See our Outsourcing Provider Directory here

Offshoring ADM Tips: How Business Engine Lowered Development Failures from 80 to 5 Percent

Business Engine, a company that helps Fortune 2000 companies justify and manage IT investments, decided to produce a collaborative project management application. Having watched Indian application, development, and maintenance (ADM) firms successfully handle the Y2K coding challenges, the company chose to outsource the ADM work to a leading software development firm there. The Indian supplier’s delivered code failed to meet Business Engine’s expectations 80 percent of the time, according to Kazim Isfahani, Business Engine’s Director or Marketing.

The company leadership had a meeting to determine which fork in the road to take: should they abandon the effort and bring the work back to the States or figure out how to make offshore work. They chose the later since they wanted to capture the 30 percent cost benefit.

Isfahani says offshoring only works if companies make it “part of their core beliefs.” He says Business Engine chose to stay the course and fix the problem because it believed offshoring was the best option. “We realized we had to learn from our failure. An 80 percent error rate could have easily killed the project. But we felt it was important to make the necessary changes to make it work.”

Sending Someone to India Fixed the Problem

Isfahani says the leadership team discovered miscommunication was the No. 1 problem. “We had to do a much better job of improving the processes including detailing the specs and performing reviews with much higher frequency than before to ensure that the Indian team understand exactly what we wanted,” he says.

Business Engine then assigned one of its employees the job of overseeing the project–in India. “We realized we had to have someone there to represent our interests, understand our perspective, and manage what’s going on on a daily basis,” says Isfahani. The employee has a three year tour of duty.

Business Engine’s Suggestions for Offshore Success

1. Move one of your employees to the offshore supplier’s site.

2. Select a project manager with superior management skills.

3. Make offshore a core company belief.

4. Be willing to learn from failures and change course to correct the errors.

Having a supplier who agreed to this solution was key to the initiative. “You have to find a supplier who understands your process and your business. If not, going offshore could hurt you despite the cost savings,” the Business Engine executive says.

Moving an employee to India produced remarkable results. Three years later the error rate is a respectable, acceptable five percent. “Our employee introduced a level of rigor and visibility at the supplier’s that wasn’t there before. It made a big difference that our guy could walk down the hall and say to the developers, ‘We have a problem,'” says the Business Engine executive.

Isfahani says this project made him realize there are a lot of similarities between running projects in the office and offshore. “People shouldn’t be scared of going offshore if they have a good project manager who has an enhanced skill set and solid collaborative project management systems and processes,” he observes. “The key to realizing the potential business gains of any IT project lies in effectively governing the projects wherever they are,” he says.

Get 3 Free Quotes Logo

  • Save 70%
  • Unrivaled expertise
  • Verified leading firms
  • Transparent, safe, secure

Get Started

Small Teams Call Logo

Start your Outsourcing Journey in 15 seconds.

Get Started

Enterprise & Large
Teams Call
Logo

Explore with an Enterprise Expert

  • Independent
  • Trusted
  • Transparent
Outsourcing

Dive into “Outsourcing”

A Guide to … Selecting the Correct Business Unit … Negotiating the Contract … Maintaining Control of the Process

Order now

Outsourcing Articles

Start your
outsourcing
journey here

"*" indicates required fields

Start your outsourcing journey.

Book a call with an outsourcing expert now

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

This guide will walk you through some areas most important when outsourcing, such as
  • Identifying Your Outsourcing Needs Intelligently
  • Research & Selection
  • The Bidding Process
  • Contracts & Agreements
  • Implementation & Onboarding
  • Ongoing Management
  • Evaluating Success
  • Additional Resources

Book a call with an outsourcing expert now

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

Become an OC Partner
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

Media Inquiries for OC
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

Subscribe to our Newsletter
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

Submit Press Release
Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, Max. file size: 8 MB.
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

Submit an Article
Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, Max. file size: 8 MB.
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"*" indicates required fields

Request Ben Trowbridge as a Keynote Speaker
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Go to standard quote

Exclusive Enterprise Assistance

  • Independent
  • Trusted
  • Transparent

Offshore staffing solutions for enterprise. Independent expertise, advice & implementation

  • 200+ Firms, Global Reach
  • Offshore, Nearshore, Onshore, Rightshore
  • Managed Request for Proposal (RFP)
  • Assisted Procurement Processes
  • Vendor Management
  • Unique Build Operate Transfer model
  • Captive & Shared Services
  • Champion-Challenger
  • Multi-site, multi-vendor, multi-source
  • Managed Solutions

For Enterprise and large teams only

  • Book 20-minute consult, obligation free

You will get:

  • Needs Analysis & Report
  • Salary Guidance & Indicative Pricing
  • Process Map

Only takes 1 minute to complete the form

Get Started

Not an enterprise?

Go to standard quote