Even though the first surge in the popularity of offshore development came at a time when special software tools for remote interaction and file sharing appeared, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for offshore software development services has grown significantly. In particular, according to statistics, this market is projected to reach USD 283,457.5 million by 2030, with a CAGR of 10.13% from 2022 to 2030.
Indeed, given the current pace of launching software solutions and the cost of hiring local specialists, for many companies, offshore development becomes almost the only viable model for further existence and growth. Below we will delve into this topic in more detail and look at the key benefits, considerations, and best practices.
Understanding Offshore Software Development
First, we invite you to understand the main concepts related to this article’s topic, as well as to find out the features of this cooperation model.
Definition and Overview
Offshore software development is the interaction of a company with an external team of developers who are located in another country and work in another company that provides software development services. This approach generally reduces costs and opens up access to experts abroad. In general, this is a good solution for those who want and can expand their production but do not have enough time, financial, and human resources for this.
How Offshore Differs from Onshore and Nearshore
While offshore development is defined as collaboration with a development team located in a different country with a different time zone, onshore one means collaboration with a contractor from the employer’s country. In turn, under the concept of nearshore software development lies cooperation with an outsourcing partner from a neighboring country.
Key Benefits of Offshore Software Development
Now let’s highlight the main advantages of offshore software development.
Cost-Effectiveness
Because businesses needing an offshore outsourcing software development company often consider countries with average market rates much lower than local ones, the project budget can also be reduced than it would be in the case of cooperation with a local team.
Access to a Global Talent Pool
The absence of restrictions in choosing specialists with the necessary expertise opens up tremendous development opportunities for your business and, in particular, allows you to implement the most advanced IT world trends for any business niche.
Flexible Work Hours
Even though your offshore software development outsourcing contractor will be in another country with a different time zone, you will be able to arrange a convenient to call your remote team and coordinate their progress on the project from time to time.
Scalability and Easy Expansion
As the requirements of the project change and as it scales, you can add or remove development team members to move towards its release at the right pace and within the pre-agreed budget.
Focus on Core Business Functions
Instead of wasting time allocating resources and managing a new project (in particular, training existing employees or hiring new ones), when collaborating with an offshore software development company, you can continue to work in your core business direction.
Key Considerations and Challenges
And what about considerations and challenges typical to offshore software development? We will consider the most common ones below.
Cultural and Language Barriers
Theoretically, when working with an outsourcing team, you may encounter some differences in mentality and language barriers. However, experienced offshore software development companies minimize these inconveniences thanks to training their employees and effective project management.
Quality Control
The quality of work done by your contractor may differ from what you expect to get from this cooperation. That is why before choosing one or another outsourcing company to work on a project, you will need to discuss the quality criteria that your team will need to follow.
Security and Data Privacy Concerns
The presence of vulnerabilities in your contractor’s network infrastructure can lead to the leakage of your business data. That is why it is crucial to choose only trusted companies with long experience in the outsourcing market. Also, before starting the project, you will need to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in which you can identify all the necessary requirements for the privacy of your intellectual property.
Time Zone Differences
Sometimes the team of specialists you have chosen may be so far away from you that the time zones typical for the country where they are located turn out to be too inconvenient for productive interaction at a distance. Please, consider this factor before choosing a specific offshore software programming company and delegating tasks to it.
Legal and Contractual Implications
Obviously, your future development team will be subject to the laws of the country where they work, which may be contrary to your local laws. This aspect also needs to be taken into account before you start working together on a project.
Best Practices for Successful Offshore Development
Finally, let’s check out the best practices for collaborating with an offshore software development team.
Establishing Clear Communication Protocols
Before starting cooperation, you will need to agree on how you will interact with your team (with which software tools, how often, in what format, etc.). This will help you understand each other better despite the distance.
Regular Monitoring and Feedback
You should regularly check the work done at the intermediate stages of the project – this will help you and your team to be sure that you both are moving in the right direction (and, therefore, there will be fewer edits).
Investing in Cultural Sensitivity Training
You should pay special attention to sharing your corporate cultural values with your development team. Thus, the final solution will be fully consistent with your brand and look like your internal team worked on it.
Prioritizing Security Protocols
We talked above about the importance of ensuring proper collaboration security, and recall it now: before you are sure that your project data will not be disclosed (intentionally or accidentally), you should not start working on a project.
Careful Selection of Offshore Partners
To get a high-quality result from cooperation, you will need a reliable software development partner. Therefore, before signing a contract, you will have to research the reviews of real clients who have previously collaborated with the outsourcing company you have chosen.
Conclusion
We hope that we have helped you understand what offshore custom software development is, and now you can make an informed decision about whether this format of interaction with an outsourcing development team is right for you or not. In turn, if your decision turns out to be positive, you can consider us as your trusted development partner.
Our specialists have many years of experience in developing solutions for various platforms and business niches and are also able to apply their skills in creating digital products based on advanced technologies. Feel free to contact us right now to discuss the details of our possible cooperation and calculate the budget and deadlines for your project.
FAQs
Now, to summarize the above, let’s answer the most frequently asked questions that are relevant to our article’s topic.
Offshore software development is an outsourcing model where a company delegates some product development tasks to a development team located in another country.
The main difference between offshore, onshore, and nearshore outsourcing cooperation types lies in the geographical distance from the employer to the contractor. In particular, cooperation with the development team from the country where the employer is located is called onshore, from a neighboring country – nearshore, and from a country with a different time zone – offshore.
Cost efficiency is achieved in two directions at once: access to a talent pool in a country with lower market rates for software development services, as well as the absence of costs associated with hiring, employment, and training of local employees.
There is a risk that your offshore software programming contractor will not provide a proper security level for your intellectual property. However, you can indicate all necessary security policies in your non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to protect yourself from these issues.
Businesses of any size can resort to offshore software services. However, the collaboration approach with a development team may be different.