How to grow your business by outsourcing your software development to Romania
By TRISOFT team
Outsourcing refers to the collaboration with external providers, beneficial to both parties and intended to achieve specific purposes, such as software development, billing, procurement, human resources and many others.
Outsourcing can involve either nearshore or offshore services, with the difference that nearshore goes for countries that are relatively close to Europe and the United States as well (such as Romania), and offshore for more distant ones (India for instance).
Many IT companies have turned their businesses into empires by outsourcing — both offshore and nearshore — their software development, this way reducing costs, gaining a better control and being able to concentrate better on marketing and sales.
Why is it a good idea to outsource?
First of all, a company that chooses to outsource will save up to 60% on this only. This gives the opportunity to offer products and services to their clients at a much lower rate, while at the same time keeping the same high quality.
Secondly, the organization will be able to focus more on its core activities and have the availability to strive to improve their business on a much higher level.
Thirdly, the costs with in-house hardware, equipment, trainings or team buildings will drop drastically as well.
What are the challenges?
As you may imagine, outsourcing has its shortcomings as well. Distance may be a challenge, since you won’t have your employees in one place. You might find it hard to manage teams that are abroad or find uneasy the lack of face to face meetings, brainstorming or other office activities that prove fruitful for the development of a new product, let’s say. However, since remote working — outsourcing’s little sister — has been on the rise in the past few years, companies have become more accustomed to new processes and tools that ensure an efficient communication and great problem solving strategies from afar.
Another challenge is the time zone difference, especially for American companies, which are more and more attracted to Romanian IT workforce. However, Romanian and American partners have found a way to work things out; since there are a few hours that correspond to the morning in the US and afternoon in Romania, business men make the most of these, they hold meetings, conference calls, exchange emails and chat, planning the work for the next day. So basically every morning brings something new for each party.
The language barrier may as well be a deal-breaker. It’s one of the reasons big multinational corporations choose Romania as main software development provider. Romanian professionals are known for their excellent linguistic skills. The Eastern European Translators Association classed Romanians as the best speakers of foreign languages in Europe (60% of the Romanians speak a foreign language, 25% of them speak 2 foreign languages and 4% of them speak more than 2 foreign languages, according to a study by this organization). Also, Romanian is a Romance based language, unlike Indian and Chinese, Cantonese or Mandarin.
So Why Romania?
As pointed out above, Romania seems to be holding the key to all the apparent difficulties of the outsourcing business highlighted above.
According to international outsourcing and nearshore / offshore experts, Romania is at the top of the list for any foreign company looking for providers of software and software related services. Hence, for Western European companies, Romania provides a golden nearshore alternative to Indian offshore offerings, whereas for companies in the US, it offers an all-day, culturally compatible, working model.
Creative, highly skilled workforce
Romania is particularly attractive for European companies (such as Germany, France, UK, Italy and so on) and for US enterprises as well, who wish to outsource custom software development. Companies choose Romania as nearshoring / offshoring destination mainly due to its offer of highly skilled programmers, providing great expertise with technology platforms and known for being creative and dedicated.
Lower costs
In the past few years, Romania has rapidly become a hip location for companies seeking competent professionals and friendly, cost-effective business environment. Offshore Romania 2003, a report by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) identifies Romania as the ideal outsourcing alternative to India, mainly due to the lower costs, but also thanks to the big number of IT specialists.
But outsourcing is not always about cost reduction. David Feller, founder and CEO of Yummly, a free smartphone application and website providing personalized recipe recommendations and a company that outsources its software development to Romania adds: Our motivation in looking for an outside group was to find the best talent, not to reduce costs. So in the end it’s really about finding the perfect recipe between costs and quality.
Ever expanding talent pool
Romania has over 8,000 computer science graduates per year, ranking 13th globally when it comes to IT graduates. Compared to the United States, Romania has twice as many programmers per thousand of inhabitants and is home to more than 2,000 software development companies.
Romania has the best human resources in the world for IT, said Florin Vrejoiu, vice president of Aries, the Romanian Association for Electronic and Software Industry. Among the socialist countries, Romania was the first to develop computers and networking, he added.
One of the well known international companies working with Romania is Microsoft, whose RAV AntiVirus software was developed by GeCAD Group, a coalition of five Romanian software and IT-services firms.
Great language skills
One of the reasons Romania has earned the reputation of a major IT hub in Eastern Europe is its multilingual workforce. Most Romanian IT specialists speak English (good English), and many also speak French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages.
With Romanian collaborators it’s safe to say you won’t ever be in a Skype call and want to pop your eyes out because you can’t make out anything they are saying and even more important, a meeting with your sponsors won’t end up in confusion due to the poor English at the end of the line.
Excellent Internet capabilities
According to specialized studies, Romania has the third highest Internet speed in the world at 200 megabits per second. Others position it fifth in top 10. Whichever the rank, it’s crystal clear that due to its excellent Internet capabilities, Romania has seen an increased demand for IT outsourcing services in recent years.
According to the National Bank of Romania, in 2013 the country’s computer and information services exports increased with 27% compared to 2012 and 2014 brought an even greater income for companies in Bucharest, Arges, Timis, Arad and Constanta.
Romania — a hotspot for global outsourcing
Since the key drivers for successful outsourcing are high quality at lower costs, impressive language skills and geographical and cultural affinities, Romania stands out as a hotspot for global outsourcing.
Important names such as Microsoft, Siemens, IBM and Amazon have opened software development offices here, but also manufacturing facilities, research and development centers, thus being the leading foreign employer with over 2,000 employees. Oracle has set up its European development and call centers in Bucharest, from where it provides assistance in 13 European languages.
And what’s more, Romanians are not only about great IT and language skills, but also about good communication and fair relationship with their employer. Rent a Coder Founder and CEO Ian Ippolito declared:
“Some buyers have told me that they prefer Romanian coders because their experience was that Romanians were harder working, more reliable with deadlines, and didn’t pester them with requests for payment before the job was completed.”
TRISOFT — the ideal destination for nearshore / offshore software development
TRISOFT provides complete software solutions compliant with the Western quality standards at Romanian market rates. As a reliable partner for software development and software quality assurance we have more than 8 years of experience in software outsourcing for clients all over the world — Europe (London, Spain, France, Denmark, Germany), Iceland, US and Canada, Australia and Thailand.
Our business model and collaboration approach is to build professional teams, which our clients can rely upon with confidence for long-term projects. TRISOFT is fully integrated in and calibrated to our clients’ desires and processes.
