When it comes to outsourcing partners, The Middle East offers many benefits. For example, outsourcing is reliable, highly cost-effective and helps to quicken the time-to-market period.
To realize all these benefits, you also need to consider a number of factors before making a final decision. Factors that, if overlooked, can result in failures, time loss and additional costs.
While the process of choosing the right outsourcing partner is almost always the same, due to the exceptional rise in outsourcing, it’s important that you don’t rush into things. Following these best practices will help you to find the right outsourcing partner, but it will also help you in building a competitive advantage.
- Make Expertise an Important Criteria in The Hiring Process: After writing the scope of work document, you can start reaching out to prospective outsourcing partners. Once you shortlist three to five vendors, you need to evaluate them based on the following factors:
- Technical expertise.
- Skill Sets.
- Access to the latest technology.
- Experience in solving complex challenges.
- Passion for your project.
- Market Reputation is Equally Important: No business can afford to compromise on quality. But more importantly, no business can also afford to work with a partner who always misses deadlines or is not polite to work with. Therefore, it is equally important to check the market reputation of your outsourcing partner before signing an agreement.
- Communicate Clearly About Budget: Cost is one of the most under looked factors that can ruin not just your relationship with the vendor, but also your project. If you expect superior services from an outsourcing partner, then you must also know that superior services often cost higher than the average.
- Protect Your Data and Intellectual Property: In today’s digital era, privacy and data security are two of the biggest concerns, especially for businesses. When you outsource a project, you will often find yourself sharing sensitive business information with the outsourcing partner.
- Use Agile Methodologies in Your Development Process: The only way to survive in today’s market is by accommodating customers’ always-changing requirements. To accommodate the changing needs of your customers, you have to utilize Agile methodologies.
- Choose a Flexible Partner: Flexibility is also important when choosing an outsourcing partner for your project. Your selected outsourcing vendor must be flexible enough to serve any urgent requirement or problem when it arises. Flexibility, in fact, is especially critical when you and your partner are in different time zones. You must include flexibility in terms of urgency and support in the agreement before finalizing them.
When building a business solution, you always have two options: Hire an in-house team, or outsource the project. While many businesses find it difficult to outsource their requirements, outsourcing can boost business growth and efficiency.
