Things to remember amidst the pros and cons of using an offshore software development service

Amidst the pros and cons of using an offshore software development service there are a few things every company planning to embark on a relationship of the sort need to be prepared with. To give you a background so as to decide reading this article in its entire form, I wish to tell you that I have been running an offshore development service for the past several years. Having said so I am a proponent of the same because it’s a win model if used rightly. This article is a synopsis of what I learned as both a provider as well as a customer of similar services in the past.

Irrespective of what ever a provider tells you about quality, scalability and other reasons, the single reason that stands out above all are Cost Advantage. It depends on how you word it. If you word it as cheap, then it will automatically drip over to having cheap quality as well. This is not always wrong either. There are several providers who might not be able to deliver what they claim to. But history shows that the ones benefited from the cost advantage far outweigh the ones who have burned their fingers.

That being said cost is not the only criteria that you should base your decision on. You should be able to say how that cost advantage can directly influence your bottom line in anyway. Saving money and releasing budget for other things is always good but calculating the hidden costs within the savings is also important. If its a small engagement and to make it work over cultural barriers and communications gaps; you end up with sleepless nights, you might just not be ready to offshore now.

But if you have been putting a few important tasks due to budget unavailability or time and resource crunch that could be great starting point to think offshore as a potential choice. Cost advantage is a default result of off shoring, but how that converts to business value is what you need to judge. In my experience I have seen clients embark on an engagement only to find that it does not add the value as they expected and wind up later. I have also seen businesses that start small and see the value and get more and more tasks done to the point that the offshore team becomes an integral part of their business strategy and growth.

ITFlux, offshore outsourcing company offers outsource software development, sugarcrm customization and more.

Custom software application development from ITFlux

In the age of off the shelf products and Software as a Service (SAAS) Models one would think that custom software application development is a yesteryear phenomenon.

Though there is some truth in this as many of the custom development does not happen the same way or in other words there has been a lower amount of completely customized applications in the near past. Businesses have only grown further in their dynamic nature. With market readiness as a key factor and the target markets changing dramatically in both demands and competition, business have to be more than ever equipped to meet the trends

The dynamism of the market has forced businesses to redefine their approaches which in turn need their software and tools to be able to address these changes. This makes many existing systems less than proper very often. So while packaged applications and SAAS model are gaining advances the need for customizing an application to meet specific business needs still prevail and are in need much as before.

The first impression people get when they hear of a custom software application development is that you will be deploying a team to start writing the software from scratch. Well that is where the difference lies. The new applications and to a great extend the open source movement has brought together a community of developers who are building frameworks to address just about every business need in a generic fashion. These open source products provide the customers with the flexibility to have the source code on which they can build on.

Here are some examples of custom software application development and packaged software going hand in hand.

1. A customer who is in need of a content management system is not going to start hiring a few developers, select a scripting language and start writing code. They would use one of the many open source tools like Joomla, Drupal, OpenCMS etc… to use the CMS system as it is and then customize it to their specific needs. The advantage is that it gives them a tremendous speed in implementing saving both time and money. Since they have the source code they could have something developed completely to their need in a fraction of the cost
2. I still remember the days when businesses use to build accounting applications and inventory management solutions and even large level MRP and ERP solutions from scratch with a battalion of developers working over long periods and long investments. Then comes the entry of products like OpenERP that brings you a completely functional ERP system that can stand on PAR with many commercial applications in the market and at the same time give you the flexibility to do the necessary customization and have your business completely propelled by world class software.
3. I also would not leave out the emergence of CRM which is also significant for the reason that Salesforce.com a CRM application are the people who build the whole market of Platform As a Service (PAAS). SugarCRM another opensource solution comes free with a ton of modules free built in and give you access to the source code that you can tweak and suit your specific business needs

In business there is always a hard way, an easy way and a smart way. Custom Software Application Development using Open source tools is definitely the Smart if not the smartest way.

ITFlux offers Custom Software Application Development, Salesforce.com Consulting, Sugarcrm Customization and more.