Outsourcing will drive the next IT revolution

Amid post-pan­dem­ic woes and the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, ener­gy price spikes and the tech tal­ent short­age, many indus­tries are liv­ing in volatile times. Yet one thing’s for sure, busi­ness­es still need a pipeline of skills, capa­bil­i­ties and the right peo­ple to deal with change. Scal­ing tech­nol­o­gy-led ini­tia­tives is also seen as an answer, vital to future-proof­ing firms, yet deliv­er­ing on all these aspects is now a real chal­lenge.

The fall­out of Covid-19 means that demand for hybrid and remote work­ing is still sky-high. Wages and infla­tion have been soar­ing, while work­ers are dif­fi­cult to hire and retain. This is why man­agers have become adept at over­see­ing dis­trib­uted work­forces. This has cre­at­ed a demand and will­ing­ness for out­sourc­ing, as CTOs con­tin­ue to roll out ambi­tious dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes.

In a recent sur­vey of 300 IT lead­ers, 64% of com­pa­nies said they had adopt­ed a new out­sourc­ing strat­e­gy due to the glob­al pan­dem­ic. 54% are now out­sourc­ing to gain access to tal­ent and save on costs, while 41% polled are out­sourc­ing to bring in new knowl­edge, tools and expe­ri­ence. As the econ­o­my enters a tur­bu­lent peri­od, deploy­ing tech con­sul­tants can be a use­ful tool when it comes to deliv­er­ing busi­ness resilience and agili­ty.

“CTOs still need to deliv­er on mul­ti-year, long-term projects despite all the cur­rent issues. If their busi­ness­es are to grow tomor­row, they also need to be able to try out and scale new soft­ware solu­tions or dig­i­tal­ly trans­form, with­out the risk of deploy­ing huge tech teams in house today,” explains Vlad Nanu, co-CEO of Amdaris, which is one of the fastest-grow­ing UK soft­ware devel­op­ment com­pa­nies and a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion spe­cial­ist.

“How­ev­er, just like at the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, there is a lev­el of height­ened uncer­tain­ty right now, but the direc­tion of trav­el is still the same. All indus­tries, whether that’s health­care, the legal pro­fes­sion or pub­lish­ing, are in the process of trans­form­ing dig­i­tal­ly. It is why enlight­ened play­ers are look­ing for more flex­i­bil­i­ty, and cost-effec­tive­ness when it comes to their tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions.”

Scal­ing from two to 25 to 100 devel­op­ers and back again on demand is not pos­si­ble with in-house tech teams in the cur­rent tal­ent crunch. But if dig­i­tal projects become suc­cess­ful then this kind of scal­a­bil­i­ty is need­ed quick­ly if busi­ness­es are to be com­pet­i­tive. This involves locat­ing hard-to-find tal­ent at light­ning speed. This demand may also be project-based and need to flex. Out­sourc­ing can meet this need, yet find­ing the right part­ner who under­stands a business’s pri­or­i­ties is cru­cial.

“In the past, off­shoring soft­ware devel­op­ment, say to Asia, has giv­en busi­ness­es an advan­tage. But now dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and IT projects are more com­plex, real-time solu­tions are need­ed that are tai­lored to local mar­kets so nearshoring makes more sense,” states Andy Rogers, co-CEO of Amdaris, which employs over 700 devel­op­ers in the UK, Europe and the Mid­dle East, work­ing with the likes of Knight Frank, Pear­son and music­Mag­pie.

Increas­ing­ly, busi­ness­es also want to part­ner with a soft­ware devel­op­er that they can learn from, who can deliv­er val­ue-added ser­vices, long-term solu­tions and deploy diverse tal­ent pools which think dif­fer­ent­ly about prob­lem-solv­ing.

There is an increas­ing real­i­sa­tion that inno­va­tion in new­er tech­nolo­gies, whether it involves 5G, AI or blockchain, also requires inno­v­a­tive and dis­rup­tive thinkers. Gone are the days of sim­ply imple­ment­ing pre­scribed and rigid sys­tems set out by man­age­ment con­sul­tants. Tri­al and error, agile ways of work­ing, con­tin­u­al A/B test­ing, co-cre­ation and refine­ment of a min­i­mal viable prod­uct are vital.

“That’s why we’re work­ing with hun­dreds of devel­op­ers. We’ve teamed up with local uni­ver­si­ties and schools in our deliv­ery cen­tres, we also run pro­grammes where we have female ambas­sadors and pro­mote women and indi­vid­u­als from diverse back­grounds in tech­nol­o­gy. We set our own diver­si­ty goals for our large out­sourc­ing teams. This is not eas­i­ly pos­si­ble with small­er in-house tech teams,” details Rogers from Amdaris, which was recog­nised as ‘busi­ness of the year,’ in the UK’s South West recent­ly.

In the same poll of IT lead­ers, 74% said they believe that out­sourc­ing part­ners can now help improve or adopt bet­ter soft­ware devel­op­ment prac­tices, for exam­ple agile deliv­ery, qual­i­ty audit­ing and tech­ni­cal excel­lence. Out­sourc­ing part­ners can also offer val­ue-added ser­vices beyond mere cod­ing, whether that’s prod­uct design or busi­ness analy­sis, stake­hold­er man­age­ment or project plan­ning.

“Right now, there is a lot of inter­est in draw­ing expe­ri­ences, know-how and inno­va­tion from one indus­try and embed­ding it into anoth­er. Whether it is legal ser­vices and insur­ance learn­ing from ecom­merce or edu­ca­tion adopt­ing prac­tices from ser­vice sec­tors. Today, out­sourcers, as opposed to in-house tech teams, are in the best posi­tion to cross-fer­tilise with their ideas, blue-sky think­ing and ideation to dis­rupt indus­try norms. They do this using knowl­edge gained in oth­er sec­tors and do so in a cost-effec­tive way,” points out Nanu.

Amdaris has aver­aged 40% a year in growth in rev­enue and head­count, with teams in the UK, Roma­nia, Moldo­va, Ukraine, Bul­gar­ia and Dubai.

The sit­u­a­tion CTOs will have to deal with going for­wards is only going to become more dif­fi­cult. Tal­ent attri­tion and loss of insti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry are sig­nif­i­cant for those with dig­i­tal skills. The same poll found that 36% of tech and soft­ware devel­op­ers are look­ing for new oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the next year. More than a third of this work­force could be on the move. Almost half say their roles are busier since the pan­dem­ic – burnout and churn are inevitable.

“It’s why out­sourc­ing is now a no-brain­er. It’s about the three Rs: Reli­able exper­tise that’s on tap. It’s about devel­op­ing resilient organ­i­sa­tions, who need to be agile and adapt to new mar­ket con­di­tions with veloc­i­ty. Then there’s resource­ful­ness. Part­ner­ing with the right out­sourcer means you have access to a whole host of tal­ent that can dri­ve dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion,” says Rogers.

“Times have changed,” he adds.

Source the best out­sourcers at amdaris.com

Pro­mot­ed by Amdaris