s).
It’s not only time-saving, but it also tells your partner that you care about them, which might motivate both of you to work more.
However, instead of solving, use the time-zone differences to create a 24/7 working process. For instance, because of the time difference between the United States and Vietnam, an IT Outsourcing firm can work on a project while you are sleeping and deliver it when you wake up.
5.7. Improve your company’s communication
The key to success is communication. With communication, all partners can share and build the project’s dos and don’ts.
Everyone on the team has to know exactly what they’re expected to accomplish each day. And why they’re working on the project. This is how you do it:
The team should have a meeting at least twice a week, or more if necessary.
The software development process should be overseen by a business analyst (BA) or a project manager (PM).
Regular yet brief meetings to receive regular updates without tiredness from extended talks.
Track the team’s productivity and quality using metrics with tracking tools
5.8. Implement software development methods.
Agile and Scrum are two of the most well-known methods for software development that you can adopt. These enable the outsourced team to operate together as a single unit. Projects’ time to market is sped up by continuous integration and delivery.
In addition, they provide adaptability, regular repetition, and tight monitoring of the IT outsourcing team, apply control over the operations.
Bottom Lines
When hiring an IT outsourcing team, you need to thoroughly describe your needs, assess the skill level necessary, plan your budget, and begin exploring offshore locations.
Be mindful of the difficulties you may face when employing offshore developers, such as time zones, lack of personal communication, and cultural differences.
Don’t want to bother yourself with the countless problems of IT Outsourcing? Contact Innotech now for enterprise-level IT Outsourcing services.
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With 14+ years of experience, 200+ projects done, and a team full of talented individuals, Innotech Viet Nam can be a reliable partner if you are looking for an IT Outsourcing company.
There is a lot of information about the clients Innotech now serves on our website. We attempt to provide you with the sense of security you need to enjoy enhancing your business with us.
Contact our team of experts if you have any queries or concerns about outsourcing and we’ll be more than pleased to assist you.
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