Offshore – Should You DIY?
If you’re thinking of building an offshore team for your business, here are a few things to bear in mind.
1. Location, location, location
As you select the geographical location for your offshore team, consider how far it is from Israel and how easy it is to get there. Are there frequent flights? Is the journey likely to cost you a whole work day? It’s also a good idea to check not only what the country has to offer, but also the specific town where you would be based. It may be tempting to opt for a small town where there’s little competition for your business, but does it have a broad, quality talent pool of engineering graduates in the way that a city with a large university might?
2. Talk the talk
You’ll want to communicate effectively with your offshore team, so it’s important that you are fluent in a common business language. Offshore programmers tend to have a relatively high level of both written and spoken English. As most of the development teams are agile, it is important for you to verify that your offshore team individuals are all capable in English, not just the team leaders. It is also very beneficial to have an Israeli on site that can translate both language and cultural differences.
3. Attracting talents as the new kid on the block
You may well be the best startup in Israel, but are people overseas aware of your brand and all you have to offer? If you want to attract quality candidates to your offshore team you need to earn your credentials locally. To get ahead of the gfame, start out by recruiting the highest quality of best employees first, even if you have to pay them above the going market rate, and haveso that they can them recommend you to their local colleagues; offer forge goodstrong connections with higher margins to local recruitments agencies so that they will bare you in mind when they come across an excellent candidatein order to receive the best CVs ahead of your competition ; host professional meetups to expose locals to your new technologies; and use online channels to reach local talent pools.
4. Getting up and running
Setting up a new office comes with various logistical challenges that take time to get right and can distract you from your core business. There’s finding premises in the exact location that will help you to attract quality talent – near transport and other facilities; understanding local laws and regulations dealing with legal issues, from rental contracts to supplier agreements to employment contracts; working out the most beneficial tax structure for your business; hiring support staff, from secretaries to IT; becoming familiar with and understanding cultural issues, such as the dates of public holidays that are different to those in Israel.
5. IT, security and support
Your business relies heavily on its IT systems, in particular when having to maintain a reliable connection between your offshore and local teams. Make sure you hire an experienced IT manager and define a well-established IT infrastructure that gives you a high level of connectivity (traffic), reliability (for example, with two separate data networks and backup) and security (security standards certifications).
6. HYBRID SOLUTION – Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT)
All of these issues are manageable, but getting it right is time consuming, expensive and frankly, risky. If you’re daunted at the prospect, you could choose to work with an offshore expert such as Matrix. We can establish your offshore team (Build) handling all the above issues (Operate) and when you have established a large enough team to justify building your own facility, we will Transfer your team to you. All the business aspects of the BOT (when, how, who) are defined within a tailored agreement, meaning no surprises and much lower risk for you.
For further information or advice, please contact us.
