The trend has been building for years and has only become more evident during the recent pandemic: Not every business process has to be performed in your office. Employees can perform some functions remotely. Plus, a dedicated outside firm can take over other functions.
However, some companies (and customers) get frustrated with traditional offshore outsourcing, which often taps personnel on the opposite side of the world in very different time zones.
In contrast, nearshore IT staff augmentation and outsourcing involves sending a business process, such as software development, to a country close to your location, both in geography and time zone—as well as culture—while enjoying lower labor costs.
Benefits of Nearshore Staff Augmentation
As you consider nearshore outsourcing of your IT staff, the advantages of this process include:
- Convenience and Collaboration: Because the outsourced team is geographically nearby, it will be easier to collaborate with them. Your internal staff will feel more connected to them, and taking a business trip to visit their site will be more feasible.
- Similar Working Hours: The time zone of nearshore providers is often only 1-2 hours different than yours—or could even be the same. This makes IT staff augmentation easier to manage because the outsourced team will meet, start projects, and make changes during business hours.
- Similar Culture: Similar regions of the world often have similar cultures, which reduces management headaches, as an extended team will understand your expectations and working methods more readily.
- Attractive Cost: Nearshore firms can often provide a skilled developer for about half the cost of a developer in your own country while offering the advantages listed above.
When Nearshore Outsourcing Should Be Used
Companies always want to pay efficiently for labor, reducing its cost when possible, as long as they can maintain a high quality of work. With nearshore IT staff augmentation, you can control the software development process by working with a team that understands your needs, as well as your customers’ preferences.
If your business depends on selling innovative, well-designed apps and software, nearshore outsourcing may be superior to offshore outsourcing. By paying much lower labor costs while benefiting from geographical and cultural similarities, nearshore outsourcing may be less jarring for your internal staff. Managers will find it easier to give feedback and direction.
And your own developers or designers will have less trouble (or no trouble at all) using the outsourced team’s work. Additionally, nearshore workers may be more motivated and alert than offshore employees who must work in the middle of the night to accommodate your time zone.
When Nearshore Outsourcing Should NOT Be Used
It’s vital to add up all the costs associated with nearshore IT staff augmentation services. That’s because the initial price tag—paying 50% less for the same product—makes nearshoring seem immediately impressive. However, make sure those cost savings are not wasted for any reason, such as:
- Your internal team being forced to spend time completing a firm’s work
- The price of traveling to the outside firm’s location a certain number of times
Plus, firms in a more developed nation may charge higher fees than you expect. Simply being “nearshore” doesn’t always mean “cheap.”
Finally, carefully consider how difficult and complex your projects are. The more collaboration, feedback, and innovation are needed, the more difficult it will be to manage work at a distance, even in similar time zones and cultures. Nearshore outsourcing is easiest to use for certain levels of development, analytics, and help desk tasks.
The Cost of Nearshore IT Staff Outsourcing Services
Nearshore outsourcing rates may be higher than those charged by some offshore firms. However, after adding up all costs, nearshore firms can be much more efficient and cost-effective. Unless you are set up to manage resources in far away time zones, nearshore development will be more cost-effective.
Some nearshore firms’ excellent culture and work ethic allow them to deliver a greater number of units of work for the same price tag than a typical offshore firm. In other words, although the offshore firm advertises a lower price, they also may deliver a lower quality of work, which causes the effective cost of each unit of work to rise.
To benefit fully from these cost advantages, your business will need to adapt to working with a nearshore firm. As you improve your processes and get the work results you want, you will be able to trust the firm more fully, freeing up your own employees’ time. Higher utilization of the nearshore firm will mean realizing more of their potential for cost efficiency.
Nearshore IT Staff Outsourcing Services
What services can you receive through nearshore IT staff augmentation? Companies can look for:
- Web Application Development: Your team can work with one or more skilled, innovative software developers experienced with all aspects of web development, including design and deployment.
- Mobile Application Development: Connect your team to trained mobile app developers who can work on iOS, Android, and hybrid apps.
- IT Staff Augmentation: A nearshore firm can add temporary or specialized IT staff to your team as needed, pulling from a constant stream of eager hires in the target country.
- Blockchain Development:Add team members who can create applications within the blockchain using programs such as Javascript, C++, Ruby, and others.
- Internet of Things (IoT) Development: Work with developers who can create applications to make better use of web-connected devices.
- Software Integrations: Task hard-working developers with creating custom code that will make your top application systems work together, sharing data and functions.
You may also consider outsourcing repetitive and time-consuming tasks within digital marketing or accounting.
Nearshoring to a Costa Rica Team
Costa Rica is an excellent site for nearshore outsourcing because:
- The government is politically stable and democratic.
- It is partnered with the US military for its defense and reinvests some of its revenue in education and healthcare.
- Workers share the Central Time Zone with the US, allowing for easy meetings and collaboration.
- Employee culture is similar to that in North America.
- Skilled software developers demand lower salaries there because of a lower cost of living.
- Workers learn English (including an understandable accent) as part of their education growing up.
- The country sources more than 90% of its energy using renewable methods, which may be very important to your customers or your own values.
Outsource Affordably with Nearshore IT Staff Augmentation
Do you need to tap into a flexible, scalable IT workforce? Do you need to develop software or mobile apps with an outside team to give your own team more time to focus on their work? Do you need workers that are geographically and culturally close to yours? Then contact us and our Costa Rica nearshore IT team now.
