Communication barriers in IT outsourcing
There is a significant increase in IT offshore outsourcing over the past decades. More and more businesses are considering software outsourcing leading to the rise of some key issues, one of which is the communication barriers in the IT outsourcing industry.
Offshore software outsourcing can bring multiple benefits including:
- Diversity in skill sets, efficient operation, cost-saving (five employees in the Philippines for the price of one onshore), more values are added to their onshore work, employee retainment, and business growth.
- Lower costs and competitive pressure: because of moving some specific jobs offshore, businesses can now save money between one-half to one-third across a variety of tasks.
- Tickets to a myriad of skilled employees. Resources that cannot be found onshore are now available offshore, niche skills, specialist apprehension.
However, there are risks and challenges lying under those benefits.
People who are looking for diversity in their work are assigned to do repetitive and small tasks that may eventually be discouraged and sooner or later, leave. Especially with big communication gaps between software outsourcing vendors and their clients.
When it comes to outsourcing offshore, language is the first challenge that both parties have to deal with. Even though it’s solely a language, it retains an important role in comprehending the project requirements and the deliverable(s) clarity.
Poor communication channels are also the problem. Using various communication tools namely Jira or Asana to engage with the team are best practices. Different channels can be chosen, say face-to-face, mobile communication, electronic methods to assure the effective communication among all parties when outsourcing offshore developers.
Although coding is an international language in terms of communication within the IT industry, it potentially has some quality challenges. The software outsourcing team should be coherent to the standards of their business partner. Two qualities that every IT outsourced vendor should look at when completing their project: clarity and maintainability.
These two points will lead to future long-term success and bug-free execution. Both partners should communicate their expectations, quality benchmarks. Regular briefings with the team are also perks. Before agreeing on a firm, ensure the consistency of code quality, ask if the software vendor measures their products with code review, functional testing, and unit testing. They should develop a robust application before releasing it to you.
Some small warning signs that any businesses should look when working with another partner:
- They take forever to reply
- They refuse to talk and prefer doing everything through email
- No clear communication channels
- No standardized formats for communication
- They do not proactively communicate with the client
- Language barriers
