Offshore IT to strengthen my team
The digitalization of the markets is in full swing. Any company wishing to increase its profitability and gain market share has to digitize all or part of its business activity. The launch of a digital project requires organization, agility, recruitment of the right skills and especially know-how in this field and in how to manage IT projects.
Offshore IT provides a comprehensive and elaborate response to this kind of need. Because an IT project is above all a human matter, the offshore ESN (ex SSII) provide a structured response to the team assembly dedicated to the offshore development of IT and digital projects: they meet the expectations of companies by setting up a team of handpicked developers with the right skills to deliver the project.
Offshore IT can cope with business overload. Companies rely on outsourced development in a number of scenarios: to absorb a peak of business activity, to focus on more strategic projects or to bring new technological skills within the company.
How will the SSII go about recruiting and hiring a dedicated team of developers? What are the benefits for my company?
When a company wants to embark on a digital project and does not have the technical skills internally, it has the choice between engaging itself in a recruitment process and calling on a specialized IT services company.
If the company decides to recruit the necessary IT skills, it will invest time and money in a long recruitment process. Recruiting a technical team internally requires having analyzed upstream the ins and outs of the digital project and determining the necessary technical skills that will have to be hired. It is at this point that decision-makers quickly realize that building the ideal team alone is part of an obstacle course and even more so when you are not in the business of computer engineering.
The offshore IT services company is used to identifying and working on the vision of the product held by the company. This vision is expounded and enriched during meetings with the product owner, the production manager and the technical director. Based on its experience and the resources available to it, the developer provider will offer the company a dedicated team assembly of several positions over a specific period of time to achieve the desired product.
Process of setting up a dedicated team with several positions (from 2 to more than 8 people) for a company
- Analysis of the Product Vision to be achieved
- Determination of technical and functional profiles capable of carrying out the client project
- In-house team building with available developers
If the developers are not available, then the IT services company launches its recruitment process within its network of engineers:
- Communication from HRD and Marketing on the types of profiles sought.
- Receipt of applications or co-option.
- Pre-qualification of potential candidates.
- HR recruitment interview.
- Technical recruitment interview.
- Proposal and signing of the contract.
- Integration into the company.
- Integration to the client project.
- Implementation of work tools.
- Project start.
- Candidate training.
- Evolution, career plan etc.
In general, a serious and experienced SSII recruits technical profiles in under a month.
Freeing yourself from the recruitment stages is therefore reducing risk taking. It is also a way of effortlessly benefiting from a turnkey solution. The offshore web agency is responsible for managing the recruitment stages.
All the recruitment and staffing part of the dedicated team is the responsibility of the offshore IT provider. Only when the proposed team is validated by the customer does billing start, never before.
I do not feel that there are that many constraints to recruit internally. What are the real advantages of going through an IT services company instead of recruiting internally?
You are sure to get the right team!
By entrusting the recruitment stages to an IT services company, you are sure to put the right dedicated team of developers in place as well as the right supervisory profiles on your project. Along with that, the SSII brings you all the necessary working tools: ticketing, versioning, chat etc. If you want to have access to new technological skills on more exotic or newer technologies, it is the same principle that is applied, you just need make the request and the process re-starts.
In the event that a member of the team does not do the job, the IT services company undertakes to replace him/her within a period of less than one month. This type of change can happen for a variety of reasons. The IT subcontractor is fully responsible for this change without the client having to pay any additional fees.
You no longer have to worry about turn-over and changing positions
You no longer have to manage the turn-over of your teams. This is entirely managed by the IT services company. You no longer need to fret over the deployment means to integrate and retain your employees. The IT services companies set up numerous social benefits to provide their employees with a pleasant working environment, to offer them career plans, and specific trainings, etc. They accurately respond to the internal demands of engineers and their desire for growth.
The management of human resources is thus entirely outsourced:
- You no longer recruit developers.
- You no longer have to manage absences, resignations or illnesses.
- You are free from increasing skills through training.
- More logistical management of the team: leave, wages, etc.
- Easy and continuous access to new skills.
How will a dedicated team of several developers strengthen my business activity?
Effectively cope with work overload
Business activity varies greatly from one period to another. Some periods are conducive to project launches and developments while others are slacker and awaiting results or results analysis. Having access to a dedicated offshore team, means having flexible conditions on the size of the team. The latter will adapt to periods of peaks and troughs in activity.
Case Example: Your team will start a final 2-week development sprint to finalize the last batch of a CRM/Billing application. At this stage of the project, your teams are about to finish several months of intense work. At the same time, one of your clients asks you, as part of an online sales operation, to urgently develop specific settings for their products. Your team is already full and cannot in any case get away or even consider overloading itself with another batch of development. In this context, calling on a dedicated support team, can prove to be very useful! Strengthen your production capacity by using two back-end developers. Thus, your team finishes the last batch of CRM/Billing, and the support team saves you what is at stake by committing itself to meet the developments of the sale operation.
Concentrate on running your core business
When a dedicated team is available to your company, it will replace the team already in place. Support to the existing team can take different forms:
- Help to absorb a heavy workload.
- Intervene on lower value added tasks to allow other teams to focus on strategic projects.
- Take charge of third-party application maintenance, fix bugs and upgrade existing applications.
Case example: You will approach the design of a complete overhaul of your IT system in order to align your applications and centralize the exchanges between applications. At the same time, your indirect sales department (DVI in French) needs a web application to record indirect sales performed each month in the field. Redesigning your IS a large-scale project that requires you to focus on design for many months, and therefore to mobilize your best resources in order to do so. Applying a dedicated team of three people, two offshore back-end developers and an offshore front-end developer to carry out the Indirect Sales Department tool is a boon. You avoid postponing this project and meet the expectations of your sales representatives.
Going through an offshore web agency to strengthen your teams means allowing your activity to be strengthened while gaining quality and agility. The dedicated team adapts to the fibrillations of your business activity. You say goodbye to the lack of technical skills internally, tight schedules and uncontrolled regular increases in activity.
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