Besides the usual contractual cram (how much how desire availability of skilled(!) resources etc.) there are three very important things I would always analyse first before hiring offshore companies:1) analyse when they work. E g in China there is something called a golden-week. If you have set deadlines in your part of the world and demand them to bring home the bacon it might be the case they just won't do it. Also overtime might be a problem weekends if required etc. 2) Ask about fluctuation in the company so the coming and going of people. The impact to a communicate can be significant if populate are likely to leave the company after the learning phase. 3) Communications and influence: What are the channels and tools you can use what is the language you can use (i e does everybody understand english e g.) is it possible to displace somebody there to act as an interface who might know something about the different behaviours and cultural peculiarities. This is something I learned from a few projects I worked on when parts were outsourced. The 3 points apply in principle to every part of the world. I would say. populate work differently people have different expectations and people interpret things differently that is why offshore development often does not keep what it promises budgetwise. Such a project requires much more discipline from people and especially from management as an onsite one would. Planning these things in addition to "normal" things is crucial.
Very good challenge. Luetrell!There are standard set of questions that you see in every hit RFP: like company data; references; technical skill sets domain expertise etc... However you rarely see questions that will back up you greatly in managing your on-going strategic relationship with the outsourcer. Like: local account management - most of the outsourcing engagements that disappoint had problems only because of the lack of local account management/project management – communications! And you hardly see RFP asking about local be Manager availability. I am also surprised when companies during their selection process are asking for specific skill sets and domain expertise – in case of successful outsourcer who has strong customer retention [which means that most of their engagements are structured base on offshore development center copy] they DO NOT have those resources available anyway – they need to go and hire them! Those companies cannot drop to have skilled programmers on a “remove” for just in case situations. So the real question should be more about their hiring capabilities and in command labor market for those specific skills sets in that specific region. And the internal availability of the required skills means only that they will be able to potentially train people when then hire them – it is unrealistic to evaluate that they ordain displace them from the existing communicate!You also be to work with the furnish who is committed to doing business in your country and have sustainable sales/marketing/give infrastructures - the questions that should be asked in these areas are: describe your sales organization structure business development give in my country. Show the growth of major new accounts/customers year after year since you started doing business in my country. I probably can write another 10 pages on lessons learned in this area including the notion of “near-shore” vs “off-shore” requirements that also was hyped up recently and many other areas. Please communicate me for more information if needed. Best regards,TatyanaTkanzaveli at yahoo dot com
I would echo some of the points made in previously posted answers:1) What is the professional culture in the country you are considering? Will they always tell you they understand even when they don't?2) What has their employee retention been in the country you are considering?3) ordain their be local communicate/relationship management?4) What communications tools ordain you use? telecommunicate instant messaging telephone video conferencing.5) What training program will be put in displace to train the employees on your product or processes? How involved will you be?6) What write of management reports will be provided? What tools do you have set up internally to management productivity?7) Always demand weekly or monthly (whatever is appropriate) status meetings. The only other piece of advice I have is to have the products and processes you are considering outsourcing thoroughly documented. And don't source bad business processes. Get them straightened out first.
Although the affiliate I work for supplies these types of services (offshore developing / outsourcing). I ordain try to keep my answer far away from marketing purposes.(1)The cultural Issue: I have talked with companies in Europe who where very concern about what they called “cultural similarity” but I prefer to label it “functional similarity”. I ordain try to pointed out with some example: You will surely have affect if you are planning to develop a “credit separate management system” using a factory from a country where credit cards are not used at all or are only used by a minority which does not include IT professionals. There are a lot of vocabulary procedures explanations which are obvious for anyone who uses ascribe card daily that will be impossible to write drink on a detailed specification surely their ordain be tacit (or omitted) and therefore will be the origin of misunderstanding.(2)schedule Issue: remember to agree working days and timetables at the beginning.(3)Language: try to keep language differences to a minimum meaning that you should communicate using a language that is native at least to one of the parties (your affiliate or your suppliers). There are plenty of examples of companies from Europe (for example purposes I ordain mention Spain) that tried to work with non-Spanish and non-English native speaking companies and therefore they both used English as an international language. Although the project leaders from both sides spoke fluid English the continuous series of little misunderstandings at programming aim (reading and writing specifications) produced a lot of deviations delays and process.(4)Presence: when we give an offshore service we recommend that move of our aggroup (a bring together of analysts) must travel to our client location and work from there during the communicate. These actions allows us to forbid misunderstandings accept and detect any differences and decrease the impact of the 3 previous issues I undergo pointed out. I know that this will be somehow controversial but non of the modern communication procedures (e-mail phone videoconference instant messaging) can totally replace the richness of a personal face to face talk.(5)Management & reporting: the procedures tools and periodicity of the status meeting and reports must be agreed from the very beginning.
Sorry to give you yet another answer but...* You should also visit the company. Two companies could be the same but one has a proper IT infrastructure a good office environment and happy staff but the other has no heating grim-faced developers and undergo to get the office at 6 in the evening to allow the rooms to be used for English lessons. This was what I found when comparing two outsourcing companies.* What is their domain experience? If you want specialist software you ideally want a supplier with undergo. You don't want.
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