We keep talking about bringing back manufacturing jobs but what about the technical roles that have been outsourced? Offshoring business can seem like an attractive strategy in terms of ROI and cost-savings, but is it worth it? In the face of macro headwinds, what once was the standard solution to augmenting teams may now be a wrench in the system. Maybe onshoring tech teams is the answer.Here’s what’s changed…

Security and Compliance  

Before we dive into security - let’s go over some quick definitions:

• Offshoring is the process of moving your operations (or a portion of them) outside of your country.
• Alternatively, onshoring is the practice of either establishing - or returning - process to your country.

What does this have to do with security? Well, in the last few years we’ve seen a lot of changes from the rise of remote work to the focus on data policies. If every company is a tech company — at least in part — then these changes affect how you do business in different locations, and legislation depends on location.

GDPR, CCPA, SOC II, and all the other acronyms

The European general data protection regulations (GDPR) kick-started an international data policy movement to which the U.S. is not immune. California’s consumer protection act (CCPA) is the first significant data legislation stateside. It affects any business that does business with California – regardless of its location. With consumers coming in from one side, educated about their new data rights, and businesses coming from the other, with compliance requirements like SOC II that affect how you manage your infrastructure, there are a lot of new implications on how you manage your remote team. Are their computer’s secure? Is customer data secure? What kind of password protections and protocols are in place? With evolving policies, one strategy is to keep your team centralized geographically - not necessarily in the same state, but at least in the same country. Particularly if you are involved in government work, now that’s its own set of regulations altogether.

Stability

Simply put. Outsourcing technical teams to other countries that are affected by political unrest and economic instability is likely to disrupt business as usual. The impacts can be as small as delayed delivery dates to larger quality and productivity issues. CIO shares examples of popular outsourcing countries like Venezuela, Ukraine, China, Portugal, and Brazil. At a minimum, companies that outsource to other countries must be aware of the political and economic climate of the business they are entering into a partnership with to anticipate those inherent risks.

Communication

Security is an undeniable factor but communication is a more noticeable one. How many time zones and language barriers can your infrastructure support? It’s great to aim for cultural diversity but small teams especially may feel the strain of having to hold meetings at odd hours to accommodate everyone. If your engineers are seven hours ahead and your product manager is 4 hours behind, what does that crossover do to your roadmap and development?Crossing time zones isn’t impossible - but it is something to think about when you’re setting up your team structure. If you have the resources to look far and wide for the best talent, then you also have the option to explore more domestic solutions like contracted employees and augmented tech teams to manage development, design, and a variety of other specialty roles. The added benefit? Sourcing a tech team through a company like TECKpert (shameless plug, we’re sorry) allows you to scale up and down as needed. Without worrying about layoffs and painful restructuring.

Quality of work

With all the widespread internet support for remote teams that are spread out over multiple countries – we know you’re asking the question, are we just promoting onshoring tech teams to suit our own needs? It’s a good question, and we have a good answer.No. Any type of team can work. What will work depends on your infrastructure and your resources. So the real question is are you set up to support international teams, or would your company benefit from onshoring your team? There’s no law that says you have to choose one path and stick to it. The beauty about remote teams in general is that they are much easier to scale than their brick and mortar counterparts. When you’re considering what type of remote team is best for you, as yourself:

1. Do I need to hire every member of my team full time, or would contract-based work be beneficial?
2. Am I prepared (and can I support) teams communicating across time zones asynchronously for projects, meetings, and general communication?
3. Once I’ve decided what type of team I need, where do I find skilled professionals?

The hardest part of assembling a team is sourcing talented professionals to succeed in their roles. One of the benefits of augmented, contract-based teams is that there is a much larger pool of talented freelancers and gig-workers than ever before. The benefit of working with a company like ours is that we not only source,  but vet specialists like developers, UX/UI designers, marketing teams, and content creators so you don’t have to. Onshoring your tech team doesn’t mean you’re limiting your talent. It simply means you’re choosing an option that works better for your business, security standards, and communication practices. Since the offshoring trend began in the 60’s and 70’s (technical offshoring in the 90’s), many organizations have ignored the real costs and just put up with the communication delays, quality issues and security breaches. With decades of data, it is now time to put the offshoring sales pitch to the test. Are the costs worth it?  TECKpert is 100% U.S.based tech talent – ready to deliver your digital transformations today. Are you looking to modernize your IT, update your cybersecurity, create a new software or breathe new life into your digital marketing strategy? We make the process easy and handle all the challenges of finding the right people to fill your roles. Reach out to info@teckpert.com to get started.