What Types of Outsourcing Are Available to You?

Evolution Is a Part of Business

Your company is evolving. Given how every business on the planet has had to change to meet the demands of an ever-shifting landscape—with more people working from home and more people without jobs—chaos is the new normal. That has led to so many companies (of every size and type) to have to rethink how they do things as they cut corners, pivot strategies, relocate, and do anything to stay afloat.

In some instances, the change has been minor—you’ve simply shifted your staff to a work-from-home environment. Other cases have been more dramatic, with businesses having to find ways to cut costs while remaining competitive in a world that doesn’t give quarter to the competition.

Those businesses have had to get creative.

Where Outsourcing Comes In

For those businesses that depend on developers, there are plenty of ways to not only save money but to expand at the same time. One such route to that level of success is outsourcing. Outsourcing not only helps your business, but it can assist your development team.Consider this: With your business either rapidly expanding or pivoting, you’re probably placing a really high demand on a group of employees that are already working endlessly to deliver. By outsourcing, you can give those teams the much-needed assistance they need. Fail in that respect, and you could find yourself with software engineers in revolt.

On top of that, when you supplement your development team with outsourced help, you’re making it clear you’re not trying to replace your full-time developers—you’re simply giving them a bit of much-needed help. That will go a long way to retain the loyalty of your full-time software engineers, while still getting the productivity your business requires.

According to Fortunly, global outsourcing grew to over $92.5 billion in 2019. Additionally, 41% of CIOs are more likely to use outsourcing now than they were just five years ago. That’s a drastic change in the landscape, one that points to the growing popularity of outsourcing.

So maybe outsourcing is a solution your business might consider now. But what types of outsourcing solutions are available to you?

You might be surprised at the answer.

Types of Outsourcing

Let’s take a look at the three major types of outsourcing that are available to your company.
Those three types are:

Onshore Software Outsourcing

Onshore software outsourcing (also known as “domestic outsourcing”) is more common than you think. What is this type of outsourcing? Say, for example, your company has decided it needs a new website, but you don’t have anyone in-house competent enough to build it. Instead of hiring a full-time employee, you search for a freelance developer in your same city, state, or in another state within your country.

Any time you hire a freelance developer from anywhere in your country, it’s onshore outsourcing. The advantages of this type of outsourcing are:

Ease of communication – you won’t have to deal with language barriers or time zone differences for phone or teleconferencing meetings.
More control – with onshore freelancers, you might find it easier to onboard them and control how work is handled.
Few cultural differences – although cultural differences make for a fantastic society, there are times when they can become a hindrance to efficient work.
Localized skills – an onshore developer will have an intimate understanding of any skills necessary for your particular locale.
Market familiarity – onshore developers will be familiar with what’s popular in your market.
Marketing advantages – by going with onshore developers you can always use that in your marketing material (“We hire local”).

Nearshore Software Outsourcing

Nearshore software outsourcing crosses a country’s border but doesn’t go very far. In fact, when you outsource to nearshore developers, you hire a freelance contractor that is geographically close to your country.

For example, your business is located in the United States, but you outsource some of your developer duties to Latin America. That’s nearshore outsourcing.

The benefits of nearshore outsourcing are:

Location – outside of onshore, you can’t get any closer than nearshore. That makes for faster travel times and communication with a similar time zone.
Cultural similarities – similar to that of onshore outsourcing, nearshore will share plenty of cultural similarities.
Fewer language barriers – chances are pretty good that the nearshore outsourcing company (or freelancers) you’ve hired will speak your native language (or you might speak theirs).
Expanding your talent pool – if you stick with onshore outsource, your talent pool will certainly be larger than it was within your company (or your city). But when you reach beyond your borders, that talent pool grows considerably larger.
Cost-effectiveness – you might find that onshore outsourcing is cheaper than hiring a full-time developer, and nearshore is cheaper than onshore. So if you’re looking to cut costs, this might be a great route.

Offshore Software Outsourcing

Finally, we get to offshore software outsourcing. As you probably can guess, offshore outsourcing reaches well beyond the borders of your country. For example, your company is in the United States, but you hire a freelance developer (or team of developers) from India. That’s offshore software outsourcing.

The benefits of offshore software outsourcing include:

Cost-effectiveness – if you thought saving money by way of nearshore software outsourcing was good for your bottom line, wait until you see how much you can save by way of offshore. This is the main reason why so many companies outsource offshore.
Talent pool – by going offshore, you have expanded your talent tool to the entire globe. With this route, you are sure to have the best developers available for your job.
24/7 work – thanks to timezones, you could effectively create a situation where you have developers working ’round the clock by going offshore.
Work ethic – when hiring offshore developers, you’re getting workers who are not only highly-skilled but have a very passionate and positive work ethic. These developers will work tirelessly to get the job done.

Conclusion

Finally, you have more options than you think with software development outsourcing. With most companies that deal with outsourcing, you can hire individual developers or you can hire an entire team of developers—all of which are perfectly skilled and trained to meet the demands your projects place on them.

Even better, should your company pivot, those software development outsourcing companies can pivot along with you. Say, for instance, you’ve been working with a team of JavaScript developers, but shift to a more .NET Core-focused business. The company you’re working with can pivot with you by changing out the JavaScript developers for .NET Core developers. It really is that easy.

And there you have it, the types of outsourcing that are available to your company. You can now make a well-informed decision that is sure to benefit your company for years to come. And if you’re interested in hiring BairesDev, feel free to contact us so we can begin working to create the perfect team to meet and exceed your needs.