If you’ve ever heard of how good, fast, and cheap web development abroad is, you must be craving to give it a go as soon as possible. You’re likely to look for a professional overseas vendor that will accomplish your company’s web development tasks. This way you may receive the needed results without the hustle and bustle of management. Through this lens, offshore web development seems like a go-to solution for your business needs.
But is it really the case?
As a matter of fact, this development option entails certain issues that will be difficult to address in the future. I’ve written this guide to help you see the whole picture of custom web coding abroad, as well as to find out about a better alternative to overseas web development.
3 Main Benefits of Offshoring Web Development
Offshore web development services mean building and maintaining websites through overseas vendors. Whenever you need to develop a site or an application for your company, you may do it through two contracting models: outsourcing or outstaffing.
If you outsource software or web development, you appoint this task to an outside provider who is responsible for the performance and project results. Outstaffing presupposes hiring an “intermediary” agency to staff you with the necessary skills that you will manage yourself.
These staffing options are used by both tech and non-tech companies that need to build their site. However, startups that develop innovative IT solutions prefer alternative staff-providing models because offshore custom web development just doesn’t work for them. Unfortunately, some tech product companies use the services of web development abroad to obtain the benefits that I have laid out below:
1. Access to international expertise
You get the chance to work with experienced IT talents across the globe, which is more than appealing. The flip side of it is that you’re not the only client of your offshore web developers and that often results in a lack of loyalty to your product.
2. Short-term cost savings
You may save some money on rent, procurements, and employees’ salaries with offshore website development. Yet this solution will translate into long-term increased expenses such as buy-out fees if you decide to hire your outstaffed workers full-time.
3. Scalability opportunities
You can either scale up or down your offshoring web development team at any stage of the project. However, if your temporary engineers work on your product for a long time, chances are your business will not be able to function without them.
As you can see, each benefit of offshoring web development goes hand in hand with risk. If you don’t want to sign up for these limitations, I’d be glad to share with you the best alternative to this business-expanding technique.
What is the Alcor ODC Solution and Why Is It Better?
ODC stands for offshore development center, where the overseas development team works on your business tasks. Alcor, the leading business process outsourcing services provider in Ukraine, helps companies to set up such a center in as little as 1 month, equips it with a team of 5+ developers from the start, and provides legal & compliance, procurements, and many other services.
While any offshore web development company restricts you in project quality, on-time results delivery, communication with the team, and other things, an ODC via Alcor will provide you with skilled developers who will adopt your corporate culture and values. Manage the development, while we take care of everything else!
For instance, one of the successful examples of offshoring is People.ai, an IT software company from the United States that develops a B2B AI-powered platform, reached out to Alcor with the need to create their offshore development center in Ukraine. The result? 4 weeks later, we launched their new office with a team that grew to more than 25 developers in the following months, and it was just the beginning.
Who benefits the most from cooperation with Alcor and how?
Being a professional BPO and IT contracting company, Alcor helps different tech product businesses: from startups, that have received enough investments to expand, to larger enterprises. To boost your sales and help you generate more income from the ODC in Ukraine, we provide the benefits such as:
Fast and high-quality recruitment
5+ seasoned developers in 1 month? Easy. What about 20+ professional engineers in 3 months? No problem. Alcor can do this and even more.
Our IT researchers and recruiters have insider knowledge of the Ukrainian IT market and a database of more than 80,000 tech specialists. This is how we will find the best developers of all levels and skills – from a middle JavaScript engineer to a senior Scala programmer for you.
Unlike offshore web development firms, we vouch for the quality of our hires. Alcor provides a 3-month employee replacement guarantee: we will substitute a candidate in 12 weeks if you’re not satisfied with them.
Increase of internal expertise
As opposed to offshore web application development, you will invest the time and costs in the learning and development of your team rather than someone else’s. With Alcor, you will receive skilled engineers that will allocate all their resources to create your site or app.
Moreover, you will be able to retain ownership of all IP rights because your ODC programmers will become employees of your company, just like your in-house programmers. No need to stress out over the intellectual property, as it will belong to you from the beginning!
Operational support
With Alcor, you don’t need to worry about legal support, leasing, equipment, payroll, and accounting because we perform all these back-office functions. This way you’ll receive an opportunity to fully dedicate yourself to the main tasks.
Another benefit of delegated operational management is that you get to directly manage your team to avoid any confusion or misconception of your business needs. No offshore web app development company can offer you anything like this since they either work on projects of several clients at once or communicate through intermediaries.
Alcor ODC Solution vs. Offshore Web Development Services
I believe you have already learned that an ODC and offshoring web development are drastically different. Yet it’s essential to recap everything you know about these development options to make the right choice, right?
A pay-per-service option
Compared to overseas web development vendors, Alcor allows you to choose the services you need and pay for what you use. This way you can save on costs in the long run and manage your expenses more efficiently.
For example, Grammarly, an IT product company that develops a virtual writing assistant for over 30 million people in the world, enjoyed our legal & compliance services. Alcor provided residence permits for Grammarly’s team, legally employed over 5 of their engineers, and helped the company to arrange business trips to the United States.
Transparent pricing
To let you fully control your ODC cash flow and know where your finances are used, Alcor’s professional payroll & accounting team prepares detailed invoices for every client each month. By the way, the transparency provided by Alcor helped the CMS company Sitecore to resolve the problem of poor accounting, optimize their payroll operations, and save considerable funds.
Even though an offshore web development agency allows its clients to make short-term cost savings, it doesn’t guarantee clear pricing. Such a provider can easily allocate your funds for unnecessary procurements or HR management that you never needed.
Loyalty
In contrast with web development teams abroad, there will be no dedication issues in your ODC team. The offshored developers provided by Alcor will not just design a responsive site that will be easy to use for your clients but become your allies in the business development process. Given that these engineers become a part of your company, they will get a sense of ownership over your product.
Employer branding
Employer branding enables you to get the most sought-after tech specialists on board. You can achieve this by offering engineers an employee value proposition that includes a competitive compensation package. To make it a reality, web developer recruitment agency Alcor will help you develop your company’s branding strategy, which will represent you as a well-established company on the market.
As a part of this strategy, we create your branded office to represent your company in all details: from slogans to corporate colors. If you’re against the idea of office work due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we have a solution. Instead of setting up a physical place for your team, Alcor can settle remote workplaces and infrastructure for them.
Needless to say, you won’t be able to promote your brand with offshore web development since both outsourcers and outstaffers work exclusively under their brands.
Final Thoughts
If you opt for offshoring web design and development, your two main contracting options are outsourcing and outstaffing. They give you access to international expertise but don’t guarantee dedication to your product; you save on their services at first but pay a hefty price in service commission and buy-out fees later; your business can be scaled up or down at any stage but you’re likely to lose your internal expertise in the future. Are you in?
If your answer is “no”, you can receive a long-term commitment, real cost savings, increased internal expertise, and other benefits such as fast and efficient recruitment, transparency in pricing, operational management, and your branding with the offshore development center via Alcor. Besides this, we offer a range of back-office services like legal & compliance, payroll & accounting, real estate, and others to create a seamless offshoring experience for you.