After founding Solidstudio, Pawel was an originator in terms of pursuing expertise in eMobility. With the build-up of a solid knowledge-base on industry’s needs & wants, he now keeps a close eye on products’ development. He’s also hugely responsible for the business’ side and designs the business models for our products.

Paweł Małkowiak

Outsourcing is on the rise as a global trend in business management. Companies that experience rapid growth often have insufficient in-house resources to take full advantage of their situation and gain new opportunities. Struggling to meet the demands of a growing business, they fail to see the big picture and miss out on their chance to become big.

Expanding development teams is challenging. Fortunately, companies can avoid recruiting new team members by outsourcing a portion of their operations or selected tasks to offshore development companies.

Here’s everything you need to know about 

Why is offshore software development so popular?

The primary reason behind the popularity of offshoring is an opportunity for companies to reduce labor cost significantly. That allows business to boost their bottom line - and that’s something important in today’s competitive market.

Companies struggle to source, attract, and recruit talented developers. Companies are competing for local talent and finding developers with the right mix of skills and experience is very hard. Offshoring offers companies a way around that problem - by partnering with a business in a foreign country, they get to expand their talent pool and take advantage of the local workforce that often boasts high technical knowledge and expertise.

Moreover, by teaming up with an offshore technology partner, companies get to cut on operational and administrative expenses such as office, equipment, onboarding, training, team management, and many others.

Key benefits of offshore software development.

Here are the most important benefits of offshore software development:

Cost savings - in a competitive market, companies can give their bottom line a boost by offshoring tasks and reducing the cost and labor expenses significantly.

Lowering operational costs - reduced staffing leads to a significant reduction in space required to carry out operations. It’s no secret that locations with high staffing cost are also characterized by high real estate costs. With offshoring, companies get to save up on space efficiently and save up on office costs (heating, electricity, equipment, etc.).

Access to specialized knowledge - businesses that rely on advanced knowledge in a specific area of software development might find it hard to source developers locally. By teaming up with an offshore software development partner, they get to take advantage of local resources without having to go through the burden of recruitment.

Offshore software development - how to choose the right tech partner?

Since there are thousands of outsourcing companies all over the world, picking the right offshore partner can be challenging.

First, it’s a good idea to decide on the geographical region you’d like to focus on. In the past, Asian countries like India used to hold the reign in offshoring services. Today, the situation is entirely different. Companies are looking for offshore partners who share their values and can communicate with them easily. That’s why Central European countries like Poland are becoming the new offshoring destination.

Once you know which region of the world you’ll be targeting, start asking for referrals. When checking a company, find out who their clients were and ask about their collaboration. Knowing how the company performs in the offshore setting is critical.

Get in touch with several companies to compare their offer. Decide which outsourcing model fit best to your project and see how it matches the offered services. Verify the company: check their blog, social media profiles, and endorsements.

Pay attention to how they manage projects. Excellent project management is key to the success of your offshore collaboration.

If it’s possible, make a test run of a potential partner regarding technical requirements and expertise. Start small and if the company delivers the project to your satisfaction, consider teaming up with them.

Poland - The best country for offshore software development?

Poland is becoming an increasingly important IT centre for offshoring and nearshoring software development services. Polish developers have university degrees, ample experience in the field, and plan talent - HackerRank placed Poland in the top 3 countries with the best developers in the world.

Moreover, Polish workers speak English and share similar professional values to Western countries, making them an ideal choice for an offshoring partner.

Are you looking for an experienced software development offshoring partner? Get in touch with us; we help companies all over the world take their business to the next level with our engineering talent.

5 benefits of working with a nearshore software development company.

If your technology business is rapidly growing and you need new people on board fast, you’re probably considering to outsource development to manage the workload. 

 allows companies to hire skilled developers who can handle even the most advanced aspects of a tech project to let your internal team focus on the big picture.

Nearshoring is one of the most popular form of outsourcing software development or services today. That does not come as a surprise because nearshoring offers many different benefits.

Here are 5 reasons why companies team up with nearshore technology partners:

By partnering with an external company, you get to benefit from the talents it has sourced and nourished for a long time before they join your ranks. You’ll be working with an external team of developers who have previously collaborated and have processes in place to enable smooth development. Hiring a team like that would take you a lot of time and resources.

Nearshore partnerships offer flexible options for scaling your IT team as needed. You may need developers for your project right now, but your needs may change after 2-3 months. Hiring nearshore allows getting the work you need, right when you need it.

Most of the time, nearshore professionals follow the same industry standards and best practices such as agile or scrum. They work on similar timelines, and you have little to no gap between time zones.

Finding qualified talents for your internal team is always challenging. When you team up with a software development agency that builds a team for you, you remove all the hassle that comes with sourcing, attracting, and recruiting developers. You don’t need to spend a dime on the hiring process.

Reducing communication issues that are usually part of outsourcing development helps to improve the ROI and bottom line. In nearshoring, you benefit from reduced language barrier between supervisors and nearshore developers. For example, in Poland pupils start learning English in primary school and are proficient at it by the time they graduate from high school.

How to choose a nearshore software development company?

Hiring a company in a neighbouring country or relatively nearby is different than teaming up with an offshore partner located on the other side of the world. Hiring a nearshore partner is more comfortable, but there are some things you should be aware of when looking for the right technology partner.

Check their knowledge of English or another relevant language - you need that skills for smooth communication. Remember that communication problems may kill a project quickly, especially if we’re talking about the complex process of building software.

Ensure that the company has skills and experience you see - it only makes sense to enter a nearshoring partnership if the partner offers expertise that fills the skills gap you’re experiencing internally. That’s why checking the company’s areas of expertise is so important.

Nearshore development - the current hot topic.

Delegating development tasks to a nearshore development team allows your company to concentrate on the big picture and create a real competitive advantage. Tech giants like Amazon or Apple are aware of the benefits of nearshoring and are increasingly turning to nearshore development today.

Hiring nearshore software developers is on its way to becoming the standard workflow of the future for companies that experience rapid growth and need a sustainable solution to support it.

Don’t leave your company behind and take advantage of nearshore software development. Get in touch with us to see how our team of experts can help you solve problems and achieve new business goals.

Nearshore software development.

Leading sales, Martyna had a chance to get to know most of our clients on top of having spoken to hundreds of people from the eMobility environment. She’s gained an in-depth understanding of what’s desired or unwanted in the business and she’s now applying that knowledge in her everyday job.

Martyna Wajda

As the digital era continues to evolve, strategic IT partnerships will only become more important. For small to mid-sized companies, in particular, the benefits of having a tech company play a partner role, whereby IT specialists can actively collaborate with the wider team and help inform business and technology strategy, can be considerable.

But it’s not just a one-way street. Forming a mutually beneficial partnership with an innovative technology company, like 

 , can help optimize both organizations. Quality collaborations can help improve everything from how a company communicates right through to profitable revenue, in short, enabling both companies to achieve more than they ever could going it alone.

The key to any successful partnership is, first and foremost, finding the right company to join forces with. At the very least, an IT partner needs to be able to serve your business' needs, ensure optimum IT performance, and has the ability to meet any emerging challenges head-on. Our guide to choosing the 

 for your business outlines exactly what you should look for and what to expect from such collaborations. But for now, let’s take a look at four key ways a strategic IT partnership can be beneficial for everyone involved.

Two heads are better than one, so the phrase goes. So it stands to reason that three, four, five, six etc heads are even better, especially when it comes to implementing long-standing IT systems. But just as an IT partnership can effectively deliver any technical know-how, don’t underestimate the value any business acumen can offer in return. Pooling and sharing resources can be a highly effective way of advancing both parties on the path to innovation and success.

Like any relationship, the more time and effort that goes into it, the more fruitful it becomes. For an IT company to get a deep understanding of a company’s systems and operations, as well as any technological challenge it faces now (and could potentially) takes a considerable amount of commitment, time, and trust.

A sustained, committed partnership offers, on one side, the benefit of on-going, innovative work and, for the other, the delivery of the most effective IT systems. But more than this, a long-term partnership offers both companies the opportunity to get to know each other’s business and build quality relationships with the people who are the driving force behind it, making it easier to work together and quickly adapt to any challenges.

For any reputable technology partner, the success of your business will become as important to them as it is to you. A quality IT company, like Solidstudio, will be creative in its approach to driving innovation to achieve the most effective technology systems for your business' needs. This can mean not only helping a company achieve a whole new level of digital transformation but keeps IT specialists abreast of all the latest cutting-edge technology and at the top of their game.

The cornerstone of any successful relationship is communication, and business partnerships are no different. In order to achieve highly successful collaborations, regular conversations are a must. Here questions such as are objectives being met and if there are new challenges that need to be addressed can be discussed, and key goals and timelines kept on track.

Partnerships offer a great opportunity to practice and develop good communication skills, which are invaluable in business. Scheduling in time for both parties to step back and measure performance at regular intervals can only strengthen a partnership as it moves forward.

For more information on how a tech partnership can benefit your business, get in touch with the Solidstudio team!

Learn about the benefits of technology partnership - does together means better?

The power of tech partnership

Read this article to find out about benefits of self-managing dev teams 

"We provide self-managing dev teams." We use this sentence as a slogan on our company website and in our LinkedIn account summaries. We also use it as a simple answer to the question: "What do you do?"

Since agile took over and phrases like "cross-functional team" or "cross-team collaboration" became commonly used, I don't want to throw everything into one basket.

I believe everyone has their own definition of a self-managing team, and in most cases is quite right. We can imagine it is a group of people who are focused on a target, act without further supervision, and organise their day-to-day cooperation. Adding "dev" to it only serves to narrow down the domain to IT.

Using this sentence as a slogan means that we believe such teams offer extra value and can act as a key selling point. It's something that could interest potential customers and show them the reason why pick us from other IT providers.

Here are the three main reasons why you should consider hiring a self-managing team as the number one priority for IT product development:

Not everything can be foreseen, and problems often emerge along the way. IT and software development are no different than any other domains. Having a self-managing group of people working as a team ensures you that the bigger picture is always the number one priority. The team knows how to prioritise decisions on that basis. In case of any problems, you can be sure the development will not stop, and all the resources are going to be directed to fixing the situation without any additional supervision.

There is an additional benefit here. Sometimes problems are swept under the rug, but self-managing people can foresee future complications and focus on delivering high-quality products throughout the entire development cycle, without cutting corners.

We know that agile is currently an industry standard for software development. Still, we see many companies struggling to tap into the full potential of agile and lean development. The reason behind this could be because digital transformation is extremely difficult, time-consuming, and requires a lot of work.

Each self-managing team brings agile with it. It's the methodology that works best, and self-organisation is deeply implemented in its approach. As a result, companies get to benefit from seeing agile in action, which should make digital transformation easier or improve the existing agile processes.

Self-managing dev teams are made of self-driven people. We're talking about passionate software developers focused on delivering the best possible solutions. As great as it sounds - there's a risk of turnover if the project doesn't meet their high expectations, especially in IT. And turnover is one of the factors that can delay the project. But giving self-driven people the possibility to develop their skills outside of the project builds greater confidence and engagement. And this is ultimately reflected in their dedication to the client's projects.

Engagement is a point worth mentioning here. The more you empower a self-managing dev team, the more engaged with the product it will become. Granting the team more control and trust leads to seamless product development aligned with your vision.

As Solidstudio, we can become your technology partner and provide you with self-managing dev teams for streamlined product development.

If any of the points bring value or is something you would like to discuss - please do not hesitate and contact us.

Offshore software development

09 JANUARY 2019 • 7 MIN READ