Now it’s the turn of the smaller ISV to reap the benefits of offshore outsourcing. Tapping cheaper labour overseas isn't just for large companies anymore as small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly taking up outsourcing and offshoring. If you are looking for a highly flexible workforce that is readily trained in the current broad spectrum of multi discipline technologies, then outsourcing can provide a valuable resource.

A good starting point to finding the right offshore outsourcing partner is to talk to your peer groups, your customers and other technology partners to get a feel for their experience both good and bad. A potential outsourcing partner needs to be able to demonstrate real knowledge and experience. It is therefore, absolutely crucial that you conduct a thorough due diligence. Interrogate their level of experience in the market place and ask if any of their staff have been onshore before and to site previous projects and customers. Examine their human resource department to look at their staff turnover and ascertain what their cultural appreciation is like, particularly if they should need to come onshore to a customer site in the latter stages of a project.

As an ISV, you may well be considering two distinct types of engagement:

• Development of your product

• Development work on a customer project.

Time, effort, quality and resulting costs are ‘unknowns’ to start with and need to be seriously evaluated.

Ideally, start with a low value, low input project to test the company’s ability and the processes. Before embarking on a project it is essential that you set out clear areas of responsibility, understand where their services start and end. Find out if they are a truly customer focused organisation and are committed to quality. Ideally both the ISV and the outsourcing partner should be jointly responsible for the risk so agree up front on how you both want to share the value of the project.

I found that two of the main issues were quality and consistency across all disciplines in order to maintain the required standard of work. It is important to have well defined and easy to follow processes that are very clearly documented. You also need to step up to the management challenges and be prepared to closely supervise a project’s progress. Don’t sit back and expect your outsourcing partner to guess what is needed.

When you generate an outsourced team, try to keep them on the project as continuity for your customer is paramount. Visit the offshore teams regularly to make them feel part of your organisation. When you tread carefully there is no reason why you can’t achieve great value from offshore outsourcing and gain the benefits that have traditionally been the domain of the big boys.