Tips to remember while starting project with an IT outsourcing company

Outsourcing is unavoidable for businesses and organizations in current market scenario. The tough competition and diminishing margins leave little choice for them other than to outsource their non core business activities and requirements to an offshore service provider.

IT requirements are the most outsourced process by business and organizations as developing solutions in-house is very costly and requires a lot of time to set-up and actually start developing the solutions. However, most of the organizations and other clients complain that they are not able to get the desired solutions from their development partner. This is because they actually don’t know how to deal with an IT outsourcing company and how to move forward with the project.

Here are some of the most effective tips that will help clients in working with the IT outsourcing company:

Hire someone local: It is always better to have someone on your side who originally belongs to the country you are outsourcing to. Make sure the person understands the dialect spoken in that very region of the country as usually there are many languages and dialects in a country. If the person is from another country then make sure that there isn’t any cultural or long standing cold war between your guy’s country and the country you are outsourcing to.

Invest some time on them: The people working at the other end are also human beings like you and they also need some nurturing and time to feel comfortable and attached. Take out some time to give an occasional call or you can even visit them if it is feasible.

Give task in packets: If your project is big or very complex then make sure that it is not served as a whole to the IT outsourcing company. First get a well formulated and thorough documentation of specifications and requirements. Then break the project into milestones and further divide it into yet smaller packages. Now you can start assigning the task to the service provider one by one. This will allow you to judge the quality and performance of the service provider before they go too deep into the project and you have spent a lot of time and money.

Know the team working on your project: It is a common business practice to assign a mixed team consisting of expert resources, ok resources and raw resources. It is your responsibility to make sure that this business practice does not get the best of you. Ask for resumes of people assigned to your project and have a brief interview if possible.

Single point of communication: The guy that you assign in the first point of this post should be the one and only point of communication between your company and the other software development company. The more people you include in communication, the more people you will have pointing at each other in case of some fault or misunderstanding. It is better to have a single point of communication through which all the communication happens.

We hope that this post would have been informative to you and would help you in better management of your IT projects. We will soon be coming up with more informative and interesting posts for you.