The Benefits of Offshore Teams for Scaling up Your Software Development

by The Scalers Offshore Development Teams In India

There’s a drive to transform across businesses, as they seek to bring exciting new digital products and services to their customers. The problem they face is a shortage of highly skilled tech talent. This shortage is crippling companies in places like Western Europe, North America, and Australasia. The talent is there, but often the very top tech organisations have a monopoly — making acquisition and retention a challenge for smaller businesses looking to grow. The benefits of offshore teams go beyond cost efficiency and that’s what we’re exploring in this article.

Why not just hire locally?

The problem with hiring locally isn’t just a question of numbers. The tech giants can offer packages and perks that make it harder for anyone outside of that small club to get the best engineers. Truly elite developers are a scarce commodity and they can pick and choose their employers. Businesses in the aforementioned locations are truly operating in a seller's market of software talent. For many CTOs and CIOs looking only in the metro area in which they’re based is simply not an option if they want to get access to the skills they need to digitalise and innovate at the speed they want.

Tangible benefits of offshore teams over outsourcing

Outsourcing is good for short-term projects and to plug temporary gaps when a business has a bulging pipeline of work. But, the engineers aren’t part of your organisation. They’re outside support allocated to the business by an external software house. They’re often working for multiple clients and have no real personal investment in the product, nor your vision and mission. Offshore teams are composed of full-time employees who’re culturally aligned to your company. As a result, it’s a long-term, value-delivering investment rather than a short-term fix. And, there’s often such a large pool of developers in the best offshoring locations that you’ll be able to find engineers with specialisations that are incredibly hard to come by at home. Or, without paying a large premium.

– Access to top talent and niche skills

– Lower costs compared to home

– No administrative hassle

– Ability to scale at speed

Working with an offshore partner

You can get the benefits of offshore teams yourself by going it alone. However, this can be complicated and hard to do due to local legalities and market differences in the location you offshore to. By partnering with an expert team builder in that country, you free yourself to focus on your product and not on operational heavy lifting. They also understand the market, and make sure the developers they source for you are an ideal cultural fit for the business. Of course, you make the final decision on who gets hired — but you’ll be choosing from the top 1% rather than simply being allocated whoever is available, as is the case with traditional outsourcing.