Category: Blog

Marketplace Insights: Vietnam reigns top countries for ODC setup

Given that the world’s market is now tailored to the development of the IT industry, technology implementation and visibility stay top of the priority in the decision-making of every business, even for companies with a non-tech core value proposition.

In fact, Information Technology and digital transformation act rather as a comprehensive tool for customer engagement, communication and management.

With the application of digital advances at scale, IT outsourcing services are developing at a quick pace, and Offshore Development Center as a branch of IT outsourcing has shown some outstanding advantages.

As many businesses considering Offshore Development Center for their IT implementation, they stumble upon the significant problem of choosing a destination of their ODC.

This article will provide you with insights into the global software marketplace regarding team composition, average pay, and the most popular destinations for IT outsourcing.

Team composition

When it comes to team composition, the two dominant regions are Eastern Europe and South Asia.

In these regions, the clients can get access to a large talent pool of highly experienced engineers. The number of years working in the industry or in any particular domain is a major metric used to assess the industry maturity.

Countries for Offshore Development Center - Team composition

Countries for Offshore Development Center – Team composition

 

For a vast and demanding industry that requires fast adaption and deep knowledge as IT industry, it is very hard and challenging to call someone an expert, let alone to gain managerial and leadership skills.
Despite the brain drain situation when most experienced engineers move onto more prominent and high-paid regions, Eastern Europe and South Asia can still provide software professionals and experts to the market.

Average Pay

Pricing is one of the significant features to be considered when clients assess their vendors. Although some clients are hesitant with the price-based decision-making, a majority of them deem cost savings the core factor that makes ODC worth investing.

Regarding the average hourly rate, South Asia and Central Asia offer the least of all, with approximately $20/hour and $23/hour, respectively. In contrast, Eastern Europe and North Africa are at a relative disadvantage with an hourly rate of $39/hour, which is about 18% higher than the average price.

Countries for Offshore Development Center - Pricing & Average Pay

Countries for Offshore Development Center – Pricing & Average Pay

 

In the case of South Asia, the main reason why the price is kept at a relatively low rate is the geographical pricing. Together with a substantial and robust labor force and the governments’ emphasis on the development of IT training, geographical pricing keeps it slow for the labor costs.

In Southern Asia countries, perhaps the most common issue reported by clients from the US and EU is the time zone gaps. In addition, nearly all clients expressed their concerns over the up-side-down working hours (both for them and the vendors). However, these concerns are not major obstacles, as many clients are willing to try and invest in the overhead required.

Remote team pricing can be divided into two groups of Asia and non-Asia. Even though the glaring gap between the price of Asia and the rest of the world has been narrowed down, there is still a fourteen-dollar difference in the average hourly rate.

Technology stack

With Eastern Europe and Asia put onto comparison, we can see distinctive traits of technical specializations.

For Eastern Europe, the talent market is bound to cutting-edge technology with a larger utility of JavaScript, Ruby, Rails and Python. In contrast, for Asia, the revenue-beneficial technologies such as Java or .Net continue to grow with a higher percentage.

With clients demanding the application of new technologies often go for service providers from Eastern European countries, those with long, protracted and complex projects go for Asia countries.

Emerging countries for Offshore Development setup

Asia and Eastern Europe are the two main competitors in the world’s market, with Asia being the more favored destination, in terms of both pricing and technical specializations.

Besides the world-renowned countries for IT outsourcing and offshore development center, there are emerging countries in this industry with a more competitive price range, including:

– Vietnam

As the top emerging destination for IT Outsourcing and Offshore Development Center setup, Vietnam has what it takes to build a fully functional and talented team of developers and tech engineers.

To make a favorable destination for software export. Vietnam is nurturing a large talent pool with 25000 eligible tech engineer graduates every year. These talents are well-trained of the technology stack and work with a competitive price range, making it the most profitable for clients when hiring their tech staff in Vietnam.

 

Countries for Offshore Development Center - Vietnam

Countries for Offshore Development Center – Vietnam

 

– India

Despite the lowest price on the market, India continues to suffer from the bad reputation of being underqualified and tacky work. However, Japan is projected to receive technical help from Japan in the transition into the new phase of development. With a well-built and complete IT ecosystem, Indian companies will revamp their services.

– China

China is not the country with the lowest price, but the technology fulfillment in this country can satisfy any client.

The technology enhancement in China continues to grow over the past few years, with artificial intelligence and virtual reality have gained substantial success. However, despite the sheer volume of tech engineers, government involvement and subsidiary, China is still a favorite destination for some specific fields and domains.

– The Philippines

The Philippines is becoming more and more popular in the IT outsourcing and Offshore Development Market. In addition to high talent competency, the IT workforce in The Philippines uses English as their native language, which eliminates the language barriers in communication.

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Does your business have these chronic problems with Offshore Development Center?

As the global market witnesses the sudden halt sowed by the pandemic, many enterprises and businesses have contemplated digital transformation and started to implement it. With this switch bringing the incremental plan for IT spending in the future, many businesses and corporations seek a more viable and cost-effective solution – Offshore Development Center service.

Nevertheless, Offshore Development Center is not a one-size-fits-all work model for any business and enterprise. On the one hand, this model brings excellent benefits in cost-saving, but on the other hand, it also poses a large deal of challenges to be tackled.

These chronic problems have shown how they can negatively affect the outlook of one business’ digital transformation, even with large and resourceful enterprises. To avoid the pitfalls and further streamline your Offshore Development Center, here are the seven most common issues that you might stumble upon.

 

1. Less-than-desirable outcomes

Offshore Development Center stands among the most cost-effective work models for businesses that want to lower the cost barrier. Working with an ODC, the vendee expects to yield similar work results as they could with an in-house or domestic IT Outsourcing team. However, this is just the ideal scenario. In contrast, many ODC projects have failed or come short of expectations. These failed scenarios can come in two forms:

  • Poor programming quality: The incompatibility in technical competencies is not uncommon when you partner up with an ODC service provider. In fact, within the talent pool provided, the diversity in experience and professional expertise is present, and team formation is quite a challenge. Additionally, the poor technical performance of one staff can lead to additional cost of maintenance, which is the last thing any vendee wants with their Offshore Development Center.

 

Problems offshore development center - Coding quality

Problems offshore development center – Coding quality

 

To advent an ODC with personnel who can work harmoniously in communicational and technical skills requires the vendee to virtually “paint the picture” of what they expect from the team member. As detailed as it can go, they need to vest out, for example, what programming language, what framework, or even what soft skills are required with this job.

The more you can save with additional tasks and maintenance, the more you can save your overall expenses.

Solution for this: – Build an accurate and well-designed plan for your businesses that is tailored to your future plans. Instead of a plan with details and a fixed budget, leave the gaps or alternative options in case of any changes in the future.

  • Shortcomings in cost-saving: Although Offshore Development Center can assure you a large amount of cost can be reduced, there are still possibilities of unaccountable expenses to be added to the final expenses. These costs could be the additional infrastructure cost or managerial cost. For some software development processes, this could be the cost for a device lab enlargement.

Any changes at scale can result in shortcomings in cost-saving, which will eventually affect the hiring party’s value proposition and financial plans.

Solution for this:

– Recruit with the help of an expert in talent acquisition field. Please be noted that any detailed requirements of programming languages and other technical aspects are of great necessity. A team leader with managerial skills should be closely involved in the recruitment process to hand-pick the team for your Offshore Development team.

 

2. Time-zone difference

Working with a contractor in an offshore location where there is a significant difference in time zone may make email communication difficult and phone communication almost impossible. If you are in a development environment where regular, ongoing communication is essential between onshore and offshore team members, working with an offshore team located within a U.S. time zone may be advisable.

 

Problems offshore development center - Time zone

Problems offshore development center – Time zone

 

Solution for this:

Time management within your ODC is one of the most vital features for an efficient digital transformation. In order to deal with time-zone-related issues, enterprises should have a fixed schedule agreed with the vendors. This schedule should include periodical checkpoint and meetings of what have been accomplished and what to be accomplished.

 

3. Poor communication

The issue of poor communication is one top-of-the-mind factor that should be included in the assessment of ODC service provider’s competencies. This problem can be accounted to:

  • Language barriers: Language barriers are a common challenge at any ODC, as this work model deals with many international clients. Due to heavy language barriers, many tech engineers struggle to interpret and understand the project’s requirements, leading to a higher chance of miscommunication. Under this circumstance, extra clarification sessions are bound to happen, hence the extra time and cost for the overall operation. With a team of two out of five tech engineers in need of extra clarification like this, the whole project can be derailed with a surprisingly high amount of unwanted additional cost.

Solution for this: – The most effective solution for the language barrier in an IT environment is the utility of plain language. It is highly required for any tech engineer to have a solid foundation of industry-specialized glossary – for the IT, it would be in English. Besides these, tech engineers are expected to communicate using plain language, meaning the minimum usage of jargon and esoteric vocabulary. With this being, the whole situation of miscommunication will be reduced to its smallest.

 

Problems offshore development center - Communication

Problems offshore development center – Communication

 

  • Another way to tackle the problem of language barriers is to clarify the requirement of language proficiency. For many enterprises implementing Offshore Development Center, they have set a “must-have” English proficiency certificate as the initial requirement of their ODC team. If too out-of-hand, an interview or quick test of candidates’ capabilities is conducted to ensure language proficiency.

– The “last resort” to eliminate any miscommunication due to language barriers can be the use of visual methods in daily information exchange. For example, pictures or diagrams speak more directly than normal conversation, saving time and effort in detailed explanation.

  • Cultural differences: Cultural differences are not always the main topic in ODC-related miscommunication, but it has shown an increasingly negative effect on the communication between the vendors and the vendees. Given the distinctive traits in how people draw their expectations and communication methods, many businesses have been cognizant of the fact that these traits can derail the team’s project and affect work morale.

Solution for this: Research the market, living standard of the country you are aiming to have your ODC in Plan the facilities Register to the local government as a legal entity Find and rent an office Design and decorate the office Install furniture accordingly Prepare and connect workstations to the internet Set up the security system Set up workplace equipment such as a printer, scanner Plan for pantry area, water, coffee machine, medicine box Buy and install hardware and software tools Purchase other office supplies.

 

4.Unclear goals and unrealistic expectations

Missed deadlines, or a higher rate of burnout and turnover, etc., are the typical signs of unrealistic expectations. Especially with the IT industry in which workload is exponentially increasing, the stress burdened on employees is more severe than ever, with a higher frequency of overtime and work hours.

 

Problems offshore development center - Security

Problems offshore development center – Security

 

In the IT industry, unclear goals result from poor leadership and communication, leading to vague objectives and strategies.

Stress is the last thing that we ever want to happen to our employees. However, a stressed employee can lay a detrimental effect on the company, not only failing the project’s objectives but also decreasing morale.

Solutions for this:

  • Set specific goals: Set goals that are specific and measurable. Measurable goals break down your achievement and checkpoint with numbers and metrics, making it easier for team managers to keep track of the operational work. If any problem occurs at any task, the person in charge can be identified immediately for a timely solution.
  • Set deadlines for your goals

By setting specific goals for individual tasks, you have to simultaneously set a deadline to achieve with those goals. Both the vendors and vendors should be involved in this decision-making process to define the most suitable timeframe and schedule for every release.

 

5. Weak Security

The intangible fear over the security of an Offshore Development Center has always existed. Allocating your essential IT development to a third party is risky enough, let alone to a foreign party in the case of Offshore Development Center.

Many case studies of ODC in the past have pinpointed the poor or even lack of security with ODC, especially noted the legal features and physical protection of intellectual property.

 

Problems offshore development center – Goals

 

However, as the service in this minor field develops with the universal recognition of big clients, poor security has been fixed at a surprisingly quick pace. Almost every vendor of ODC services, clients are promised to be provided with stringent physical security layers, along with legal confidentiality and intelligence property paper terms.

Solution for this: Weak security is still a significant threat for any of the vendees of Offshore Development Center. The best way to avoid this is to seek help from prominent and experienced vendors in the field. With this being done, your project is protected from not only intruders but also legal barriers. A legal consultant from the hosting country should be included in the negotiating process to be sure about this.

 

6. Process discipline

Work overload happens regularly, especially in a high-pressured and demanding industry of Information Technology. Sometimes, any cog in the machine is derailed, leading to desynchronization, and that is when process discipline comes in action.

A process discipline is of paramount importance for a well-oiled machine and is required on both a personal and organizational scale.

Solution for this: The need for a Project Manager or BrSE to be the “bridge” connecting the vendor and the vendee. This staff acts as the flagship that leads the way for people to follow, including the rules and disciplines.

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Essential guide for Offshore Development Center setup

Having an offshore development center to take care of your IT tasks at a reasonable cost is juicy. Still, every step, challenge, and viable solution of offshore development center setup must be considered carefully, no matter whether you have an ODC partner or set up an ODC business on your own.

There is no fixed way to successfully set up an offshore development center, but here come 8 typical and vital steps:

  • Clarifying your visions & requirements
  • Choosing an ODC model
  • Deciding an ODC destination
  • Selecting a service provider
  • Forming an ODC team
  • Establishing communication protocol
  • Defining project management practices
  • Clarifying security management standards

Let’s go into detail!

How To Set Up Offshore Development Center

 

8 Steps of Offshore Development Center Setup 

 

1. Clarify Vision & Requirement

For a business, clarifying vision and requirements before initiating dedicated offshore development center implementation is of great importance. This prerequisite helps ensure that the ODC setup is the best option to go with, clarifies what you need in your ODC, and sets out a path for you to follow.

For example, if you prefer cultural and time zone alignment, onshore development is a good option. But in case you prioritize cost saving and extended IT human resources, offshore software development can benefit your business both financially and technically.

Here come the major aspects to clarify upfront: 

  • Business objectives. E.g., whether you want to complete a one-time project or set up an offshore operation. 
  • Priority. E.g., control or cost reduction.
  • Project scope. E.g., whether you need an end-to-end solution package or specific software development and software testing services.
  • Your available resources, including budget and time frame.
  • Security restrictions.
  • Expected outcome.

When you’re done with clarification and grasp a big picture of the project, the next step should be choosing an ODC model.

 

2. Choose an ODC Model

So, what are the most common ODC models, and when to use them?

Managed ODC 

If you want to save money and focus on core business activities rather than IT operations, managed ODC will be a suitable option. 

In the managed ODC model, the client joins the ODC service provider during recruitment and team formation process. After that, during the project, the vendor handles the ODC facilities and HR administrative stuff while the client manages the team’s work directly.

The common pricing model for managed ODC is Time & Material (T&M), which uses a pay-as-you-go approach based on the actual time and effort of the development team.

Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT)

In case you want to establish a long-term offshore presence but lack the resources and understanding of the local market to set up the offshore team, the BOT model is for you. 

A typical BOT scheme consists of three phases:

  • Build: The vendor conducts necessary research and discussion with stakeholders to finalize the plan, and subsequently set up the ODC resources and facilities.
  • Operate: The vendor puts the team into operations and runs the operations for an agreed-upon period.
  • Transfer: The vendor transfers ownership of the ODC team to the client.

The BOT model involves the expenditures of ODC resources and facilities and the service fees. 

Are you new to using external IT services? Check out our infographic on IT Outsourcing Strategy Checklist.

 

3. Decide on an Offshoring Destination 

With an offshore development center, you know for sure that it is located in a foreign country, but the real question is what country it is. 

When it comes to offshore destination decisions, typical deciding factors include price, HR competency, time zone, and business environment.

As of 2023, the most popular destinations for IT outsourcing are South and Southeast Asia, the U.S., Latin America, and Central & Eastern Europe. Among them, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR, at 8.3% in IT services revenue in the coming years. 

top-it-outsourcing-countries

Top IT Outsourcing Countries 

Certainly, India has been the largest IT outsourcing vendor with a large IT HR pool, but the price has increased significantly as the country primarily serves US clients. On the other hand, emerging nations for ODC like Vietnam can offer satisfactory results with a competitive price, vibrant IT talents, and a favorable business environment

For instance, LTS Group as a Vietnamese ODC vendor offers dedicated offshore developers of all seniority levels for less than $25/hour. Since 2016, we have supported big brands from South Korea, the US, Japan and other developed countries to establish dedicated development centers in Vietnam.

Are you curious to explore the landscape of Vietnam’s thriving IT sector? Check out our latest ebook: Vietnam’s IT Service Industry: Landscape, Challenges, Opportunities.

4. Select a Reliable ODC Vendor

IT outsourcing is developing at an unsurprisingly high rate, and software development offshoring is not an exception in this case. Businesses now are spoilt for choices with plenty of service providers to evaluate and consider. 

So, here come the popular criteria to choose the most suitable offshore development center setup partner:

  • Transparency
  • Deep understanding of your project
  • Strong and relevant portfolio
  • Skillful software engineers
  • Clear and frequent communication
  • Cost-effectiveness
  • Timeline guarantee
  • Clear security standards 

Finding a suitable ODC partner to accompany you on your journey is not an easy task. You might have to go over dozens of vendor portfolios, reviews, pilots, case studies, etc.

 

5. Form The ODC Team

Offshore development center setup is different from IT outsourcing in the sense that ODC involves the vendees in the recruitment process. Since the vendees’ approval of the candidates is the top priority, it is a must to provide the vendors with a detailed job description for the positions needed in the projects.

With this clarified, both client and service provider parties can come clear of the must-have technical competencies and other soft skill requirements

  • For the technical aspect: A list of tech engineer interviewing questions can determine the candidates’ capabilities and programming proficiency. 
  • For the non-tech aspect: “Knock-out” questions putting the candidates in actual scenarios and situations should show their personalities and work attitudes. 

Also, remember not to underestimate the language and cultural behaviors aspects to steer clear of potential misleading, inefficiency, or poor final work results.

 

6. Establish Communication Protocol

Communication is the key to effective offshore businesses. The initial communication process in which you clarify your goals, product concepts, project ideas, and expected results plays the foundation stones of what to be included in meetings and reports later on. 

With this being clarified, your offshore development team can get a better grip on your business goals. Any adaptation and redirection will be of need for the overall resonation of both parties. 

Clear and daily communication via emails, messages, and online meetings can help you build and develop active and long-lasting relationships. It also creates a habit of frequently updating information from your ODC team, which is of great advantage for better management.

At LQA, we employ the most popular channels and platforms for task and communication management such as Jira, Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, Trello, etc. Depending on your preference and business needs, we will propose the best suitable tools.

 

7. Define Project Management Practices

The determining factor of a project’s prominence and success lies in the capability of the vendee and the vendor in project management. To initially grasp the idea of how to accomplish project management and cover the fundamental features, stakeholders should pay attention to the following aspects.

The development team

Your offshore development team is your partner, not just an IT Outsourcing provider that follows each of your orders. Once you’ve hired an ODC, you work with them as equal parties, meaning that they would receive the same benefits as your other departments.

Since the ODC specializes in IT, decision-makers should consider the team’s technical opinions. It’s a brilliant idea that you involve them in the decision-making process, then evaluate, develop and further contribute to their ideas to come up with the most well-rounded approach and solutions for the company.

Despite the lack of the offshore development team’s presence, members of ODC are still a part of your organization. Thus, to maintain high engagement and connection across departments, you should introduce and engage them in the company’s activities. 

The project manager

For any offshore development project, the presence of an IT project manager can reflect on the professionalism and dedication of the service provider to your project. This manager is required to juggle between tasks and responsibilities with both managerial and technical skills

Resources management is an imperative task of a project manager. With a detailed schedule and tasks assigned according to each member’s capabilities, businesses can take full advantage of the team’s potential.

Progress reports

Frequent meetings with a checklist of what to be updated are essential for project management. The main reason why some are still hesitant towards offshore development centers is the unclear working process. 

Some enterprises prefer actual interaction and close-up supervision for comprehensive management, but when the cost reduction outweighs this problem, the optimized management solution is through meetings and reports

Both parties are expected to be transparent about the visions, working process, methods, approaches, and resources. Therefore, predetermining the schedule for weekly or even daily reports is a must.

You might wonder: How To Overcome Chronic Problems of Offshore Development Center

 

8. Clarify Security Management Standards

Offshore development center service providers sure all put down “High security” as the perk of partnering up with them. But these security features are still a hazard if you don’t get involved in the process of building them. 

A plan of ODC security measurements that covers physical security layers and confidentiality will protect you from any intruders and intelligence leaks.

At LQA, we implement the following steps for data confidentiality in offshore development center setup and operation:

Legal confidentiality

  • Sign a Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) on both ends before the knowledge exchange.
  • Well-train staff about ISO 27001 standards.

Network security

  • Use Virtual Private Network (VPN) for communication
  • Continuous risk monitoring from the QA team

Physical security

  • CCTV system is set up in every office area
  • Biometric scanners at the office entrance

Above is a quick guide to set up a dedicated offshore development center. By following our recommendations and breaking down the ODC setup process into sequential steps, you will be able to have an offshore development center that meets your requirements and powers your business growth.

 

Frequently Asked Questions about Offshore Development Center Setup

 

1. What is an Offshore Development Centre?

An offshore development center (ODC) is a software development center of a business that’s located in an oversea country. An ODC’s typical components are facilities and a development team.

 

2. How do you manage an Offshore Development Team effectively?

Managing an offshore development team effectively can be achieved through these practices:

  • Ensure that everyone is on the same page: Before starting, make sure your team knows the project’s goals and what they can do to achieve them.
  • Set milestones and deliverables: Setting clear and achievable milestones for your remote developers, so they know what they need to do, and you can track their progress easily.
  • Eliminate micromanagement: Once you’ve decided on your offshore team members, trust them to do their job and look at the big picture instead of constantly checking every little thing they do. 
  • Treat them like your team: a dedicated offshore team is essentially an extended team of your business. Hence, avoid an “us vs them” mentality, show appreciation for their hard work, and treat them like they are a true part of your internal team. 

 

Conclusion

Setup offshore software development center is not that complicated. For foreign investment to thrive, many countries have developed favored policies for foreign countries to partner up with domestic businesses, making it easier to enter the market. However, for the firm legal foundation, you can have a legal consultant work on the rules and regulations regarding foreign investment and other legal matters for you. This can prevent any further possible legislative obstacles in the future. 

Having additional questions about the offshore development center setup? Contact LQA to consult our experts and get insights into Vietnam offshore software development center now!

 

Offshore Development Center (ODC) from A to Z: Maybe you’re missing this

 

Since the pandemic taking its toll on the world, we have witnessed the screeching halt of the world’s finance and economy. Even the most prominent players in the market are doing everything they can to cut down costs.  As in the IT industry, the most exploitable approach is perhaps Offshore Development Center, or we often call it ODC.

The term “Offshore Development Center” may not be that familiar to some businesses. However, this has been adopted in multiple fields of the IT industry and gaining its reputation as a cost-effective, approachable way of IT Outsourcing.

So, if you are taking the first steps toward offshore development, take a tour with us to gain an overview of ODC.

1. What is Offshore Development Center?

Offshore Development Center, short as ODC, is a form of IT Outsourcing that entails the creation of a dedicated off-site team located in another country to work on your software development project. Simply put, you are using software development services of an oversea country. The three main points of an ODC are:

  • Scalability
  • Dedication
  • Integration

For an ODC, the resources included will be the human resources and infrastructure. Although the name says for itself the purpose of this off-site team, which is software development, the ODC can also include administrative and supporting staff, all depending on your requests.

Here is an invaluable guide to software development for business owners, check it out!

 

what-is-offshore-development-center

What is an Offshore Development Center?

 

Since it is a “Center”, an ODC is often for large-scale and long-term operations. How you manage it lies upon your resources on a management team. It could be a single project manager working on-site covering all the monitoring, reports and assessment, or it could be a team of tech engineers from your side.

An Offshore Development Center may consist of some to tens of people. They can either work on the same project or on different projects. This varies on how much you want this ODC to cover the information technology aspect of your operation.

 

2. Offshore Development Center vs. IT Outsourcing: Aren’t they the same?

Some might mistake IT Outsourcing with Offshore Development Center. Actually, Offshore Development Center is just a form of IT Outsourcing. While IT Outsourcing pays no regard to location, Offshore Development Center refers explicitly to the offshore operation of the projects.

For an IT Outsourcing project, its core should be the output, while how the outsourcing team produces that output is just a minor factor. The client has no or little control over the project specifics. In contrast, since the ODC acts as a branch of the business, it should follow the company’s guidelines and code of conduct. An ODC can function as a branch or an IT department of one business, dealing with every technical matter of that business.

Thanks to geographical pricing, the gap between labor costs in some countries is higher than in some other countries. Exploiting this trait, many enterprises can now hire talents with the same capabilities at a much lower expense when applying ODC. One extra task for enterprises using this model is to have a project manager supervise the project.

 

offshore-development-center-vs-it-outsourcing

Offshore Development Center vs. IT Outsourcing

 

For anyone who doesn’t know whether ODC or IT outsourcing is suitable for your business purpose, you can consider this:

  • IT Outsourcing focuses on the output of the project. Therefore, the cost is a minor factor. As long as the requirements are met, you have no problems in the limited control of you in the team. The personnel of the IT Outsourcing team can change over time. For each IT Outsourcing team, they usually just work on one particular project. For another project, another team or contract is set up.
  • Offshore Development Center’s core priority is cost reduction. Plus, the management within the project is stricter, with the client hiring extra personnel solely for management and supervision. ODC can work on multiple projects at the same time.

 

3. What can Offshore Development Center bring to your business?

Yes, IT Outsourcing and Offshore Development Center are two different models, and yes, IT Outsourcing is a more popular choice for businesses. However, Offshore Development does hold some beneficial traits that can contribute to your business:

  • Cost reduction
  • Close-up management and supervision
  • Access to a large talent pool
  • Market expansion
  • Diverse team of technical engineers
  • Continuous maintenance – Avoid knowledge releasing
  • Alignment with client’s objectives

Cost reduction

The main reason why one business considers Offshore Development Center is the cost reduction it can offer. As mentioned before, the labor cost and other infrastructure costs vary from country to country. This is geographical pricing. With this glaring gap, many enterprises see the opportunity in which they can have a team with the same capabilities and proficiencies at a much lower cost.

Talking about ODC cost, it includes the initial cost to set up an ODC and the cost for operation. Let’s look at our calculation on running a domestic software team vs. an ODC software team.

 

Cost comparision between Onshoring and Offshore development center

Cost comparision between Onshoring and Offshore development center

 

Close-up management and supervision

The fear of loose management and inadequate supervision might be one daunting factor for businesses wanting to apply Offshore Development Center. However, the reality proved the other way round.

Over many years, the management method of Offshore Development Center now works in a functional way, including the stringent procedures and close step-by-step supervision within each project team.

And don’t forget about the increasing number of QA & QC staff working in an ODC. For example, each ODC project will be assigned with at least one QA and 2 QC employees to keep track of the work. In addition, Project Manager will be in charge of the whole operations through daily reports and constant updates.

 

Access to a large talent pool

Besides the leading factor of reduced costs, Offshore Development also holds another great benefit of a large talent resource, both in quantity and quality. When it comes to building the traditional in-house team, the recruitment cost goes through the roof with many trivial spending. Candidates don’t appear out of thin air. Corporations have to spend quite a fortune on ads, training efforts, orientations, etc.

aking advantage of this reality, companies providing ODC services always try to work through an effective recruitment process and training programs to sharpen IT staff’s skills, to to constantly adapt to the market’s demand and bring as much diversity to the project as possible.

 

Market expansion

With Offshore development services, companies now can expand their market in two manners:

  • Form a new branch in an oversea market and get closer to their customers – a subsidiary for market expansion.
  • Extend service capabilities, enhance customer experiences, reach more markets.

With ODC, as long as you find the right offshore development vendor and agree on the right way to engage with the process, raising business capabilities to expand the market is no longer a significant concern.

 

Continuous maintenance – Avoid knowledge releasing

With an offshore development team, you get a long-term dedicated team to take care of the entire cycle of the project and avoid knowledge releasing – the lack of people well-understanding your product/service for maintenance and upgrade.

The trend now is continuous maintenance performed on a weekly or even daily basis. First, each employees’ work is logged onto the management file, clearly stating what has been done. Then, the QC, QA and PM will take turns to check and verify their work. Finally, if anything goes wrong, the one held responsible will fix the problems. This is the process applied widely in the market and has proven its effectiveness.

During the entire cycle of the project, ODC uses every resource they have to complete their tasks. But, even in that case, there might be some time that the results don’t live up to your expectations. This is another reason for the continuous maintenance of your project. With instant maintenance after each step, the time-to-fix and time-to-market are reduced to their minimum.

 

offshore-development-center-continuous maintenance

Continuous Maintenance with Offshore Development Center

 

Alignment with client’s objectives

For an ODC to function properly, you cannot leave out the position of Business Analysts. With this personnel, the mutual understanding between the ODC and client is more clearly clarified. Transparent requirements, along with advice from an expert in business development, can help you a great deal in finding the best work model to with.

With mutual understanding, ODC can now align with the client’s objectives and make any more adjustments if needed.

 

4. Domains for ODC: electronics, automotive & healthcare

Offshore Development Center is being applied throughout the world. Information Technology is the universal requirement for any business to adapt to the current preferences of society. We’re used to the pervading use of technology in entertainment and utilities, but the market is much bigger than that. Instead of the direct interaction with technology through apps and social media platforms, we now can see the increasing use of technology in multiple industrial and service sectors. The most obvious domains can be counted as:

  • Electronics
  • Automotive
  • Healthcare

 

Electronics and Embedded Software

The “Smart” concept is more popular than ever, with embedded software implementation on every electronic device manufactured. For one electronic device, the modern world’s consumers not only care about the core functions of the device but also have a preference for the “high-tech” feature of the device. For example, an electronic fan is not enough. This fan has to obtain the “smart” feature and be a part of the manufacturer’s ecosystem. We have seen this in the case of Xiaomi. This new player in the technology marketplace of China has manifested the favor of consumers when it comes to electronic devices through its success with Mi home – a new ecosystem of home electronic devices.

 

offshore-development-center-electronics-embedded-software

Offshore Development Center for Embedded Software

 

Through this example, we can see the undeniable growth of IT in the electronics manufacturing field. With a large number of devices to put on the market every year, not to mention the updates and upgrades of the embedded software, the demand for electronics embedded software is higher than ever.

On the contrary, the supply of infrastructure and especially human resources within one country for this growth is still very limited. Hence, the electronics manufacturers have to come for IT Outsourcing, or even Offshore Development Center to seek help.

Instead of simple IT Outsourcing, manufacturers often go for Offshore Development Center for better security.

 

Automotive

It is almost like a tradition for the automotive industry to outsource its production (with an outsourcing rate of 80%), and the information technology aspect is no exception.

Offshore Development Center with Automotive

Offshore Development Center with Automotive

The widespread usage of digital sources and appliances has influenced how automakers wish to update current models. With customer-centricity, anything that benefits their consumers is designed to apply in the vehicles, such as automated automobiles, AI systems in customer service, and virtual assistants, the manufacturers, the adoption of an ODC can improve the security of the project, which is now bound the legal agreements.

 

Healthcare

From 2020 to 2027, IT Outsourcing in Healthcare and Medical is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11%. The rate for the rise of Offshore Development Center is approximately the same.

With the pandemic taking its toll on the world and the outburst of many other diseases, the medical and healthcare system needs more than what they have now to provide the best services.

Besides the clinical demands for each doctor and health worker, the world needs utilities and other technical advances to deliver conveniences to the health workers and the patients.

Since the technical system often requires highly competent staff, the demand for this is increasing. However, their core business development was never the technology. It is the overall experience of one customer and the treatment process that matter to them. The point is, for the best services, IT is indispensable.

For this reason, healthcare is another eminent domain for IT Outsourcing, especially Offshore Development to grow on.

 

5. ODC Checklist – Three keys to launching your ODC

Got Offshore Development Center in mind? This is just the first step. In fact, the world’s market has witnessed many failed cases, all of which lack the consideration of the following Offshore development center checklist:

  • The right country for your offshore software development center
  • The suitable team structure for your project and management style
  • The right ODC pricing model for your project

The country in which you want to set up the ODC

The top destination for IT Outsourcing or Offshore Development Center used to be in Eastern Asia, with China, Japan and Korea reign as the most popular ones. However, in recent years, the labor cost in these countries has increased to the point that they’re no longer the favored destinations for Offshore Development Center.

Instead, Southern Asia and South-East Asia countries’ Offshore Development Center service is developing at a staggering speed. Standing out in these countries, Vietnam reigns top countries for ODC setup. According to the U.S. News, Vietnam scores 100/100 for Cheap manufacturing costs globally and is the 2nd-lowest operation cost country in Asia. Also, the legal infrastructure of Vietnam for the IT sector is also supportive, with tax reduction/exemption, land rental exemption, and other favored policies.

Apart from the Southern Asia and South-East Asia, companies can consider Australia, Newzealand, The Philippines, Poland, and Argentina for ODC.

 

offshore-development-center-choose-a-destination

Choosing a country to set up an Offshore Development Center

 

The suitable team structure for your project and management style

Team structure in an Offshore Development team varies according to the client’s requirements. But the major roles include:

  • Account Manager: This person is like the focal point of communication between two parties of the client and the ODC. They take in your requirements and deliver them to the project manager and the development team
  • Project Manager: This person specializes in managerial skills and technical skills to carry out planning and executing, making sure the client’s requirements are met.
  • Developers: They are like worker bees working on different tasks of one project. The installation, testing, and maintenance process may be involved in the work, depending on the client’s requirements.

 

The ODC model for your project

The pricing model of Offshore Development is quite diverse, especially with the ever-changing market of the IT industry. However, there are two most popular models of Offshore Development Center as below.

– Dedicated Offshore Development Center:

Taking from its name, a dedicated offshore development center gives the client the whole fully functioning team. This team can act up as the client’s other subsidiary/branch that specifically works on the development and their IT-related tasks. This model is for large projects with undefined requirements, meaning that the team will work their way out during the work process. The client will pay upon the onboard time of the team.

– Build – Operate – Transfer:

This BOT model can be considered a more advanced price model of Offshore Development Center in general. During the work process, the Offshore team will be responsible for Development (in “Build”) for Implementation (in “Operate). Once the client wants to take over everything, they will sign a contract for further purchase and other legal matters.

This BOT model is also for large projects, and especially for companies wanting to enter the market of hosting countries.

Whether you choose Dedicated Offshore Development Center or Build-Operate-Transfer, there will be a lot of things you have to take into consideration for the best interest of your company.

 

Final Notes

With all of the above information on Offshore Development Center, you can grasp the basic idea of how this works and how it can benefit your business. If you’re swamped with too much knowledge of this, you can learn about our Offshore development services or contact our expert for a free consultation.

 

Contact us at:

7 Strategies to overcome your burden of IT recruitment

The riddle of how to nurture, recruit and retain IT talents is the universal problem that HR departments face every day. As in the IT industry, 80% of the candidates are passive candidates, meaning that they’re already occupied. The process of planting the seed of job switching to attracting those candidates to apply to your company is a long and demanding journey. In this journey, for every step of nurturing, recruiting and retaining poses different challenges; fortunately, these can be easily tackled, thanks to the following solutions:

  1. Build a strong employer brand
  2. Employee referral program
  3. Competitive benefit and compensation program (what motives your staff?)
  4. Broaden your recruitment sources (institution)
  5. Proper investment in HR Campaign
  6. Remote Staffing
  7. IT Outsourcing

 

1. Build a strong employer brand

72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agreed that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring, and 75% of those who are looking for a job often take employer brand into consideration. Also, 49% of LinkedIn users following official social media accounts of tech firms to watch our for job openings.

Building a strong employer brand is not something that you can do overnight but a long-term investment, both for business development and recruitment attraction. Still, it is important for one to “imprint” a good impression of your brand. These impressions would range from modern workplace, young and dynamic work culture, transparent policies, etc. Especially in the IT industry, candidates have a wider range of choices, hence they always go for the company with outstanding features of flexibility, scalability, etc.

 

Finding talents on LinkedIn - Solutions for IT recruitment

Finding talents on LinkedIn – Solutions for IT recruitment

 

The real question here is that “How does your employer brand stand out?” The most popular and common channel is social media. By leveraging your image on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you’ve already highlighted the robust work culture and friendly environment. The choice of what image you want to put on to attract candidates lies in your hands. It could be young and dynamic, or friendly, or professional, it’s up to you.

To deliver the image of your employer brand as an IT recruitment solution, you can go with media sharing, company events, job development opportunities, etc. Through these, potential candidates will first capture the essence of the workplace and then engage more in the activities of your company.

In terms of career development, it’s best that you set up and organize technical events such as host meetups, workshops, and hackathons to revamp competition within the business.

Also read: Top 7 challenges in IT recruitment

 

2. Employee Referral Program

Employee Referral Program has long been an effective IT recruitment strategy exploited by many businesses. In this program, employers encourage their employees to refer qualified candidates with rewards.

 

Hackathon - Solutions for IT recruitment

Hackathon – Solutions for IT recruitment

 

This strategy has proven its effectiveness through multiple analyses indicating that employee-referred staff tends to outperform the nonemployee-referred ones. Alongside these performance-related metrics, an employee referral program also helps businesses hire talents with suitable backgrounds and avoid any unwanted characteristics. Plus, as the information about the job openings is shared through the employees’ network, more candidates can get access to the information at a quicker pace, hence boosting the recruitment process.

With a reasonable reward, an employee referral program is considered a cost-effective way to tap into a large and qualified talent pool of passive job seekers.

 

3. Competitive benefit and compensation program

Each job position in different companies offers different pros and cons, and there is no one-size-fits-all vacancy that can meet all the requirements of the candidates. As a result, you should research the factors that motivate them, in which benefit and compensation are two factors contributing to a successful IT hiring process.

The most common priority recently is the remote working conditions. The candidates also put an emphasis on how they can balance out their work life and personal interests. You can also understand this as they are willing to move out of the suburban areas if they can work remotely.

 

 

Another fraction is the reference for internal development, meaning more training, technical courses and on-job guide, etc.

Concerning the finance factors, although the salary and other financial compensation policies might sound very compelling, the social and mental benefits top at the priority of what tech engineers look for in their jobs.

Due to the shortage of IT talents, tech engineers are spoilt for choices of the company they can work for. To make your business stand out in this very competitive environment, businesses are compelled to produce an impressive benefit and compensation program.

 

4. Use different platforms and sources for acquiring talents

Recruiting is not just about posting to job and waiting for candidates to flock to you. This is never an effective way for you to find the best candidates. Indeed, it requires one to employ multi-platform recruitment to search for as many applications as possible.

As it is shown with the following statistics, although job listing and social business platform is quite popular within recruitment community, more than 71% of the talents come from employee referrals and internal hiring, 65% are from LinkedIn and 56% are from Indeed.

These sources of applications and candidates have proven its success with quite prominent numbers, but the outlook for the IT recruitment process can be even better if you employ some of the following methods:

  • Hackathons/coding competitions: By organizing these “playgrounds” for developers/testers, you expose your employer brand to a small society of IT worker community, hence raising the chance of being considered when they have a plan for changing jobs. Through these competitions, you also get access to the personal contact address of the candidates, which can be used for later candidate nurturing.
  • IT training institutions: Partnership with universities and colleges with IT majoring can give you early access to a large and dynamic talent pool. This can ensure high-quality candidates thanks to the systematic and intensive training during their tertiary education.
  • Certificate providing institutions: organizers for IT certificate provision have contact points of the qualified IT candidates in different fields that can assist the mass recruitment process.

Talent acquisition does not always mean the recruitment from direct sources of candidates who will later on work as in-house staff. Instead, many international tech giants have switched their approach to staff augmentation or third-party recruitment services. With this rather new approach, your company would benefit from a bigger talent pool with candidates specialized and expertise in one particular domain or technology.

5. Proper investment in HR Campaign

As talent shortage becoming an alarming problem in the IT industry with 69% of companies globally report talent shortages, tech enterprises now place heavy emphasis on Human Resources and IT Recruitment. HR department now holds greater responsibilities and priorities amid the pandemic, requiring decision-makers to take more measures to improve recruitment campaigns. As the competition among tech companies gets more and more serious, it is urgent to employ a proper investment in HR campaigns to stand out in the market.

 

offshore-development-center-choose-a-destination

Choosing a country to set up an Offshore Development Center

Here are some critical channels to improve HR campaign’s performance:

– Signing Bonus. This can be the leveraging factor that can boost the recruitment process. One-month salary bonus or even more is exactly what one might expect to receive from their employers. This is not only a welcoming gift for the staff but also a promoting point for the company’s image.

– Advertising on multiple recruitment platforms. With a reasonable budget allocation, HR leaders can arrange ads to attract more candidates. Each recruitment platform has its pros and cons, which requires decision makers to do their research and try them out before sticking to any particular platform.

– Linkedin Talent Premium. With this all-encompassing hiring platform for talent professionals, a recruiter can find, connect with, and manage the people you want to be on your team. With a small cost, you can work efficiently and get access to a large talent pool with tech engineers from all over the world.

– Recruitment landing page. A well-designed recruitment landing page is crucial in creating a good impression towards IT talents. With subsequent information about opening jobs, plus nice content and picture layouts, the candidate can sense the professionalism of your business.

6. Remote Staffing

Remote staffing is an trending solution for IT recruitment. For some enterprises, the burden for IT recruitment takes up too much of their resources, not to mention the following additional cost of onboard employees. One way to approach these issues is to implement remote staffing and hybrid work.

With remote staffing, every operation and activity is executed on online platforms, which can eventually save up operational and infrastructure costs.

For the recruitment process, remote staffing can refer to the online operation of the recruitment team. Every step of the process is done virtually with a variety of platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

7. IT Outsourcing

IT Outsourcing is a service that has long been on the market with a relatively steady growth rate. As in the IT Services Outsourcing Market Size, Industry Report, 2020-2027 of Grand View Research, the global IT services outsourcing market is projected to grow at USD 520.74 billion in 2019. The annual growth rate (CAGR) from the phase from 2020 to 2027 is expected to be 7.7%.

IT Outsourcing is not a new approach in IT recruitment. In fact, its development over the years has proven its capability to thrive as an independent sector.
With IT Outsourcing, you can:

  • Cut back costs by approximately 50%
  • Halt employee turnover
  • Hire experienced experts from BPO
  • Have a low rate of burnout

The burden of IT recruitment can’t be solved overnight. Instead, it requires careful observation to decide on the optimal solution for a business to adopt. These 7 above strategies are popular Solutions for IT Recruitment but they are not the one-size-fits-all solution for all companies. One should consider their situations to find the best way out for them.

 

About Lotus QA

Lotus QA, as part of Lotus Group, is an emerging global IT firm specializing in providing the best technology services to the world. We have a comprehensive talent pool of top-notch IT engineers to offer you the most cost-effective HR solutions. We can ramp up a team for you in just 2 to 3 weeks and conduct interviews for you to choose your own team members. We provide a flexible approach for any of your requests.

If you’re looking for the Solutions for IT Recruitment, contact LQA for the 24/7 consultation of the HR market. We can help with this problem in no time.

Top 7 Challenges in IT Recruitment Faced by Tech Giants

The 4.0 industry continues to play a more significant role in our society, posing many challenges in IT recruitment process. With hundreds of companies in information technology receiving massive investments every year, investments are piling up; hence, there is supposed to be a higher number of IT workers joining the IT industry workforce.

Reality speaks differently. Despite the increasing number of universities and institutes putting Information Technology, Computer Science, etc., the market demands more than that as their flagship development focal point.

In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by the year 2026, the shortage of IT engineers in the US will be more severe than ever, with the number exceeding 1.2M. Currently, 75% of enterprises are struggling with talent shortages or skill gaps in key IT positions. Under this circumstance, the HR department faces some of the biggest challenges in IT recruitment to nurture, recruit and retain talents.

  1. Finding the qualified talents
  2. Building employer brand for a deeper impression
  3. Aligning with hiring managers’ demands/job requirements
  4. Recruiting within tight time frames
  5. Creating an efficient recruiting process
  6. Nurturing inactive candidates
  7. Maintaining a low turnover rate

You might concern: Talent management fundamentals – attract, attain and develop talents.

1. Finding the qualified talents

With high demand and low supply, finding qualified candidates for software development, software testing jobs has been always among the most recognizable challenges in IT recruitment. The IT industry is booming with its implementation in many aspects of our daily lives, leading to the unprecedented requirement for IT job openings to be filled. This year alone, the world has witnessed the spiking number reaching 7 million of job positions in the IT industry.

As opposed to this enormous number, the slugging market of IT talents cannot meet the requirements of IT firms, both in quantity and quality. The current number of candidates with qualifications and certificates to work in IT and computer science can only meet 50% of the market demands.

 

Finding the qualified candidates - Challenges in IT recruitment

Finding the qualified candidates – Challenges in IT recruitment

 

When it comes to IT recruitment, more often than not, one might expect it to be easy-money work, with literally little professional work to be done. “All they have to do is sit there, post the job description and arrange the interview!”

Well, that’s just part of what they do, and it’s like the tip of the iceberg – all the struggling and hard work is before that. Perhaps the biggest challenge in IT recruitment is how to find qualified candidates to go further into other rounds of interview.

The major problem in finding qualified talents is the technical and professional knowledge over the field, and the minor ones are requisite soft skills, experience and formal education.

To tackle this challenge to the core, there are some measures to carry out, including:

  • Broaden your circle of candidates (for multiple education backgrounds)
  • Look into candidates’ experience and their products/modules.

Finding qualified candidates is just the first step in a very demanding recruiting process, not to mention how to retain talents in the future. The actions that need to be done here lie not only in the recruiter’s hand but also in the hand of the IT department to attract talents effectively.

 

2. Building employer brand for better competition

In the eyes of the HR department, perhaps employer brand or branding is the marketing department’s job, not theirs. However, when discussing employer brand here, we want to emphasize the brand’s workplace, work benefits, insurance, etc., which can impress and attract candidates.

We know branding is not the one-size-fits-all formula for a higher incentive of IT talent acquisition, but it still holds an imperative role in hiring and retaining talents.

With an upmarket image of how the brand interacts and engages in the workplace, one business might benefit significantly with a higher impression and the privilege in the competition when recruiting.

Additionally, when comparing one business to another, people often judge based on the reviews and the images of these companies on online platforms. Basically, the one with a better employer brand image will reap this advantage.

 

building-employer-brand-for-it-recruitment

 

Although the brand image is the primary responsibility of the marketing team, the best way to handle this would be the collaboration within two departments. The marketing team has the digital tools and the tactics to deliver the message.

In contrast, the human resources team has professional knowledge of producing the key features that can attract IT candidates. Together, these can promote the image of a friendly yet professional workplace for the company’s staff, which is the thing that most of the IT candidates are looking for.

This direction can be pivoted based on the goals and objectives of the business, as long as it can be the “Candidate Magnet.”

Because there are currently more tech jobs available than IT job seekers, companies find themselves in the position of having to compete for the top candidates. No longer does an applicant have to take the first job they find—they now have the luxury of choosing the company offering the most appealing job. Fortunately, you can do a few things to position yourself among the most attractive companies to work for.

 

3. Aligning with tech team’s requirements

Another challenge posed during the recruitment process is the inconsistencies in how the tech team and the talent acquisition team process things.

There are circumstances in which the hiring staff and the tech leader are not on the same page regarding the hiring targets.

 

Align with tech team requirements - Challenges in IT recruitment

Align with tech team requirements – Challenges in IT recruitment

 

For recruiters, their goals are to fill in the missing positions quickly, as long as the technical requirements are met. On the other hand, tech leaders also pay much attention to a perfect fit for the job, both technical and ethical. This qualified candidate has to be a team player or an out-of-the-box thinker (this depends).

For this case, both departments have to work together to develop a parameter, a checklist of developer interview questions or a metric of must-have characteristics. Based on this, the most necessary information is wireframed to “paint the picture” of the most suitable candidates, hence boosting the recruitment process.

*Also read:

Complete checklist of interview questions for developers

7 Strategies to overcome your burden of IT recruitment

 

4. Recruiting within tight time frames –  Challenges in IT recruitment

Highly qualified candidates are of scarcity, and you must be quick enough to get a hold of these candidates. Unfortunately, more than half of the job seekers nowadays are impatient, meaning that they are willing to give up on a job if they have to wait too long for any response, even if this is their ideal job.

This situation leads to many big organizations, even with major brand names and ideal workplaces, cannot hire the best candidates.

 

Challenes in IT recruitment - Tight time frame

Challenges in IT recruitment – Tight time frame

 

More often than not, when a candidate sees a job advertisement, the first impression would be on the time from job opening to hire. If it’s too long, the candidate will lose interest because they will have to wait for a quite long time to be in the first round of interview if they apply. On the other hand, if it’s too short, one may hesitate with the excuse of “being unprepared.”

The fundamental answer to this problem is how you keep the candidates updated on the process so that they have a feeling of being carefully attended to. The odds of candidates dropping out of the interview is now lower than before.

 

5. Creating an efficient recruiting process

The recruitment process is often deemed the trivial feature of the HR department, despite the fact that this process is crucial for one organization to find the right fit within a fixed time frame.

However, in the case of the IT industry, the role of human resources department, especially the talent recruitment division, has gradually gained its credit, under the circumstance of talent shortage in recent years.

With a comprehensive recruitment process in hand, qualified candidates, no matter they choose to go with the job offer or not, can help you form the enriched talent pool full of professionals and experts in this tight job market.

 

Create an efficient recruitment process - Challenges in IT recruitment

Create an efficient recruitment process – Challenges in IT recruitment

 

This well-crafted talent pool acts as a tool that can minimize the time involved in the recruitment process.

The perspective of a comprehensive recruitment process varies within industries and even companies, but the most crucial features remain:

  • Clarification of job requirements from tech managers
  • Well-devised Job Descriptions
  • Talent Search on multiple channels
  • Screening and shortlisting
  • Interviewing
  • Evaluation of Employment
  • Job Offering

By creating an efficient recruiting process following these steps, you not only facilitate a consistent application of recruitment to ensure stability in staff proficiency but also streamline the staff culture in accordance with your visions.

 

6. Nurturing inactive candidates – Challenges in IT recruitment

More than 50% of the IT candidates on the market now are passive candidates, meaning that they have already worked in another company or project. Although they are not in demand of finding a new job, and nurturing these candidates may not be in effect immediately, the long-term impact can be the key player when they want to switch jobs.

Instead of talking them into joining your companies for a week or more, you can build a connection or even a new relationship when you put your effort into candidate nurturing.

The act of nurturing inactive candidates is not only for those candidates to join your force. Instead, once the foundation is built, you can get connected to their colleagues’ circle, which will, in turn, grant your more opportunities to connect to other potential candidates.

 

how-to-nurture-inactive-candidates

 

 

7. Maintaining a low turnover rate

The situation of a high turnover rate is not uncommon, especially in the ever-changing market of Information Technology. Turnover is the act of replacing an employee with a new employee.

The case of high turnover rate is not always bad for one business, but for the HR department, a high turnover rate can be a contributing factor to the failure of the business operations.

 

Challenges in IT recruitment - Low turnover rate

Challenges in IT recruitment – Maintain a low turnover rate

 

With high turnover rate means the high number of employees leaving a business, this can lead to many problems, namely:

  • Dragging amount of time spent on filling open positions, which is very much time-consuming
  • Adverse effects on the business core operations as the critical positions are left empty for a long time.
  • Tremendous stress on the employees’ morale and productivity when watching their former coworkers leave the company.
  • A massive amount of costs are spent on recruitment and training of new employees.

To tackle the high turnover rate regarding human resources, one must confide in recruitment process experts to develop a detailed plan on how to retain talents, including the solutions for high incentives, great work benefits, and transparent career path, etc.

The riddle of IT recruitment has been there since the beginning of this industry, requiring HR managers and talent acquisition staff to implement different measures for better management of the IT talents.

 

vietnam-software-outsourcing-contact-us-1

 

On a final note

The challenges in IT recruitment can be easily tackled with appropriate measures and considerable investment. But sometimes, the resources and time spent on recruitment can be too troublesome for the in-house HR department to handle, and this is when you can come to IT outsourcing vendors for help.

Unlike recruitment agencies which will only start recruiting when the requests are in, IT outsourcing companies already have a talent pool of IT engineers of different expertise with different ranges of experience. Whether they will work long-term or short-term, it will all depend on your decisions, and you will not be bound to any definite employment contract. By outsourcing the hiring processes to a vendor, your company can save a lot. No more burdensome employer branding, no more lengthy recruitment process, you can now focus on the core business operations.

However, outsourcing software projects is not without risks. Choosing the wrong vendor, an unmatching model, or unclear goals and processes can lead to poor-quality products, project delays, and unnecessary costs. If you want to avoid outsourcing failures, check out our Ultimate Guide for IT Project Outsourcing in 2023 to get the most valuable benefits from your IT vendors.

About Lotus QA

Lotus QA, as part of Lotus Group, is an emerging global IT firm specializing in providing the best technology services to the world. We have a comprehensive talent pool of top-notch IT engineers to offer you the most cost-effective HR solutions. We can ramp up a team for you in just 2 to 3 weeks and conduct interviews for you to choose your own team members. We provide a flexible approach for any of your requests.

If you’re looking for the solution to this matter, contact LQA for the 24/7 consultation of the HR market. We can help with this problem in no time.

Complete Checklist for Developer Interview Questions

 

Under the influence of the remarkable development in the IT industry, enterprises are in need of IT talents more than ever. To have a short-listed candidate is hard enough, let alone to hit spot on with the “knock-out” interview questions, you can apply this checklist for the complete developer interview questions.

This checklist takes things in two different approaches. One is from the technical point of view and the other is from the strategic point of view. While the technical aspect needs reviewing from a technical officer, the strategic one should be in the hand of the CTO.

 

What recruiters should prepare before any interview

Before rushing into any lengthy recruitment process, several things should be put into consideration to create proper IT recruitment strategies:

  • The ideal candidate profile: For any job openings on the IT market, besides the developer interview questions, the very first thing to do should be the clarification on what you need for your project. The job description should indicate the programming language needed, frameworks, tools, experience, etc.
  • The candidates’ preference: You should also skimming the candidates’ preference in terms of work location, work benefits, salary to see if they can onboard once they’re hired. Some might even reject a job offer if the work location is too far from their residences.
  • The shared objectives between the employer and the employee: This is a strategic question that both the recruiter and the candidate need to answer. For the best of both parties, the career path and career development should be clarified so that they can understand each other.

Also read: How to hire Test Automation Engineer

Four developer interview questions to test your candidates’ technical skills

It is never easy to stay ahead of the curve, especially when working in the IT industry. JavaScript, Java, C# and Python are currently the most popular programming languages in this tech world. But besides these, there are plenty more; each is suitable for different purposes and different kinds of applications.

 

Among the IT talents in the industry, each has different skills, and it is such a puzzle for enterprises to find the candidates with the right skill sets for their projects, prompting the biggest challenge for the HR department when recruiting.

To identify the suitable candidates for your projects, you need to explore their experience and potential step by step, and perhaps this guide can help you out.

 

Dive into their portfolios for insights of what they have achieved and their experience in the field.

As there are no one-size-fits-all programmer portfolios, you have to dig deep into what is included in their portfolios to grasp the idea of how your candidates work in their job. In these CVs, they should note out their objectives and expected career goals, as well as their projects in the past. These should cover the foundation knowledge about the candidates, and the recruiter can elaborate from there.

Programming Language Developer Interview Questions

Programming Language Developer Interview Questions

 

You should be well aware that programmer portfolios can come in all shapes and sizes, including a pool of their work’s information. When asking about this, four things should be carefully considered, including:

  • An overall introduction of this project with domain information, time frame, team size, target customers.
  • The candidate’s responsibilities in this project. The responsibilities can be categorized as front-end, back-end and full-stack.
  • The technology stack of the project
  • The programming language(s) required

Remember that this kind of information is just to build the get-to-know your candidates, but not the deciding factor for you to know whether you should hire them. Instead, it is recommended that the recruiter test their capabilities directly and look through the actual products of their previous work.

Before the face-to-face interaction, the candidate’s portfolios serve as a basis for understanding and it could help you build the bespoke questions to use during the recruitment process.

 

Take a look at their GitHub account

GitHub is perhaps the most popular “playground” for developers to showcase their work and skills. With open-source projects on GitHub, either developed by the candidates themselves or by others, it also shows their ability to:

  • Write comprehensive and easy to understand codes for others to contribute to
  • Understand others’ work and maintain code
  • Collaborate with others to deliver a better product

Look at theri GitHub

Look at their GitHub – Developer Interview Questions

 

This process should be done with the help of a tech team or technical senior under the recruiter’s assessment. Regarding the GitHub repository, you should check:

  • The number of followers. This number shows the reputation of the candidates and the appreciation they receive from the community.
  • Their time on GitHub. This shows their experience in the industry.
  • The number of their repositories shows the projects they worked on.

 

Set up a live coding interview

The most direct way to assess a candidate’s ability to think, code and present their approach is through a mini coding test.

These live programming tests can give you the fullest understanding of the candidate’s logical thinking and their tendency to solve a problem. From this, you can figure out their approach, especially when they have to work under pressure.

Some candidates may not agree to take a test, but it also shows their attitude towards challenges once they do. The attitude is another characteristic needed for any forward-thinking employee, which may benefit your company to some extent.

 

Set up a programming test

For an objective and efficient assessment, recruiters should pose the candidates with actual problems and actual bugs (the one they already have known where the glitches are). With practical answers in practical scenarios, the candidates can show their full potential in problem-solving and technical skills. This test should be devised based on the programming language needed in the job and the experience mentioned in their portfolios. This can be considered another layer of authentication for their capabilities.

After the candidates have finished their tests, they should be automatically analyzed according to performance metrics. These metrics can be:

  • Code Design
  • Programming Language competency
  • Maintainability
  • Solidity

Interview questions to assess the developer candidate’s cultural fit

As for the personal and culture fit aspects, the questions vary depending on specific situations. Here are commonly-asked questions for tech recruiters to refer to:

  • Why would you want to work for the company?
  • What do you expect from this position?
  • Where do you see yourself in 3 – 5 years?
  • How do you describe a healthy working environment?
  • What management styles motivating you at work the most?

 

Quite a list for developer interview questions, right? If you’re struggling in finding suitable candidates for your company, why don’t you let us help? Contact us for a thorough consultation of IT Talent recruitment.

Talent Management Fundamentals: Maybe you should know this

 

Yes, the IT industry is more vigorous than ever, and yes, the outlook for this industry to thrive in the years coming is undeniable. As a result, a talent management program is more important than ever for businesses to attract, attain and develop talents.

While it has come to the universal recognition that the “lifeblood” of this whole sector lies upon the IT talents – the ones that can bring simple code lines into complex systems, the statistics predict quite a “gloomy” future regarding the HR field. By 2026, the US market will see a shortage of 1.2M talents, and it is becoming more and more difficult to fill any IT positions.

 

1. What Your Future Employees Want Most

The world has witnessed a soaring number of job openings with more than 7 million positions to be filled. Yet, enterprises are still struggling to find high-profile candidates for their operations. Plus, qualified candidates now reap the advantages of being favored, hence the enterprises wanting to recruit them have to reconsider how they attract, retain and manage their talents.

It is undeniable that the competition in HR is growing day by day, with the enterprises boost their recruitment campaigns with skyrocketing costs. Besides marketing and branding to bring the most likable image to the candidates, these high-profile talents are seeking:

  • Flexibility in their work
  • Value over Volume
  • Team diversity

 

Flexible options

According to a study regarding the Future of Talent Management, 88% of the knowledge workers say that they would prioritize flexibility in terms of working hours and location when it comes to finding a new job. Soon, IT candidates expect that the recruiters would go for a wider range of searches, even cross-region or cross-border.

Working remote is one of the priorities

Working remote is one of the priorities

 

In contrast to the past, IT workers now have a diverse choice of where they can work, either remotely or onsite. They also put an emphasis on how they can balance out their work life and personal interests. You can also understand this as they are willing to move out of the suburban areas if they can work remotely.

In order to stay close to your most potential candidates, enterprises are advised to build the foundation near them or create the opportunity for them to work remotely. With the advance of technology, online communication is not a challenge anymore.

 

Value over Volume

As the workforce for the IT industry is getting younger and younger, their perspective towards how their productivity is measured. The traditional metrics often focus on the volume of the work they can deliver, and this is now deemed the outdated way of productivity measurement. Instead, today’s employees want to be assessed based on the overall value that they can bring to the enterprises, rather than the same old qualified outputs.

With this “philosophy” implemented in their jobs, they will have more space and trust to do their best. Of course, from the employers’ point of view, they want to go the traditional way to ensure the outputs for the whole system.

For forward-thinking companies that want to have a new approach for talent management, creating a workplace of people-centric experiences will give the employees the freedom to discover and strengthen their creativity.

 

Team diversity

The importance of a company’s culture is gaining its reputation in recent years, and one of the key features is team diversity. According to the survey, 86% of IT employees and 66% of Hr directors indicated that a diverse workforce would be even more critical. This diversity can help the team cope with the ever-demanding requirements of skills and roles.

The diversity we want to mention here is the diversity of background and technical knowledge. A team of members from different backgrounds can work together to create the best values for their company.

 

2. Facts and Figures about IT recruitment you don’t want to miss

We compiled multiple surveys to deliver you an overview of what’s happening in the IT recruitment sector. These surveys involve HR professionals and IT talents. We highlighted the most outstanding features for you to have the overall picture regarding IT talent management:

  • Technical priorities
  • Competition between hiring companies
  • Favored platforms for finding jobs
  • Likes and Dislikes

 

Technical priorities

Besides the priorities mentioned above regarding work culture and work location, software developers are still looking for the same things in job opportunities, especially the technical challenges. To the IT talents in the industry, Technical challenges/interesting tasks reign the most important features when it comes to choosing a new job. With the opportunity to be in one-of-the-kind experience, IT talents can find the motivation to work in that job. Trivial and day-to-day functions are the unfavored things.

Of course, salary is another important factor, but it only comes in third place, right after the flexible working hours and balanced lifestyle.

Favored programming languages

Favored programming languages

 

From the employers’ point of view, the most in-demand programming languages are JavaScript, Java, C# and Python. As the IT industry is booming, the needs for responsive, interactive websites are higher than ever, and JavaScript, with its object-oriented programming features, has become the most popular language in the industry.

There is a slight difference in what programming languages that candidates are capable of and what languages are favored by HR recruiters. For example, as most of the candidates asked know how to code in C and Bash, only a few of the recruiters want to hire someone with these programming languages.

JavaScript, Java, C# and Python are in the top 4 for both programmers and recruiters.

There are, however, some inconsistencies. For example, although ObjectiveC is one of the top 10 most sought-after languages, only 0.5% of developers said they actually liked the language.

Java and JavaScript receive controversial opinions on whether they are the most loved or hated programming languages. However, most of them agree that PHP is the most dreaded one. For the recruiters, 40% said they were looking for IT talents proficient with PHP.

ObjectiveC is also among the most sought-after programming languages, but the number of IT candidates with this skill is lacking.

 

Competition between hiring companies

The number of technology companies is spiking, with tech positions to be filled reaching the highest number ever. Under this circumstance, the recruiting department of one company faces a big challenge of finding qualified candidates while having to compete with many other businesses.

With human resources as the bloodline of the operation, many enterprises have raised the budget for recruitment, e.g., branding and recruiting platform. On the one hand, this has opened more doors for IT talents to reach more job openings. On the other hand, it makes it more competitive for recruiters to impress candidates. It also requires the enterprise to have a strategic talent management program to attain talents more effectively.

 

Favored platforms for finding jobs

78.3% of the developers said that they would go for LinkedIn for job opportunities. How the platform connects recruiters and candidates makes it easier for them to communicate. Transparency regarding the job descriptions and salary range also plays a key factor for candidates to choose a platform, and LinkedIn seems to have it all.

Despite all that, LinkedIn is not the only platform for recruiters. They can turn to networking events or job listings websites for candidate data. Tech-oriented, niche platforms take up a small percentile of the market, but high-profile candidates are likely to be listed on these platforms.

 

Dislikes

In general, irrelevance is the problem that both recruiters and IT talents face every day. While the candidates indicated that the irrelevance in the job offers and technical questions make them feel uncomfortable with the recruiters, talent recruiters also thought that they are not receiving enough relevant applications and CVs. Most of them are underqualified and not even close to the expected level.

 

Recruitment is never an easy task. If you need help with this, contact us for consultation:

What to do when choosing an IT Outsourcing Provider?

IT Outsourcing is the answer for cost reduction and domain expertise for some particular industries, which can facilitate consistent application of your requirements.

The benefits of IT outsourcing are pivotal to the development and digital transformation of one business, but to choose a capable IT Outsourcing provider with a strategy and development plan tailored to your requirements is no easy task. You have to follow these steps to find yourself the best-suited vendors:

Define objectives, goals, scope for your IT Outsourcing project

There is no one-size-fits-all approach for business in IT Outsourcing, no matter what sector you’re working in. Even for businesses in the same industry, the approach for IT Outsourcing varies, depending on the scope, objectives and goals of different companies.

Define your goals - Choosing IT outsourcing provider

Define your goals – Choosing IT outsourcing provider

To successfully manage the outsourced project, the first and foremost thing to do is to define what your business wants to achieve when outsourcing. A checklist of the project structure, features to develop, functions to be outsourced and evaluation criteria should be made.

Once these are identified, your business can both know the expected outcomes for the outsourced project (for internal evaluation) and the criteria for the project’s effectiveness.

With the detailed specifications of what to be outsourced and whatnot, your business can further devise the agenda and HR allocation for the next step of the outsourcing project. A set of roles and responsibilities within and without your business is also a metric for better management.

For the best outcome, businesses are advised to work with the providers with the same goals or have experience working with the companies in the domain.

Clarify how you want to outsource

The clarification of how you want to outsource should be addressed based on what you want to outsource. The goals of your IT Outsourcing project should also be considered in this step to choose the right IT outsourcing vendor.

Know how you want to outsource - Choosing IT Outsourcing Provider

Know how you want to outsource – Choosing IT Outsourcing Provider

There are many engagement models for businesses to work in IT Outsourcing, and you can take a look at the three main ones as follows:

Time & Material 

The Time & Material model only requires general and basic requirements of the project. The IT Outsourcing provider will form a dedicated team just to work on this project. Specifically, this engagement model is perfect if you’re doing a project with complicated or non-predefined requirements. Throughout the process, you might want to add more features for the Outsourcing team to work on, hence generating more costs during the process. This model is designed for long-term projects with frequent updates to be carried out. 

Project-based

The project-based model is the engagement model tailor-made for small and mid-size projects which have solid requirements. Every feature is noted for the outsourcing team to work on. Since the features are unchanged during the process, the budget is fixed. In case of any changes, the whole project will be re-estimated with a new contract. The project-based is usually for short-term projects.

BOT

BOD, or Build, Operate and Transfer, is a popular engagement model, in which the IT Outsourcing Provider carries out all tasks, and the outsourcer’s in charge of giving requirements. After a while, based on the team’s performance, the business will decide whether they want to take over the whole project. 

When outsourcing, businesses should also consider the strategic approach and the transitional approach. With the strategic approach, a long-term relationship in which both parties invest to develop partnership. With transitional one, IT outsourcing is applied for an IT infrastructure upgrade. While the Outsourcing team manages the system, the in-house team takes care of the new technology.

Evaluate the quality of the IT outsourcing provider

Once you’ve decided what you want and how you want things to be done, it’s time to find the right partner for your business. Regarding the quality of the IT outsourcing provider, you should put into mind the following:

  • Talent quality of the IT Outsourcing provider: For different IT projects, it requires different skill sets of programming language, management tools, etc. This is the reason why you should identify which skill sets are necessary to find the best-suited service provider.
  • Infrastructure quality of the IT Outsourcing provider: The infrastructure includes physical infrastructure, device lab (for software testing service), wi-fi, the internet, etc. 
  • Work process: The work process varies for different IT outsourcing providers, but it should comply with the international standard and adapt to the clients’ requirements.

Evaluate quality - Choosing IT Outsourcing Provider

Evaluate quality – Choosing IT Outsourcing Provider

  • Data security and confidentiality documentation: Intellectual Property Rights and Patents should be clarified. It would be best to ask about the physical layers of security (with or without biometric scanner and lock), staff confidentiality, legal documentation, etc.
  • Experience in the field: It’s not about the general experience. It should be the experience in your domain.
  • Language competency for communication is a must for project efficiency.

Set up a team of tech leaders for management

Even your business’s focus is not the technology itself, you should always have an in-house team of 2-3 personnel to manage all IT operations. 

Set up a team for management - Choosing IT Outsourcing Provider

Set up a team for management – Choosing IT Outsourcing Provider

This team takes full responsibility for the project, hence being in charge of the communication with the IT Outsourcing provider. The project’s outcome lies in their hands. To do this, your business should allocate HR for at least a project manager/product owner. He/she will take matters into their hands by writing a handbook of terms, specifications and notes for the whole project. This is the shared documentation/a standard point on which every operation is based upon.

Also, during this project, weekly/monthly reports are issued for those who are involved. The project manager should pay much attention to this. 

With this checklist, you can find the basic information for your business to consider when it comes to choosing an IT Outsourcing provider.

If you don’t know what to start in this, LQA can help you. Contact us for more information:

Automated TestingEmbedded TestingManual TestingSoftware Testing

Ultimate Guide for Managing IT Outsourcing Projects

IT Outsourcing is the way to go for many projects and many companies worldwide. As the information technology industry progresses and thrives, the fostering of digital transformation is on the rise, even for companies that have no strategic core of technology development. 

Whether it is an enterprise or a startup, IT Outsourcing can be the tactical approach for prospects and enhancement, not to mention the cost-barrier to be lowered when implementing this.

However, as if managing complex technology projects wasn’t difficult enough, IT outsourcing can be a loose screw in your overall IT operations if the management methods go off the rails.

In fact, it can create numerous stresses that you have never experienced, causing malfunctions and underperformance when using an external team.

Interesting enough, it is normally the lack of communication, strategic analysis and management skills that derail the project, not the technical competence of the IT Outsourcing providers. Indeed, the most important and primary aspect in managing outsourced projects lies within how to meld diverse organizations into a cohesive unit. To do this, you might want to follow these 9 strategic guides for a cost-effective and cohesive operation when working with IT Outsourcing companies.

 

Identify what to outsource

The picture of outsourcing is not as simple as you might think. In fact, the adoption and implementation of hiring someone outside of your organization require a thorough examination and assessment of what to outsource to ensure minimal cost and strict security.

What should always be kept in your mind is the ultimate goal of outsourcing, which is the cost to be reduced. The question here is, which operations and systems can be outsourced without damaging the business’s operations and core strategic services.

Identify what to Outsource

Identify what to Outsource

 

To do this, you should divide your operation into 2, one of which is a commodity system and the other is a strategic system. By stating the “commodity”, we meant the activities that keep you running but do not necessarily differentiate you from other competitors in the market.

By dividing your business activities accordingly, you can have a clearer look at which activities can be outsourced to a supplier with a reasonable price and which cannot be entrusted to outsiders. 

 

Choose your supplier

One special feature of IT outsourcing is the length of the contract. Normally, the outsourcing contract in other sectors could last for years, while in the IT industry, the average contract duration is 2 years. 

The reason for such a short contract time is the unprecedented and unpredictable changes in the industry, not to mention the ever-growing amount of new approaches and technologies. Many companies might want to change the terms and requirements in the contract to adapt to new features of the industry, and this is inevitable.

When choosing your supplier, another thing to take into serious consideration is to minimize the power of suppliers by soliciting separate bids for each service. By doing this, you have already minimized the risks of complete dependence on the suppliers.

On the other hand, one should not automatically assume that a supplier would outperform their own IT department. Instead, the in-house department should be allowed to compete with the outsourcing team to institute the best practices.

To constructively choose the right IT Outsourcing supplier, your business should form a team consisting of mostly IT professionals to review the proposed bidding for each contract. Their deep technical expertise, together with a clear understanding of the company’s goal, can keep an objective eye on the service, benefiting the business operations.

 

Clarify your business goals

The clarification of your core value proposition and business goals does not necessarily stay at the top of your priority list, but it is a must for smoother and more effective collaboration between you and your outsourcer.

This does not entail endless and lengthy training sessions and documentation exchange. In fact, the essence of this is to share your most important features and elements of your business such as business process, business model and your people. 

Clarify your business goals

Clarify your business goals

 

Once your business goals have been clarified to the outsourcer, they will have more information to adapt and align their approach in accordance with your business goals. To achieve this, a mutual understanding between two parties can help a great deal to create more value, both for your business and the outsourcing company.

For the case of IT Outsourcing, you need paramount consideration of how to define your business and software concept. The questions of what it can do, what target audience and how efficient you want it to be have to be answered right at the beginning of the project. Being on the same page about mutual interests and values can create a strong partnership, which can be of great use in the time coming. 

 

Make sure everyone’s working from the same playbook

Being cognitive is very much advantageous to your business when you want to adopt IT Outsourcing, but it does not simply mean the alignment in business values, business goals or anything so large-scale like that.

In fact, it is about the resonation in how to work, process, test and deliver. One way to ensure the well-designed and robust workflow of the two parties is to create a playbook that contains step-by-step instructions.

This method has long been in use in some giants of the IT industry when outsourcing. With a detailed hand-book, all information compiled can facilitate consistent application of your requirements. 

With this hand-book, the majority of information is the background and the technical material that could help them in further streamlining and managing the project.

During your work of outsourcing your projects, you might encounter IT Outsourcing companies from different parts of the world, and they might not be speaking English. 

Hence, besides the written documentation and requirements, preparing wireframes, annotated diagrams and other visual aids is also recommended. With your needs clearly conveyed through specific notes, the outsourcer has a higher chance of getting what you want.

 

Work effectively with the time-zone

Assuming that you’re working with an offshore IT Outsourcing service provider from Vietnam, while you’re in America. In this case, working in different time zones can cause much delay and inconvenience. To deal with this, you should be cognizant with the time difference, hence scheduling meetings that suit both parties.

Pay attention to the time zone

Pay attention to the time zone

 

By doing this, it not only helps you save time, it also shows your concern about your partner, through which you can build a level of trust and motivation for both parties to work harder. 

To make this work, you can take the following as an example. If you have partnered with an IT Outsourcing company in Vietnam, which is 11 hours ahead of the East Coast of the United States, you can send them something at the end of your business day, they can work on it while you are sleeping and have it back to you at the start of the next business day.

 

Build business communication

“Communication is the key.” With communication, a mutual understanding is formed with bells and whistles of the dos and don’ts in the projects.

Alongside the overall message to be delivered during the project, you also have to ensure the understanding over the project and the work required from every team member. 

You have to make sure that every team member has a clearly defined workload for the day, and understands their purpose of the project. Here’s how to do this:

  • Daily calls with the team or at least 2-3 times per week. 
  • Have a team of business analysts (BA) or a project manager (PM) to ensure that every stage of the software development goes smoothly. 
  • Regular but short meetings which prevent exhaustion with long discussions and get regular updates.
  • Involve a tracking mechanism (aka metrics) for measuring the team’s productivity and quality.

 

Use project management software

On a small scale, management software may not be the most necessary. In contrast, a large-scale operation would benefit your business the most if you use a collaborative platform to manage projects. 

In this platform, instead of staff keeping track of their own workflow, tasks and schedule in an unorganized manner, they can follow their work, time management, and task progress, in tune with their visualize colleagues

Use management software

 

In other words, this platform is like a gathering place which keeps all the records of one’s work, allowing users to accomplish more without getting distracted. 

When choosing a platform for your project, you should pay attention to the built-in extension and other broadening functionalities to find the most suitable one. 

For projects with sensitive security terms, some might find a customized or in-house built tool is more suitable. 

 

Adopt software development methodologies

There are many software development methodologies that you can make use of, the most famous of which is the Agile and Scrum method. These allow the outsourcing team to work under unification and collaboration. The feature of continuous integration and continuous delivery helps boost the speed of projects’ time to market. 

These also ensure flexibility, constant reiterations and close supervision upon the outsourcing team, entailing full control over the operation and activities.   

 

Sync up regularly

To effectively speed up and ensure the work of outsourcing, agreement on the sync-up schedule and reports should be made.

It can be done on a regular daily basis, or even weekly to ensure the time frame and outcome, especially if your outsourced team is in another time zone.”

“Effective communication, especially with new or off-site employees, is key to creating a more efficient, productive and profitable project,” says Handy. “Whether you are using Google Chat or Slack, keeping all project communication in one central location will increase accountability and allow all team members to communicate in real time.”

Operating an IT Outsourcing project in tune with your business culture that can ensure efficiency and productivity is tricky. With strategic approaches and detailed checklists of the dos and don’ts, you can easily lower the cost-barrier with IT Outsourcing providers. 

 

Don’t want to bother yourself with the trivial problems of IT Outsourcing? Contact LQA now for standard and scrupulous IT Outsourcing services.