Offshore Bespoke Software Development

There is of course only one reason to consider developing software offshore, the price.

The following disadvantages of offshore development will be fairly transparent to most businesses:

• Language, time zone and cultural differences
• The requirement to specify your solution yourself fully
• Little control or visibility over development staff for build, and, possibly more importantly, for ongoing support

The disadvantages that will be less obvious will be:

• The  additional overheads required to manage an offshored project, predominately the all important interaction between you, the client business with the domain knowledge, and the developer with the technical ability. This interface is the one critical point that determines the success or failure of a bespoke software build, and whilst an additional overhead will represent an additional cost, any reduction in the quality of the interaction is likely to also lead to an inferior product.
• The difficulty in actually determining the savings, as a cheap day rate takes no account whatsoever of the productivity of the developer. Stories abound relating to developers at 1/3 of the daily development cost, but allied to 1/3 of the productivity.
• The ability of the development house to add value to the solution by interacting with the business is severely compromised. This in reality means that you get what you ask for, when a superior solution, offering greater flexibility, faster ROI etc. may have been possible.
• The aggressive wage price inflation taking place in India and China amongst others is moving the cost / benefit balance very quickly at present.

Adding up all of the hidden costs, and making allowance for the likely inferior product that will result, will probably close any gap between onshore and offshore development, but how can you be sure?

Contact us to discuss the ways in which we can offer you a world class solution, whilst ensuring that you are paying a competitive price.