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plan business success with remote teams

Time to Plan your Business Success by hiring Remote Teams

The advent of digital transformation and the severe shortage of engineering talent in western countries have accelerated globalization. This, followed by the increasingly intensifying struggle of maintaining their operations and keeping their workforce intact during the pandemic. It has led organizations to revise their talent acquisition strategy.

Following the astronomical rise in remote work, 88% of organizations reported adopting the approach and expanding their recruitment efforts beyond the in-team/onshore model to hiring remote teams. This includes some of the most popular organizations like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Evident from a KPMG global outsourcing survey, offshoring is already a major hit among companies, especially in the west. So much so that North & South America alone constitute 42% of the outsourcing buyer region. This behavior on the part of organizations comes on the back of the purported benefits offshore teams offer them.

Major Outsourcing Buyer Regions

What are Remote Teams or Offshore Partners?

Since offshore partners are third-party resource teams, companies can assign them full responsibility for a broad range of business functions. It includes overseeing development to ensuring legal compliance, and handling daily administrative tasks. These teams become value-added extensions of their onshore team and enable competitive advantage through labor arbitrage. According to a Deloitte Global Outsourcing survey, the main reasons why businesses switch to offshoring are:

What Are Offshore Partners

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The same survey noted that 57% of respondents said outsourcing helped them focus on their core business operations. In comparison, 17% said it helped them break their business mold and drive change from within. They also afford businesses smaller time-to-market and more incredible staff support, allowing them to remain competitive, and scale their services and offerings.

Why Do You Need a Remote Team?

dedicated team model

According to a global manpower study, as many as 54% of companies faced talent shortages, which led to the hiring process becoming long and drawn-out. As a way to stray from this ineffective recruiting model, businesses turned to hiring remote teams. This helped them gain greater access to intellectual capital, thus allowing them more room to accommodate projects.

Global Talent Shortage At Record High

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Take, for example, the case of Repeat Booking. An Australian company that offered sole traders the ability to add customers for automated follow-ups, Repeat Booking needed to grow soon and turned to an offshore team to achieve their business goals. By hiring remote teams, they were able to build their website and scale it to their users in just 180 days.

Remote teams have come to be regarded as the epitome of innovation, apparent from their increased activity prompting the global offshoring and outsourcing market to grow to the whopping US $88.9 billion.

Offshore Development Team

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As the number of businesses hiring remote teams rises, it pays to have a look at its reasons in detail before moving to how to collaborate with them for improved business success.

Reasons Why Every Business Should Leverage Remote Teams

1. Inexpensive Approach

Offshore teams provide better value at a comparatively lower cost. So much so that outsourcing IT services reduce overall costs by 60%, according to McKinsey.

For instance, Apple (the popular member Fortune 500 list) is able to generate great profits each year owing to its offshore development teams.

2. Access to a Wider Talent Pool

Offshore teams provide you with greater access to intellectual capital. It is the joint top benefit among organizations looking to hire remote teams and is what fuels the fancy of 28% of them.

Hire Pre-vetted & High Performance Remote Teams

3. Improved Productivity and Quality

When asked about it, 31% of companies said that they chose remote teams for their improved service quality. Offshore teams also have all the required infrastructure ready at their disposal so that you always get a stable product with superlative UX.

A well-known remote team success story- The communication giant Slack outsourced the designing process of all of its major visual elements i.e. the app redesign and logo design. And to the company’s expectation, this move helped Slack refine the crucial designs of their product, helping them scale to 15,000 users in just over a fortnight.

Slackss-Growth-Shows-No-Signs-of-Slacking-768x547

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4. Flexibility

When outsourcing work to remote teams, you share the risk management and impact with them. This allows you an additional resource that can help you respond to and effectively manage unforeseen situations.

In fact, this practice is so well-known that 81% of businesses have a remote team because they believe it to be a crisis response team as well.

5. Greater Number of Market Opportunities

Working with an offshore team helps you innovate quickly and bring down the time-to-market. In the opinion of 17% of business executives, this opens up a greater number of market opportunities and helps drive a broader transformational change.

For instance, in Repeat Booking case study the dedicated development team was able to develop a fully functional and scalable website for the business within just 180 days.

How to Plan for Success by hiring remote teams?

David Tapper, Outsourcing & Managed Cloud Services, IDC

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A Deloitte study reported improved business outcomes for organizations with dedicated offshore partners courtesy of their cost-effectiveness, better global scalability, and enhanced service qualities. The same study also highlighted the importance of partnering with the right remote team to ensure frictionless and high-quality collaboration.

However, creating a successful and productive relationship requires a lot of effort. While it falls upon the offshore partner to build your remote team, it is equally important that you stay invested in the process right from the beginning. Lay down a recruiting framework before signing up a partner that takes care of the following to ensure a smooth collaboration:

  • Review business goals and targets
  • Establish the dynamics of your collaboration
  • Evaluate your partner options based on their past portfolio, breadth of services, expertise in automation technology, and more.
  • Have an IT specialist on your end
  • Recruit the right professionals that make up your remote team
  • Make use of overlapping hours

How to Manage Remote Teams

While the particulars of your framework may vary, it will more or less resemble the one provided above. Stick to the framework and have your IT team always engage the suitable hires from your offshore partner. Last but not least, allow your remote team autonomy and don’t escalate to micromanaging them as a survey by Trinity Solutions reported that it causes 60% of professionals to consider switching jobs while 71% think it negatively impacts their performance.

Here is, 10 Tips on How to Manage your Remote Team

How to Manage Your Offshore Development Team

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While it isn’t unorthodox to supervise your offshore team, micromanaging them can make them feel they lack freedom. This can end up obstructing their thought process and impeding their productivity.

An equally important consideration on the subject of productivity is taking the difference in time-zones into account. Use overlapping hours to create an effective weekly communication schedule, such as status calls, meetings, and scrum calls.

Also Read: Best Team-Building Exercises for Your Remote Teams

Conclusion

If you’re looking to build your own offshore web development or marketing team and want a partner with a superlative track record, contact us today to learn more about how we can help you.

Uplers is recognized as a forerunner of innovation in web development among global circles of outsourcing agencies. We command both experience and competence to turn your projects into success stories.

4 Performance Metrics to Measure Offshore Development Team's Success

4 Performance Metrics to Measure Offshore Development Team’s Success

Offshoring of different business tasks from accounting to customer service has grown for several years. In recent years, however, IT outsourcing has overtaken business process outsourcing (BPO).

We focus on web and apps development offshoring in this article.

Why Offshoring Is So Popular

 Among the various location-based models of outsourcing, offshoring has consistently surpassed the others. The reasons, as captured through various global surveys, are as follows: 

  • Saves cost considerably
  • Facilitates access to relevant skills and talents
  • Increases business efficiency as the in-house team finds more time to concentrate on core business activities. 

What Are offshore development team partner

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There has been enough research by reputed companies like Deloitte,  A T Kearney, etc. to indicate that offshoring your development creates a win-win situation for both the client and the vendor. Provided you have a set of robust parameters to scrutinize your offshore development team’s performance. So, here we present –

4  Must-have Performance Metrics to Measure the Offshore Team’s Success

1. Time Taken for the Development vs. Expected Time of Arrival

Setting a deadline and meeting it is critical for every project. Clients inevitably trust vendors who can deliver on or before time. 

A delay at one level can set off a chain reaction of delays. The failure to deliver on or before time can even lead to the cancellation of a project. 

Working to meet a deadline has several advantages.  

  • Setting a deadline allows planning a project roadmap and prioritizing activities.
  • That, in turn, facilitates allocating human resources accordingly. You can then distribute responsibilities among the members of the project team according to priorities. 
  • Delivering benchmarks as per the timeline is the best way to keep your client happy. That will promote a relationship of trust. 

A 2009 survey had indicated that 58% of the respondents complained of delivery delays by their offshore teams. 

India has emerged and remained the most favored offshore destination for IT-related work for several years now. That is evidence that Indian companies have clearly transcended that problem of delay in delivery. 

That does not anyway reduce the importance of keeping tight control over the project timeline agreed between you and your offshore development team. It is critical to ensure that no time lag happens between the agreed timeline and the delivery of project benchmarks.

hiring dedicated developers

2. The Deliverables vs. The Project Scope

The efficient management of the project scope is imperative. Pretty much everything to do with a project comes within the project scope, as listed below: 

  • Overall project goal and specific objectives
  • The deliverables to match the objectives and the final goal
  • The features and functions that must be there to match the objectives and the goal
  • The project roadmap to achieve the objectives and the goal within the specified timeline
  • Project costs
  • A monitoring mechanism to check that the project is progressing as per the planned timeline
  • Developing a quality assessment mechanism and applying that on a sustained and regular basis
  • Quality assurance 

This last point of quality assurance is particularly critical. A Google survey indicates that 61% of users will not care to try an app for a second time if their first experience isn’t good. Among them, 40% will straightaway start using a competing app. 

When it comes to app development, three other points are also vital from the quality monitoring perspective: 

  • The app must be scalable as per need. To prioritize scalability from the beginning is to reduce costs in the future.
  • An efficient app developer will make the app customizable. 
  • A good app developer will ensure that the administrator can manage the backend without needing to run to the developer for every small thing. 

Weave in these elements within the project scope part of your contract document with your offshore development team. You will be saved from the stress of uncertainties during the execution of the project.

3. The Project Management Approach

Adopt a project management software and insist on all project-related communications to happen on that platform. 

How to Manage Your Offshore Development Team

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Organize frequent online meetings with your offshore remote teams on a regular basis. A Monday meeting schedule, for example. 

Setting up a regularized channel of communication is critical to the seamless management of your offshore remote team. You must also have one point person available whenever you need to convey something urgently. The project manager of your offshore development team, for instance. 

These are all important. Without doubt. Just that, they are not enough. Necessary, but not sufficient. 

There’s a cultural issue that you need to keep in focus in the case of managing an offshore remote team. Not language – culture. That well understood but ill-defined concept called culture can cause communication issues with your offshore development team. 

A quarter of the respondents (25%) in a survey involving 305 clients and vendors mentioned communications to be a problem in offshore team management. The respondents were from different parts of the globe: Asia, Europe, and North America.

If the language barrier does not cause a problem, what else could complicate communication? 

We find the concept of the Power Distance Index (PDI) a practical and useful one in this context. The renowned Dutch sociologist Gerard (Geert) Hendrik Hofstede introduced this notion. 

Hofstede simply argues that the distance between a boss and the rest of the employees get perceived differently in varying cultures. The numbers range from 1 to 120. The bigger the number, the greater the perceived distance. 

As a client, you are the “boss” to your offshore management team. If they have a cultural background with a high PDI score, such as in the Asia-Pacific region, they will never ask questions. 

That can cause misunderstandings. However, simple solutions exist: 

  • Communicate to your offshore development team that asking questions is fine. 
  • Ask your offshore team’s project manager to send you an email after every conversation/meeting. You’ll know immediately if there’s been any communication gap.  

Also Read: Top 10 Facts About Offshore Development Centers Across the World

4. Feedback Resolution

When it comes to app development, feedback resolution is as critical as the development process itself. Bugs in the app development process are inevitable and your offshore team will most likely have their own bug management process in place. That’s routine. 

What happens if a bug has somehow escaped the process, and you report it? What happens if a bug gets discovered via user feedback?

You need to consider these four parameters: 

  • Your offshore development team should not take bug fixing/ feedback resolution lightly. The response should be immediate. Not lackadaisical. 
  • The immediacy of the response demonstrates the expertise of your offshore development team. An immediate resolution indicates the team’s professionalism and skills.  
  • An experienced offshore development team will take feedback/bug reports positively and respond fast to resolving the problem. Any attempt at defense signals a lack of experience and/or expertise. 
  • Feedback resolution should not involve any extra costs. 

Are You Happy?

Does your current offshore partner match up to all the details of the four yardsticks? You can relax. You have a great partner. 

If you are frowning because quite a few of these metrics do not apply to your current partner, it is probably time to consider a change. A dedicated development team from Uplers is what you need. 

We match every single detail shared here, and more!

Offshore development team

10 Mistakes That Can Demolish Your Offshore Development Team

The restructuring of the global business ecosystem is unfurling novel opportunities for companies. Due to the integration of global markets, the collaborative flow of new technological advancements is being shared. In today’s current market place, the new or growing web companies need to imbibe potential alternatives to scale up the development. Hence, hiring an offshore development team accentuates the optimum use of advanced technological, economical, spatial and cultural domains. The ubiquity of IT tools is hedging the popularity of the dedicated development teams in the web development cycle.

Offshore development team members are distributed geographically and collaborate for common goals through virtual technology tools. But as new dynamically economic spaces are erupting, the current offshore environment also indicates some challenges, complexities, and prerequisites before and after hiring offshore development teams. So it is important to access probabilities of mistakes, which may undermine your development team’s efforts.

Let’s read more which mistakes can demolish your offshore development team:

With the cohesive collision of growing web development companies, it also becomes important to dive in for probably associated risks. Nothing is without trade-offs in the economy, and offshoring is not among exception. So let’s have a comprehensive look over mistakes, which can be avoided while working with a dedicated development team offshore.

1. Inappropriate Offshore Location

The growth of business relies on human capital, financial capital or social capital. Hence, similarly, once you decide to offshore the development, what matters first is the location. Some contributing factors are:

  • In a competitive market, every company needs to revivify the core factors like cost-effectiveness, adroit resources, experienced team, market trust, and quality work.
  • After racking up all necessitous observation,  the decision to choose offshore development company ordains with a perfect offshore location for your web development.
  • The location must not be holding an unconstructive road map for your projects. It must not face undue technological and communication differences.

Now, the question pops out, where to offshore?

best it outsourcing companies location

India is the best location for the offshore development team due to:

  • Economical labour cost
  • Consistent technological advancements
  • Innovations
  • Time zone benefit
  • Evolving IT ecosystem

The latest forecast by Gartner Inc. suggests, that India’s total IT spending will be US$94 billion in the year 2020. Furthermore, It is expected, that the digitally skilled manpower (IT-BPM) in India, would swell up to 150 million by 2020. So, offshoring to India has more salutary results.

2. No In-house Technological Expert

The uncertainties keep mounting up with an offshore remote team not having in-house technological experts. It becomes more colliding and less efficacious if you are not tech-savvy.

Lee-Parry

Hence, a technical expert is a fundamental monitoring factor for your entire web development cycle. They will be committed to organizing necessary communication with the offshore remote team and documentation of technical requirements. You need to ensure the availability of a dedicated in-house technical expert before executing the project.

3. Undervaluing Project Budget

Undoubtedly, a Fixed-price Contract is a preferential option for small projects with pre-determined purposes. If, there will be no further additional budgeting, no need to explore, Rate Card, Time and Material, and Cost contracts.

But with instantaneous market strategy and requirements propels to increase the budget of contract. The company accompanies several creative phases in the entire web development cycle. Hence, it is quite suggestive to keep a substantial margin while determining the final cost.

McKinsey-&-Company

4. No Long Term Goals

It is among the popular principle of the business, to constitute a road map for long term goals. So, if you lack it in the case of the offshore development team, you are stacking up more problems. Hence, you need to prepare long term plans about collaborating resources, its utilization, future competitive needs, customized solutions, etc. It gears them up for a strategic course of action for successful projects. And hiring a dedicated development team turns out a better option.

Also Read: Is Your Dedicated Web Development Team Making These Common Mistakes?

5. Look Away The Similar Project In The Bucket

Similar projects sprout more ideas and give a thorough insight into the team’s skills.

One size never fits everyone: No web guarantees the exact replica of the business requirements unless they are made customized. The expectation of the stakeholders necessitates the managers for taking proper insights for similar prior projects.

Bloatware is dangerous: Working over the old frameworks always leave the company in midstream. Therefore changing the frameworks and finding the compatibility with the existing system is necessary. Around 44 percent of businesses are raising their IT budgets for customization, which was a little lazy effort a few years back.

 

hiring dedicated developers

6. Communication Gap and Undecided Goals

Better communication flow hedges the efficient development of the project. If communication is deteriorated due to the unwanted communication gap, the project development would be more wretched. Bridging the communication gaps through potent mediums is a must. Furthermore, there must be predetermined goals and objectives for managing offshore teams efficiently. It is to be jotted down while planning future decisions with an offshore development team.

7. Disregarding Cultural Differences

Higher cost does not guarantee upper hand on skills: Most prominent psychological blunder outsourcer make is to give blindfold trust to tier1 resources. Always check the correlation between financial attraction, skills and business environments.

offshore development_graph

Play wisely with geographical diversity of web development: Web development industry is too wide and covers almost every civilized community in the world. The way of settling the conflicts always differs from culture to culture. High context people are way harder to deal whereas low context people prefer to discuss conflicts better.

8. Inefficient Management and Coordination

The managerial efficiency leads, yielding road maps with viable options for additional developments. You need to ensure that there would be a Project manager in the dedicated development team. It makes them responsible for planning budget, team resources, time management, quality assurance, reporting, and documentation. Furthermore, you need to establish better coordinated and planned meetings for managing offshore remote teams. There may be an issue with a time zone difference while scheduling a call or meetings, so a better mutual decision would end it.

9. Lack of Detailed Documentation Before Hiring

The lack of proper and detailed documentation may lead to unwary future consequences. You will not be yet confirmed about the credentials of the dedicated remote team. It is better to have detailed documentation of all relevant details before hiring. Around 39 percent of the project fails due to the unclear or bad requirement gathering.

  • Your product specification document must be engaging and effective.
  • PRD communicates the necessary capabilities, that need to be included before release to the testing and development team.
  • For channelizing every effort into the forwarding step, you should be in contact with the offshore development team
  • Also, quality assurance becomes easy.

10. Overemphasize On Cost

Every business decision is ultimately motivated by cost. Good research can let you get the premium services at a much lower cost than other available options.

Less focus on cost-effectiveness: Spending a few bucks more can never purchase you the better efficiency. The secret of the good web lies in the development process and models. The European and US developers prefer Agile/DevOps model (leaving great scope for improvement), whereas few countries still work with the Waterfall method.

So where do you draw the line?

The key here is to do your research and figure out what the ‘average’ fees are from different offshoring companies. Ideally, you’d be able to discuss specific case studies and real numbers.

Focus over good SRS: A perfect SRS saves time, reduces cost, increases transparency, and leverage the understanding with the development team.

Offshoring reduces the cost by 50 percent, eliminate the defect by 25 percent and reduce the time to launch by 40 percent; only and only if the above factors are given significant concern.

The global IT outsourcing market was $62bn in 2018 and rising with CAGR of 6% annually. [Beroe Inc.]

Wrapping up

The embellished role of the offshore development team can offer you a more economical product development process. But you need to avoid these mistakes for preventing unprecedented managerial and financial problems. Whether you opt for MVP or directly launching the product, the time-to-market is a significant factor to look for, which is considerably reduced with 37% difference, while choosing a dedicated development team. Apart from the above, the development team must have business-specific skills. It is always not possible for offshore developers to advance the specific skill, whereas the dedicated team model leverages the specific needs, therefore considered successful.