“Your choices define who you are”, is how the cliché goes! It goes for outsourcing as well, for your choice of outsourcing partner will eventually determine how well your business performs in the longer run. Right choices boost business growth and unwise choices put all hopes of expansion and growth to rest. It is important that you do not rush into things and consider the factors given below before Outsourcing. These will help you find the right outsourcing partner and build a competitive advantage:
- Identify Your Need: The first thing you must ask yourself even before you begin is what your actual need is. Identify your business goals and draw out a roadmap to achieve those goals. Once those technical requirements have been understood, the final choice can either be an offshore vendor on an onshore vendor. Outsourcing to India has over years has offered lots of benefits to companies worldwide such as reliability, cost-efficacy, quick time-to-market etc. A lot of organizations are Outsourcing Businesses to India and you must consider pursuing this option seriously.
- Expertise supersedes everything: A service provider’s expertise in a particular domain must rank above everything. You must gather information about service providers and find out more about their way of working and delivering. Some of the factors that must be taken into account about service providers include skill set, business model, technical expertise, access to latest technology, previous project portfolio, experience of having managed complex business challenges in the past, adherence to deadlines, communication and passion towards technology. Talk to technical leads/developers/project managers following agile technologies and hybrid development models. Evaluate all your options on the basis of technical expertise, skill set and access to latest technology, experience of having solved complex challenges and passion for your project.
- Approach: The reason why businesses across the world consider Outsourcing Services to India seriously is because of the approach Indian vendors follow with respect to work and delivery. Human involvement and behavior, good customer service, commitment towards helping build a sustainable product are a few of those. Service providers who are simply in because they want to make a quick buck should never be given any sorts of consideration. Companies worldwide have found Outsourcing Businesses to India a profitable proposition for a long time now because India service providers are customer-centric. Their approach towards work shows in their deliverables. Ultimately, this approach matters above everything.
- Reputation: If you are suspicious about the past record of a service provider, it is always helpful to find out more about that service provider from past clients. Are they polite to clients? Are they are delivering things on the committed deadline? Do they deliver good products or sloppy products? Was the quality desirable or does it leave a lot to be desired? Unless the reputation of the service provider is good, it is advisable to avoid pursuing such options. Such vendors are never really going to add any kind of value to your business and neither will their solutions offer you any kind of scalability. In the world of social media, nothing goes unnoticed and it will not be hard to find out about a service provider and its past successes and failures.
- Budgetary Constraints: Superior, timely and good quality work always comes at a cost. It is not realistic to expect miracles at ordinary costs. In short, you need to take a good look at how much you are willing to spend before you approach a vendor. Do you have enough with you to invest in a project? Moreover, are you confident of making desirable ROI on your investment? The reason why Outsourcing to India is so popular is because vendors do not apply hidden costs or additional costs. The costing structure is generally found suitable by companies. Keep the size of your project and budget in mind.
- Data Security: In the world of technology, data theft is a grave concern. As a matter of fact, with most companies in the past decade, data security and privacy have been the biggest concerns. There will be stages during the project when you will have no other option but to share sensitive business information with the vendor. Only professionals can manage this well and ensure your data never gets misused. The piece of advice here is that you make your chosen vendor thoroughly visit your intellectual property rights and privacy policies and make them sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Vendors who keep conducting regular security and network audits within their workplace must be given preference above the rest.
- Model of Development: Market conditions keep changing dynamically. Only when you are good enough to adapt yourself to this can you actually sustain yourself. Only those vendors become market leaders who choose to work on agile development models, as these are highly collaborative and offer quick results. Thus, you must choose your vendor after finding out about his model of development. Consider Outsourcing Services to India only after finding this out.
- Post-Deployment Support: In case if you need any urgent support, will your outsourcing partner be available. What if both of you happen to work in different time-zones? You must consider this aspect very seriously? Your partner must be there for any after sales support that you need. Support must include future bug fixation and providing regular software updates.
- Stability: Companies generally suffer because they fail to consider this. Always be sure of your outsourcing partner’s operational and financial stability before you enter into any kind of collaboration. Factors such as ownership structure, partners, acquisition plans etc. must be subject to verification. In case you ink the agreement with the vendor and say after a few months they declare bankruptcy and run out of business, it will be nightmarish for you to take it from there. Moreover, switching vendors can prove costly. Finding out for how many years the vendor has been in business will make deciding easy for you.
This guide will help choosing a reliable outsourcing partner.
Shaun is the director of Virtual Employee Private Limited, a remote staffing & tech MNC, and is responsible for leading a team of more than 1200 experts from domains like IT, Content Creation, Digital Marketing, Designing. A law graduate from Brunel University, Shaun has been instrumental in creating a business model which is increasingly being seen by industry peers as a model for new organizations in the tech outsourcing domain.
