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Nearshoring

IT outsourcing

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Nearshoring

From which locations does SharpMinds operate?

SharpMinds has its headquarters in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Additionally, we have offices in Chernivtsi, Ukraine and Lisbon, Portugal. From these international locations, our developers work remotely for our clients. Curious about a specific location? You can see them here!

What are the benefits of nearshoring?

Access to knowledge and expertise: Nearshoring expands your talent pool, allowing you to find more qualified people and specific expertise. With this additional and better expertise, you can create a stronger foundation for your product and adapt more quickly to market and technological changes.

Cost savings: One of the biggest advantages of nearshoring is cost savings. Labor costs are often lower than in your home country, and overall costs are often reduced through HR support.

Flexibility: Nearshoring offers the flexibility to scale up or down quickly in response to fluctuations in demand, enabling you to better respond to changing market conditions.

Time zone overlap: You can communicate and collaborate in real time, allowing adjustments and problems to be resolved quickly. This also gives you greater control over your process.

Cultural similarities: Nearshoring partners often share similar cultural values. This reduces miscommunication and improves collaboration.

Risk diversification: By combining nearshoring with onshore and/or offshore teams, you can better spread your risks and be more resilient to unexpected problems or disruptions.

Business growth: When the first two benefits come together, your value proposition improves. You get a better product that is also cheaper, or at least no more expensive to produce.

Faster time-to-market: The combination of time zone overlap, access to expertise, and flexible scalability allows you to shorten development time and launch your product faster.

Improved customer satisfaction: With nearshoring, you can respond more quickly to customer needs and market demand, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Why nearshoring?

Companies have different motivations for choosing nearshoring for their software development. The main reasons are often:

Access to talent and expertise: In their own country or region, there might be a lack of specific knowledge or it might be difficult to find the right people. With nearshoring, you expand the pool of available talent. By adding more capacity to your development team, you can launch your product faster. Additionally, with more and better expertise, you can build a stronger foundation for your product and adapt more quickly to changes in the market and technologies.

Cost savings: Cost savings can be an important driver. Often, labor costs are lower than in the home country. However, it is important to emphasize maintaining quality standards.

Flexibility: A sudden increase in project volume, new customers, or an expansion of the product portfolio can all lead to a demand for software development. Companies struggling with higher workloads often try to expand their teams. Nearshoring offers the ability to easily scale up or down in response to fluctuations in demand, allowing you to quickly adapt to changing market conditions.Diversity: Nearshoring directly brings cultural diversity into your team. Research shows that greater diversity leads to creativity, innovation, and a better understanding of different customer groups. This, in turn, contributes to a better corporate image and more satisfied and loyal employees.

What is the difference between nearshoring and offshoring?

Nearshoring and offshoring are both strategies for outsourcing business activities or processes, but they differ in the geographical location of the service providers. Nearshoring refers to outsourcing services to a nearby country. This means that the country is often within the same region or an adjacent time zone. The advantage is that there is an overlap in working hours, and often similar cultural and business norms, which facilitates communication and collaboration.
In offshoring, you look to more distant countries, often on the other side of the world. Offshoring usually offers greater cost savings due to lower wages in distant countries. However, offshoring can be less flexible due to the physical and cultural distance and the time differences.

What is nearshoring?

Nearshoring, also known as nearshore outsourcing, is the outsourcing of business activities to relatively nearby countries. In the case of SharpMinds, this means building a remote development team at one of our locations in Portugal or Ukraine. By looking across the border, you expand your search area, gain access to more qualified developers, and increase your capacity.

Is nearshore outsourcing suitable for your organization?

To find out if nearshore outsourcing is the right solution for your organization, it’s good to review the following list:

You want to expand your current development capacity or set up a new development team
You are set up for remote work
You expect consistent quality
Communicating in English is not a problem for you
You want to be able to quickly interact with your developers
You want direct access to development capacity
You are looking for high-quality developers

Or read our blog post about the “8 Signs That Nearshoring is a Strategic Choice” here!

IT outsourcing

Why do companies choose IT outsourcing?

Companies choose IT outsourcing for various reasons:

Cost savings: By outsourcing IT services to external providers, companies can save on labor costs, infrastructure, and training. Offshore and nearshore outsourcing in particular offer significant cost advantages.
Access to specialized knowledge and technology: External providers often have specific expertise and advanced technologies that are difficult to develop in-house. This gives companies access to highly qualified professionals and the latest IT solutions.
Increased flexibility: IT outsourcing offers companies the flexibility to quickly scale up or down in response to changing needs.
Focus on core activities: By outsourcing IT tasks, companies can better focus on their core activities and strategic goals. This increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization.
Improved quality and performance: External providers are often specialized in specific areas of IT and can deliver higher quality and better performance.
Risk management: IT outsourcing can help spread and reduce risks. External providers often have extensive experience and protocols for handling IT challenges.
Faster time-to-market: By leveraging the expertise and resources of external providers, companies can bring their products and services to market faster.

By utilizing these advantages, companies can improve their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and better position themselves in a competitive market.

What is IT outsourcing?

IT outsourcing is the process where a company outsources its IT services and tasks to an external service provider. This can range from IT infrastructure management, software development, technical support, to cybersecurity and more. Companies choose IT outsourcing for various reasons, including cost savings, access to specialized knowledge and technology, increased flexibility, and the ability to focus on their core activities.

There are three main forms of IT outsourcing:

Onshore outsourcing: This involves outsourcing IT services to a service provider within the same country.
Nearshore outsourcing: This involves outsourcing IT services to a service provider in a nearby country.
Offshore outsourcing: This involves outsourcing IT services to a service provider in a distant country, often on the other side of the world.

How much time difference is there in nearshore outsourcing?

With nearshore outsourcing, the time differences are generally small, because the work is outsourced to relatively close locations. At Sharpminds, the nearshore offices are located within a 1-hour time zone difference. This means that your remote developers might be 1 hour earlier or later. This way there is plenty of time for meetings and communication opportunities.

Where does my remote developer work when I use nearshore outsourcing through SharpMinds?

From one of our offices in Portugal and Ukraine. In addition, the developer also has the option to work from home.

Hire a remote developer

What kind of developers can I hire through SharpMinds?

We can provide a wide range of developers. Whether it concerns juniors, mediors, senior or front-end, back-end and full stack. We always deliver a tailor-made solution. As soon as it is clear which profile you are looking for, we will look for suitable candidates. In addition to developers, we also supply testers, Cloud and DevOps Engineers and UX/UI designers. This way we can create a complete team.

How does a developer work?

At SharpMinds we choose to work with dedicated developers. This means that developers really become part of your development team. Even though a developer works at a different location, they follow your work processes, tooling and requirements. Some work processes may have to be adapted to remote working, but as a rule the only difference is that meetings will take place online instead of physically.

How much does a developer cost?

The cost of a developer can vary widely depending on several factors such as location, experience level, type of developer (e.g. front-end, back-end, full-stack), and the technologies used. Once it is clear what kind of developer you are looking for, we can make a market scan and provide more insight into the expected wage costs of a developer. You can contact us for this.

I normally work with Dutch freelancers, what are the benefits of remote workers?

Freelancers often have rapidly changing assignments, or multiple assignments at the same time. Before they really understand your product, the assignment often ends. However, our remote developers have only one priority: your project. They become permanent remote colleagues and thus part of the team. They build up a lot of knowledge about your product over time and can therefore contribute the most. In addition, remote developers are often a lot cheaper than freelancers in the Netherlands.

How fast can you deliver a developer?

Need Developer? Depending on the profile, it takes us an average of 6 to 8 weeks to find suitable candidates for a vacancy. As soon as we have found it, we introduce the developer to you and we start building/expanding your remote development team.

How do you ensure the quality of a developer?

For us, guaranteeing quality already starts in the application process. Before we introduce a developer to you, we have already done an initial screening of the soft skills and we have had a technical interview to assess the hard skills of the candidate. After all, the developers we are looking for have the same skills as your team here in the Netherlands and can perform at the same level. In the longer term, we guarantee quality by conducting an evaluation every six months with the developer, the development team and the customer.

Way of working

Does SharpMinds offer no cure no pay?

Certainly! You only pay once a candidate actually starts work

How does SharpMinds screen remote developers during the recruitment process?

We believe that only with the right match can a long-term collaboration arise. That is why screening is one of our most important tasks. What exactly this process will look like is determined in advance together with the customer. In broad terms we always see the same steps:

1: The customer’s needs and objectives are identified and a profile is outlined.

2: Recruiters look for suitable candidates.

3: Candidates are screened for soft skills in an interview and hard skills through an assessment. These can be adjusted to customer demand if necessary.)

4: Suitable candidates are introduced to the customer, followed by an interview between the customer and candidate.

5: The customer decides whether or not they want to hire someone.

Am I tied to a contract? Or can I cancel early?

There is always a two-month trial period for every developer. During this period the contract can be canceled daily. After the trial period it is possible to cancel the contract. The notice periods vary from one month to three months per location.

Do evaluations take place and how is this done?

An evaluation takes place every six months. Within this evaluation there is the possibility for the customer to assess the developer, the developer assesses himself or herself on his or her performance and there is an evaluation within the team.

What is the working language?

English. To guarantee the quality, our remote software developers receive weekly lessons in language and communication.

Who directs the developer?

You! We have learned from our experience that direct contact with the developers works best. After all, you have the most in-house knowledge about your product and market. By switching immediately, the chance of noise and therefore miscommunication is minimized. You determine the working method yourself; for example with sprint sessions and monthly deadlines. You can also determine the tools with which you work. Because the remote developer is part of your own team, these are usually just the methods and tools that are already being used.

Other

Doesn’t hiring a developer through SharpMinds create a lot of extra paperwork?

No, after all, SharpMinds provides full HR support. Very handy!

I have less good experiences with foreign parties; why should I trust SharpMinds?

Since we work nearshore, we can respond immediately if something is wrong. You can quickly and easily switch between your project manager and developer(s). In addition, we notice that many issues with remote development projects start with language barriers and miscommunications. That’s why our developers have weekly English lessons.

In addition, we have been our own ‘guinea pig’, so to speak: we work with our remote developers ourselves and through our own experience we know where the pitfalls lie and what we should pay attention to. We have translated this into our best practices and share these with our customers.