7 Offshore Outsourcing Trends 2020 and Disrupted Traditions
By: Shift Asia
Tags: Quality Assurance, Vietnam, Agile, Outsourcing, Software Development

A Thought leader in the 90's said “If you deprive yourself of offshore opportunities and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.” And 20 years later that became the reality.

When offshore outsourcing services first emerged in the late 90’s, for many people the concept seemed almost absurd, because some even thought of it as an act of modern colonization, republicans were against outsourcing jobs to overseas, and the ethics was being questioned. However, in today’s global scenario, the time when offshore outsourcing was only seen as a move by organizations to drive down operating costs is long gone. It is now seen as an investment to improve the quality of operations and accelerate speed to the market with scalable and flexible services utilizing a bigger pool of talent.

As we all know, outsourcing activities happen especially in the field of IT, and according to Statista, the IT outsourcing industry was worth $92.5 Billion in 2019. And also by a report “Global Software Testing services market 2020–2024” by Technavio, Software testing market is worth more than $45 Billion global. Now that the geographical borders in business transactions are blurred thanks to the changes brought by the pandemic, it is expected to double in the next year. Currently, there are 37% of companies that outsource a single process, mainly to boost efficiency and to receive expertise.

While the industry seems thriving, the offshoring businesses now stand at the helm of innovation, as their clients demand delivering solutions that offer returns on investment rather than the pure cost reduction such as localization and compliance management, scalability, higher agility and effective risk management. Here are the 7 market trends to watch out for and want to make sure your companies are taking necessary measures.

- Strategic offshore partnership

- Expertise and flexibility over price

- Shift in offshore location

- Mobile First

- Agile and Continuous Delivery

- Automation

- Experienced economy and consumer expectation

India accounts for a big portion of those outsourcing activities, however, the world has seen a shift to countries like Vietnam and Eastern Europe. It is because of the fact these countries have evolved to provide tailored services to companies in Japan, Singapore and EU respectively.

In such mobile-first and experienced economy, consumers have high expectations. Therefore businesses have understood the value of flexible project management and rushing to adopt continuous delivery models in software development, so naturally companies look for experienced offshoring firms that follow well-established Agile practices.

Going ahead of this trend, SHIFT Inc. in Japan at which Jenkin’s inventor Kosuke Kawaguchi is appointed a seat as advisor, has invented its unique certification program (CAT) to turn non-IT talents into QA testers that work closely with engineers on agile development projects. Especially in Japan, IT sector is experiencing talent shortage and businesses had to outsource some of their operations to offshore partners, but now that the industry has become so mature, businesses choose to do so.

SHIFT ASIA, subsidiary of SHIFT Inc, a quality assurance startup based in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam has luckily been able to establish a pool of inexpensive and skilled testers and engineers to provide scalable and custom product testing resources. On top of that, expertise in security, agile development and localization have helped many enterprises in the APAC region to launch services in multiple locations without risking data integrity and loss on usability.

We feel that taking advantage of offshore development has become the mainstream and quality of output is improving so much, that it is a viable option for any businesses around the world looking to maximize cost efficiency and agility. Hope this article helped you in any way.

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