Choosing an Offshore Partner

Its been sometime since we wrote something on this blog- it has been an exciting phase in Texnovate's growth so far which left much less time for anything else. We've been busy developing our developing more service options and additional value propositions for our customers.

Anyway, back to the post.

This post will focus on the all important question - "How do you choose an offshore partner". In the previous post we had discussed how using offshore partners in your software development efforts can bring more value even for small and medium sized teams.

In this post, we will briefly revisit the Why Offshore question specifically with relevance to the issue of the value an offshore partner can bring to a product development team. The basic reasoning or advantage of having a trusted offshore partner can summarised using the following phrases.

1. Focus on core competence - The companies that do well any industry are those which know their strengths and work on using those to their advantage. An offshore partner can help a product vendor focus on activities which they do really well. Hence,the first step in deciding on an offshore partner is to Know Yourself i.e understand your specific core competence or what you do best. It is on the basis of the core competence identified that a product company can take a look at the non-core activities that can be offshored. We'll post another blog post on identifying core competence. Most of the good offshore development companies including Texnovate offer consulting services which can help in identifying the offshorables non-core activites.
2. More Hands on the Deck - Choosing the right offshore partner can help product companies manage the cyclical nature of their resource requirements (for e.g. testing resources during the testing phase, specialist Architects/programmers during the design/development phase etc) effectively. A strategic partnership offers companies the flexibility of dipping into their partners resource base during their times of need and makes scaling up and down cost effective and easier .
3. To each one his calling - This again ties back to the question of focus but with relevance to the focus of the partner. Let the offshore partner do what he is best at while you, as the vendor, should do what you're best at.

So, keeping the above three advantages in mind - We believe the following things should be considered by a software product vendor/team while considering an offshore partner :

• Expertise & Focus - It is extremely important to evaluate the partner's areas of expertise and skills they have access to. This would be crucial in identifying and evaluating if the partner can handle all your non-core activities, understand your business and give you the attention you deserve.
• Depth and Breadth of service offerings -As a small and medium sized business/team, the amount and time required to manage multiple suppliers may prove very costly - hence it is important that you choose a partner who can provide you the depth and breadth of service offering (if not directly, the partner should be able to offer other services through their other partnerships etc)
• Team -The partner's team should be evaluated for its technical, managerial and business skills.
• Ability to scale up- The partner should be able to scale up based on your growth plans.
• Location -With respect to the above points, the place where the partner is based gains significance. It is important that the partner be based out of an offshore location with easy access to highly skilled and expert resources.
• Flexibility -The delivery and pricing model offered by the partner should be flexible enough to handle your specific requirements.
• Size - It is important that the vendor be not too big to not attach too much importance to you as a customer (this can be a factor of the vendor's size or a factor of the organisation structure)
• Culture Fit -Although it is a difficult aspect to evaluate, this can be a crucial factor in driving the relationship. Hence, it is important that the senior management of the partner be met at an early stage to understand their priorities and values.
• Quality and business processes -The quality of the deliverables from the partner is dependant on the quality system and business processes followed by the organisation. It is important that the partner has a clearly defined quality and business process.

At Texnovate, we work with our customers in building a scorecard/evaluation sheet based on the above mentioned factors to help them select their partners. These scorecards help our customers get more value from the relationship and achieve the desired results from the engagement.

Please do contact us at info@texnovate.com in case of any queries/comments on our evaluation models and partnership opportunities.

Offshore Product Development - Introduction

This is the first of a series of blogs by Texnovate Solutions on the Offshore Product Development(OPD) market.

Introduction
In this blog, we will briefly touch upon what OPD is and how can product development companies benefit from it. Offshore Product Development refers to the services offerings specifically targeted at Software Product vendors by companies based in locations with easy availability of highly skilled resources at affordable cost. OPD service providers can be providing services targeted at the entire end-to-end product development cycle or a specific part of the cycle. This can include working on a part of the product, market research, new features, testing for developed code, documentation, providing technical and user support for products or even taking complete ownership for product lines.

Who is OPD service targeted at?
Offshore product development services are targeted at software product vendors of any size. This can be the largest vendors, who use their captive and a multitude of service providers to derive value, to a product company with a handful of employees. Small and Medium sized product vendors (or divisions of large companies) who are looking at growing to the next level can benefit from the freedom OPD offers in focusing on developing and marketing their product lines.

Benefits
How does this benefit Software Product Vendors?

A. Core Competence:Among other benefits, this brings us to the question of core competence. As in any outsourcing, the benefits are proportional to how much internal analysis and strategic evaluation has gone into the outsourcing exercise. And such analysis should lead to the answer to the question - where is the our time, as a company, best spent? If the answer to this question is marketing, product management, product idea or programming, it still leaves out a lot of activities as non-core and potential candidates for outsourcing. The outsourcing of non-core activities brings more focus and helps get more time for activities which bring more value to the organisation.
B. Access to Specialist Resources: For many product vendors, it is difficult to get some specialist resources at the right time. In some instances, the resource requirements may be very cyclical leading to not justifying hiring them. Such cases deserve a look at outsourcing the resources to a specialist vendor who has a pool of resources available for such needs. This situation can also apply to resources for lower skilled jobs (compared to programming) like testing, documentation etc.
C. Support and Migration: Support for existing product lines and migration of products to new platforms or multiple platforms are also activities which can take up a lot of time and in some cases not be justifiable by a business case. This could be the case because there are not many customers requiring it. It is nevertheless an activity that cannot be ignored because of the effect it can have on the vendors reputation. Again, this is an activity that can be done very effectively by specialist vendor.
D. Best Practices: Since OPD vendors undertake all of their different offerings for a number of vendors, the product companies can benefit from a lot of best practices, newer techniques and quality processes.


In the next blog, we will discuss what to look for when scouting for an OPD supplier.

About Texnovate
Texnovate is a young and dynamic company established with the aim of bringing the benefits of technical expertise, best practices, scalable team and outsourcing to product development companies. It is a group of product development and technology experts from leading IT companies who have a breadth of expertise developing products with large IT and Product companies. Based out of Pune one of the leading IT corridors of India, providing easy access of software talent and communication facilities, Texnovate works on a business model seeking to establish local management teams closer to where its customers are – thereby ensuring its customers get the attention they deserve