Seeking cost efficiencies in all functions, including software development, has now become an obvious business consideration. In that context, working with an offshore software development partner has become established as a great way of allowing an expert team to take care of a range of software development tasks. But it’s also true that time zone differences, communication and response issues, and cultural and social differences have a role to play.
That’s where the concept of nearshoring could work wonders. Allowing a company in a similar time zone to get embedded into your software development process makes it easy to overlap, communicate, and plan onsite visits while saving costs and stress for your company.
There are many well-known reasons why nearshoring makes business sense. Not only can you save costs inherent in recruiting and maintaining an in-house expert team but you also get instant access to a pool of talented and professional software engineers who have experience of developing software applications of global standards and quality. That boost can help you bring your product to the market sooner.
That said, here are 4 situations when nearshoring could just be the thing for your organization:
1. When your software development costs are exponentially increasing:
Making a trade-off between quality and cost is never easy. Despite all the efforts you put in to keep costs under control, if you experience a gradual (or sudden) increase in the cost of software development, maybe it’s time to turn to nearshore.
With nearshoring, you get a closer overlap with the development team while reducing the costs of hiring, training, and retaining qualified software resources. With both your in-house and nearshore team working in greater synergy, you can more easily meet the growing demands of product quality and time- to-market deadlines. Since the nearshore team will be located in the same time zone as you, you can monitor tasks as they are completed within the specified time frame.
2. When you witness diminishing innovation and quality:
You might have a talented pool of in-house resources working day in and day out to deliver quality software. But if you witness diminishing innovation due to fatigue or other priorities, maybe it is time to get qualified outside professionals onboard to add a fresh set of eyes to the innovation challenge.
The tech world is in the midst of an array of shifts. Skills that were relevant yesterday aren’t any longer. With an experienced nearshore team, you can be sure of allying with resources with proven skills in emerging technologies. Technologies like Machine Learning and AI, for instance. Such resources can help you embrace the latest innovations and best practices and build products that are modern, flexible, and scalable. The nearshore team will be aware of aspects that are needed to achieve success in your geography. You can also be sure of working in an Agile fashion to build great early versions and product prototypes. Once your products stabilize, you can always allow larger, more process-driven offshore teams to take over the ongoing development, maintenance, sustenance, and product evolution process. This will help drive both agility and scale.
3. When you have difficulty ramping up productivity:
For any software company, ensuring ever-improving productivity is a challenge. If your internal team structures have become more entrenched and less flexible with time and your teams are struggling to collaborate, nearshoring your development work can be a great way to bust into a new productivity orbit.
With a nearshore team, you no longer have to worry about identifying what work needs to be done,which resources will perform tasks or the timeframe in which it needs to be completed. By working side by side with your nearshore team, having real-time communication with them and frequent visits to get to know the team, you can improve collaboration, build greater synergies, and ensure quicker attainment of shared goals. While the nearshore team handles development activities, your resources can focus on more creative and value-adding tasks – without getting over-worked or under-utilized.
4. When you’re struggling to meet your time-to-market deadlines:
When you have time-to-market deadlines to meet and your resources are struggling to accelerate the development process, nearshoring some (or all) of your development tasks can be a great way to quickly and resolve bottlenecks.
You can work alongside your nearshore team, have back and forth discussions in real-time, work on challenges and bottlenecks together, and get your products rolling much faster. The nearshore team would be ideal to work on product prototypes, POCs, and innovative models that could disrupt your existi ng product. The team would be able to look at the effort with none of the baggage of your existing teams and this would free them up to fearlessly break things to make them better. Since nearshore teams work in a similar time zone and have the knowledge and experience of industry best practices, you can flexibly implement changes and meet milestones. They will have the right tools and development process in place and ensure synergy between teams, so you can build and deploy your product much faster.
Enjoy sustained business growth
In an era where companies are struggling to meet the quality and time-to-market demands of their customers, nearshoring can be extremely effective in driving growth-oriented strategies. In addition to reducing software development costs, the expertise of the nearshore team will allow you to become more agile, innovative, productive, and agents of change.
