Offshore software development has become a popular practice for businesses worldwide. It allows entrepreneurs to save costs, time, and resources while delivering high-quality software for their companies at the same time. It implies hiring remote professionals to build software products for your future successful operations while you may continue to be focused on the core activities at your company.

However, finding a reliable and experienced software development partner may be challenging and time-consuming for business owners and key executive managers. It requires considering a large range of factors and specific details you should be aware of choosing the right team for your project. To help you make a better-informed decision, we have prepared this guide to hiring the best offshore software development company.

Goal-setting: Clearly Define What Your Company Really Needs

Before you start looking for an offshore software development company, you must clearly define your business goals and individual requirements to your technology provider.

It’s a cornerstone of an offshore software outsourcing bible. Think of what domain knowledge and niche expertise a partner company should have.

Consider your growth targets and strategies you’re aiming at. It’s also highly recommended to create a written outline of your goals, KPIs, expected results, and a type of the project you’re going to outsource. Your company’s HR representative can attach this document to let candidates see if they correspond to these requirements at a glance; it also helps you better understand whom your company should look for. It will enable your team to filter candidates and save time searching for the best service provider.

Investigate Management Capabilities

The main peculiarity of the collaboration with an offshore software development company is that you should constantly keep in mind that it is located in another country. It automatically implies plenty of factors you must evaluate before you decide on your future tech partner. They include a time zone, language, cultural fit, and some local standards applied to software products and services. However, the most different factors may be matched and smoothen up if there is excellent management.

The number one thing you must pay particular attention to is the level of responsibility of project managers and leaders. Most often, the first contact with a company allows you to clearly see whether an offshore software development team fits your communication requirements.

Have they responded to your message timely? What digital tools for messaging, videoconferencing, storing and sharing information, and other collaboration channels they use to set successful communication with clients? Do their project managers have a high English literacy level as it’s claimed on the company’s website? Do they understand your requests?

These tips may seem very obvious and straightforward. However, they are crucial for effective communication between your teams and overall project success. To determine if there may appear any communication issues, it’s also advisable to check feedback about it from previous clients.

Consider Cultural Fit

Pay special attention to purely cultural factors like the religion, local beliefs, mindset, political opinions/preferences of this country, and cultural sensitivity of a particular offshore development team. You might be surprised, but they also may impact the workflow and communication process. If there is any cultural misunderstanding between managers, it may influence the team’s mood, attitude, and productivity. So, be attentive when considering these factors and try to choose the outsourcing company located in a geographical destination that feels closer to your team’s mindset from a cultural perspective.

Evaluate Cost-Effectiveness, But Not Only the Cost

Before hiring the company, try to objectively assess the cost-quality ratio and consider that the “good” price doesn’t also mean the good quality of services. As widely known, one of the biggest benefits of offshore software development services is low prices.

Since the cost of living in countries like Vietnam, Poland, China, and the Philippines are lower than in the US or western Europe, the cost of software services is significantly more attractive for business owners too. However, the key point of assessing the possible outcome for your business also includes the outsourcing team’s capability to deliver the best quality and value to your project. For instance, the imaginative company A may charge 50% more than company B, but it also ships 3 times better results that are expected to pay off to your business in a longer perspective.

Check a Portfolio and Customer Testimonials

To determine the team’s skillset, you may check the team’s expertise, customer reviews, and the key clients on the company’s profiles on B2B directories. You can also view its portfolio on a corporate website or platforms like Behance, Dribble, GoodFirms, etc. If the quality of the work delivered by a team for previous clients doesn’t meet your standards, probably it’s worth looking for another service provider.

Be Well-Informed on How to Sign a Win-Win Contract

So, you have found a software company that addresses all your needs and requirements. Let’s move to the next stage — negotiation and signing the contract. There are several types of contracts based on three models of collaboration with an offshore outsourcing software development company: a dedicated development team, time & material, and fixed price.

Types of contract

Fixed-price contracts are the optimal option for small and medium-sized projects. If you have a relatively little task, it’s easier to set a fixed price to get it done by an outsourcing team than run a complex change-approval process.

A dedicated team of developers. This model implies hiring a software team that fully dedicates itself to your project. Usually, this model is highly flexible and applied to larger-scale projects.

Time & material model (T&M). It’s the best option when you need an expert for your project temporarily.

Check vital aspects to avoid contract-related risks

Regardless of the type of contract you select, there are standard elements and obligatory requirements that every agreement with a software development company should include. These are the following:

• Determined deadlines for issuing an invoice and invoice payment as well as clearly defined the consequences for missing payments on the client’s side;
• Liability clauses which determine clear limits of responsibility for both parties;
• Warranty clauses which guarantee the quality of provided services;
• Notice periods — time frames associated with the project kick-off, scaling up and scaling down a team;
• Data protection rules (the deidentification, reidentification, and anonymization of data);
• The client’s ownership of the code, when it is delivered and paid for;
• Agreeing on the law of which country will be governed if the contract is international.

Conclusion

Software development is a complex process that includes many stages and factors you, as the client, must be aware of to receive the best outcome for your business. In this article, we have considered the top six strategies usually applied to find a trusted software service provider, even in other countries. We hope that this brief guide will help you navigate the offshore software development market and make the best decision on a technology partner for your next project.