3 Misconceptions About Offshore Web Development

3 Misconceptions About Offshore Web Development

By admin June 22, 2015
Blog, Web Development 0

When it comes to web development of any kind, the options you have are many in todays interconnected world. You can either choose to go the offshore development business model or the onshore development business model depending on your budget, goals and overall business needs. The difference between the two is quite simple yet vast but the pricing and experience can truly vary for each scenario. Onshore web development means that you are working with a web development partner, company or person that is physically located within the same country, state or city for example. To explain it further to avoid any confusion, if I am located in London and am working with a local London-based web development agency or even a web development agency in Leeds which is still within the UK but 200 miles away, these would be both considered onshore development. Offshore web development means when you are working with a web development agency or company that is located in a different country than yours. For example if you work with an offshore web development company in India or in Poland or even Bulgaria for example but you are physically located in the US which is a different country, these would all be considered offshore web development. Offshore web development takes place at many growing economical countries such as India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Poland and many more. The reason why these countries are chosen for offshore web development is due to the abundant amount of technical expertise that is available in these countries, English being very widely spoken and the cost of living in these countries is far less than developed nations in the West making it economically viable.

A web development professional in the UK or US would be paid 4 to 6 times on average than what someone in an offshore destination would be paid as the economics is different in each specific country. They are pros and cons to both offshore web development and onshore web development but below we will discuss some of the misconceptions about offshore web development that are very widely known. Granted, some of these are true in some cases but they are not always true in whole. We will discuss some of the myths versus the realities when it comes to working with an offshore web development company. The arguments and misconceptions are many when it comes to offshore web development so we will list some of the most common ones along with how true they actually are:

Myth: If I work with an offshore web development company, this means that I will have problems with communication as they will not speak good English and they are located thousands of miles away. If I am working with a local company, it’s much easier to communicate with them and companies that are located offshore don’t communicate well and they just don’t get it.

Reality: Like everything in life, there is always good and bad. Granted, some offshore web development companies are really bad when it comes to communication in English and conveying what they want to say can be a challenge to decipher as it seems like they are speaking another language! Almost all of us have heard those horror stories of people working with offshore service providers that couldn’t speak a lick of clear English or couldn’t even put together a full sentence. The reality is that if you work with an experienced and capable offshore company that knows what they are doing, they will have good English-speaking proficient project managers on staff. These project managers, account managers or even account directors in some cases are familiar with what clients expect, how to interact with them, how to communicate with them and so on. It’s no coincidence that majority of Fortune 500 organizations from Salesforce to HP and Microsoft are capitalizing on the offshore business model whether it be software, call centers or anything of that sort. If you are able to find the right mix of a technically sound offshore company that communicates well in the language of your choice, it can be a beautiful mix that can save you a ton of money and really ramp up business. The best thing to ensure that you find or work with a company that has good communication and an understanding of what you are looking for is to speak to the actual staff that will be handling your account offshore web development project. It’s one thing to speak to the sales guy but you need to actually speak to the technical staff and project managers that will be handing your account on a daily basis. This will give you a really good sense of the overall project management style, guidelines and overall communication capabilities. Clear communication and transparency is essential in any relationship and the same goes for when you are evaluating or choosing an offshore web development company to partner with.

Myth: When you work with an offshore web development company, you are compromising on quality. An offshore company will not be able to deliver the same work that a local development or onshore partner will be able to. The quality is much different when you compare onshore development versus offshore development.

Reality: When it comes to software development of any kind, they are always ways or perhaps to better put it, checks and balances that need to take place to ensure you are getting high quality output from the web development partner you are working with. Any good web development company follows a guideline or methodology such as Agile, Scrum, Waterfall and so on. There is no right or wrong method but rather the end goal is what is really important and based upon that, the methodology that works for your project can be chosen based around that. In addition, they are many types of software or quality guidelines that are followed by web development professionals such as W3C validation, HTML/XHTML Markup etc. The fact of the matter is that, the quality of code and the output you receive is fully depending on the onshore or offshore web development company you are working with. You can get bad quality code even from the web development agency down the street as they don’t follow any guidelines or methodologies, you can have the highest quality output from an offshore company or even vice versa. It’s all about the expectations that you set along with the guidelines that you put in place when you are selecting an offshore web development or onshore partner to work with. If the offshore development business model produced bad quality then so many Fortune 500 organizations across the world wouldn’t be using this business model. Lastly, when you are searching for a company, if you make it clear what you expect and you tell them that you will get certain things tested through certain parameters or methodologies, the better it will be for all people involved. You need to be clear and transparent about the quality that you expect along with the testing parameters so everyone knows what they are responsible for.

Myth: It is cheaper to hire an in-house team versus working with an offshore web development company. I will have control and real-time visibility on my employees/staff that are working on my project and it will be cheaper when compared to outsourcing my web development work.

Reality: It may seem super-easy to hire an internal resource but that is far from the case. Firstly, it takes a lot of time and effort to find someone that you are looking for and if you can’t find someone, then you may have to pay recruitment fees to find someone. Then, you have to train that person and pay for their hardware/software expenses such as a physical computer, software licenses and so on. It can be very expensive and time-taking to try and hire internal staff to work with but most of all you need to monitor the output that you are receiving. The fact of the matter is that if you are able to find a good offshore web development company to work with, it will be less expensive when compared to hiring someone internally or a team for that matter. In addition, you will also save time and other countless headaches that come along with having people on staff or internally within your organization. The biggest benefit about outsourcing or working with an offshore web development company is that you don’t have to go through all these headaches of hiring, firing, operational and other things which happen when you hire people internally. Some people may say its easier to hire internally but the fact of the matter is when you work with an external offshore partner, you can easily scale up or down your needs without worrying about anything.

Summary
Working with an offshore web development company in India or any other country for that matter can be a very rewarding and lucrative experience. You will always have naysayers and people that have bad experiences which is true in any type of business model that you have. The experience can be good or bad and sometimes a little bit of both. If you do conduct the necessary due diligence, take your time and find a really good offshore partner that knows what they are doing, the sky is the limit. You just need to be clear, concise, transparent and know what you are looking for. If you are looking for a trusted, experienced and capable offshore web development company in India, please feel free to reach out to the team at Mind Digital for any of your development or digital marketing needs you may have.

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