What is the nearshore strategy, and what's the difference between nearshoring and outsourcing? Why should you delegate your tasks to an agency from Poland? Let us address your doubts one by one.
What almost all business owners want is to expand. Bring in more customers and meet their needs. For digital and marketing agencies, one of the crucial decisions regarding business growth is whether to run and scale up your development department or outsource it. Of course, there are risks and gains to both approaches. Between them, nearshoring is becoming one of the most favored choices while considering expanding your software development services. Read below to find out if it's a strategy for your company.
What is nearshoring
Let's start with the basics. You most definitely have heard of outsourcing and probably have done it in the past. For example, accounting, customer support, marketing, and software development are among the most commonly outsourced business activities. But outsourcing is a broader term than nearshoring.
Nearshoring is, in fact, a form of outsourcing different from onshoring and offshoring. To simply put it, it is a business strategy where a partner company performs services for you, operating in a nearby country. So, for example, we are a Polish digital agency, but most of our clients come from the UK, Germany, or Netherlands.
Nearshoring vs. offshoring vs. onshoring
Onshoring means outsourcing to a vendor from your country, which many companies do. There is no language barrier or foreign tax policies. Still, the service cost is often not much lower than the cost of hiring a new employee, and the talent pool might not be that wide, especially when you operate in a smaller country.
Offshoring is what many people from the western world mean when talking about outsourcing. It is delegating tasks, projects, or the entire business branch to the less expensive countries in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Cost-cutting is the most apparent reason to offshore, but cultural and time differences are the main challenges. Imagine having an emergency like a significant database failure while your entire software team is asleep on the other side of the world.
That brings us to the advantages of nearshoring.
Top reasons to nearshore software development
Nearshoring combines the best aspects of the other forms of outsourcing. It is a work transfer to countries that are usually less expensive but geographically and culturally close to yours. It's most often used by brands expanding their services in cases where building an in-house team would be too big of a challenge. Here are the main reasons to choose that strategy.
Proximity
Proximity to your development partner distinguishes nearshoring from other types of outsourcing. You work in the same time zone, and that facilitates communication. Every digital project requires tons of planning and coordination, which means close cooperation between management and the development team. It’s much easier to schedule meetings when you and your partner work at the same hours.
No major cultural differences
Cultural differences in communication have a tangible impact on international partnerships. Some gestures, phrases, and types of behavior can be interpreted differently depending on the cultural background. For example, it may be considered rude to answer e-mails immediately or come right out with work instructions in some cultures.
Nearshoring is all about choosing a partner whose culture and work ethic is similar to yours. We've worked with companies from the UK, Germany, or Switzerland. In each of these cases, we felt like a part of one team, not an outsider.
Cost efficiency
It takes a lot of effort and money to build an in-house software development team. Recruitment cost and the whole ordeal of finding the candidate with the right potential and set of skills. Cost of training, onboarding, employer's contract, additional office space, hardware, benefits... Imagine you can cut all that by hiring an entire team of skilled and experienced specialists, ready to start working on your project immediately.
Flexibility
Nearshoring allows you to develop digital projects in a highly efficient way. There's no need to negotiate individual employment contracts when gathering a team. With a transparent pricing model, one agreement with a subcontractor saves you time and resources. If any change occurs and you have to scale down suddenly, you don't have to let your employers go because your partner can just move their specialists to a different project.
Is nearshoring the right choice for your company?
So, you consider nearshoring Kentico/Umbraco development but still have some doubts? Let us break it down for you.
- You don't have a Kentico/Umbraco/.NET developers team, but you need one now.
- You have a dev team, but it's too small or constantly overworked.
- You are used to working remotely (online meetings, messaging on Slack, etc., which we had covered even before the pandemic).
- You expect professionalism, quality, and flexibility from your dev team.
- You expect cost efficiency and quality at the same time.
- You don't necessarily want to spend time building an in-house team.
If most of these apply to your company, nearshoring will be an excellent opportunity for your business operation.
Why nearshore to Poland
Poland is in the top 5 IT outsourcing destinations. According to the "Next Technology" report from last year, it has a talent pool of almost 300 000 qualified software developers and ranks high in EF English Proficiency Index.
ADHD Interactive is a Polish digital agency operating on the international market for almost ten years. All of our developers have huge experience in complex web projects and speak English on an advanced level. We've worked with many international clients, and we get excellent NPS scores. You can contact us at any time to get more details. For every new client, we offer up to two hours of a free consultation with a Senior Developer.