Mind the risks of outsourcing
Offshore outsourcing has been one of the most dynamically developing business spheres for the last decade, gaining new and new advocates and covering more domains, starting from low-end technical support and amounting to high-end technology software development. And while the advantages of this obviously successful practice are evident, customers should not forget about the existing risks of outsourcing which might pose a serious obstacle on their way to achieving successful cooperation with overseas business partners. Millennium Rise always strives to dinimish or eliminate any possible IT outsoursing risks while maintaining the advantages of offshore outsourcing.
Some of the risks of outsourcing include:
- expectations to lower expenses. Basically this was what offshore outsourcing was meant to do, to lower the expenses of getting a particular product or service. However, the expectations should be properly estimated and the reductions duly calculated in order to avoid unpleasant surprises. Even if it was possible to save up to 60% of costs ten years ago, nowadays it’s hardly practicable. Be reasonable. Millennium Rise managers will help you develop a realistic project budget.
- intellectual property security. Any program product developed by offshore specalists for a foreign customer constitutes an intellectual property, sometimes of a very high value, correspondingly one of the risks of outsourcing lies in the eventuality of important data being lost or shared in an undesirable way. Be careful. Millennium Rise offers high level of data security and warrants due protection of your intellectual property.
- know-how protection. Another of the risks of outsourcing, also related to intellectual property protection, lies on the other side of the ocean, meaning the knowledge of the customer which might be important and valuable enough to doubt the possibility of transferring it overseas. Be cautious. Nevertheless, in case you turn to Millennium Rise, you can be sure that your knowledge is properly applied and a very high level of privacy is assured.
- provider’s incapability. Sometimes it happens that the provider turns out to be incapable to give the customer the desired product or service. Such cases do not happen too often, however they still happen, and you should consider such a possibility as one of the risks of outsourcing. Be prudent. Millennium Rise managers will help you assess the realness of your project as well as possible risks and determine realistic time and costs frames.
- cost range. Software development doesn’t know such a thing as a pre-determined fixed cost of a project. Project managers try to evaluate the general frame your order will fall into, however the final price may vary by a significant percentage, especially in case you ask to add more features to the product or modify it in the process of development. Developers will not work for free, so the customer will be obliged to pay the additional cost. It doesn’t at all mean that the final expenses will be twice higher and that the provider is going to rob you in such a way, it simply means that it might happen so that the developers spend more time on your project than originally intended. Be realistic. Millennium Rise specialists will discuss and ground every possible change in the cost of the contract to avoid such risks of outsourcing.
- mentality differences. One of the risks of outsourcing lies in the possibility of misunderstandings occuring due to the cultural and language differences between the developers and the customer. Even in India where English is an official language, cultural differences might be quite significant. Be tolerant. Millennium Rise specialists are open-minded and closer to the Western mentality than those of Indian providers, as well as have good English skills, so you will not face this problem turning to our company.
- time to transfer knowledge. This is a point which is seldom taken into account when thinking about risks of outsourcing – and this is a huge underestimation. The vendor does not necessarily possess all the knowledge needed to realize your project, and you will have to transfer it somehow. With the modern technologies it’s possible without sending a representative into the country of the vendor, however you should mind the time and the efforts needed to share your knowledge with the developers. Be patient. Millennium Rise professionals are highly skilled and fast-learning, so we hope that this will not constitute any significant problem in our potential cooperation.
As you can see, risks of outsoursing are numerous and sometimes quite important, however Millennium Rise does its best to diminish the impact of them on its prospective collaboration with its customers.