How A No-Shore Approach Might Be Better Than An In-House Team

Can a no-shore approach save your business money?

The landscape of work is changing - especially in tech where local talent alone cannot satisfy the demand for diversity and depth of skills required. No-shore, remote work, outsourced, telecommuting are all words to describe the new global workforce that could be tapped into for your next project. 

But that’s not all. 

Here are the 4 reasons why a no-shore approach may be better than employing a full in-house team.

1. Cost

The major perk of a no-shore approach is cost.

Exchange rates and local expected wages can differ greatly, especially when transferring over to countries with lower costs of living. Not only that, the additional but necessary cost of employment such as insurance, employee perks, benefits, unscheduled absences, sick days, office space, hardware and software maintenance is reduced significantly per person. 

With a no-shore approach, the outsourced contractor is expected to have all this calculated into their invoices. While it may feel more expensive initially, the ancillary payment that comes with maintaining an employee is often much higher. A study from PGi found businesses could save up to $10,000 per employee per year in office space through telecommuting. 

2. Diversity of skills

When you go no-shore, you are reducing the geographical limitations you face when it comes to finding the right talent.

The pool of skilled and quality developers, designers and project managers increases, giving you access to knowledge and experiences that are not immediately available in your area. 

Your local hire market, for example, may be PHP heavy with little user experience knowledge. But what you need is a front end React with Node kind of person. No-shore eliminates this problem by getting rid of boundary-based restrictions. 

3. Reduction of time sinks

One of the reasons many businesses remain with an in-house team is because it feels like there is more control over the developer’s availability and time.

Meetings can be scheduled and conducted on the fly. Clarification can be met with instantly. However, this sense of security can also be a cost to the business due to frequent interruptions that a developer may face. 

Outside of a traditional office environment, a no-shore developer can efficiently manage their time and effectively engage in deep work. A meeting is always meaningful and with an expectation of outcomes and results. Time sinkholes often occur in unnoticeable blocks that can quickly add up over several days. According to a study by the University of California Irvine, it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back into a task. If an in-house developer gets asked a question 3 times a day, it means that productivity output is reduced by over an hour - or over 5 hours of reduced productivity over a week. In reality, your in-house employee probably gets interrupted much more than that. A no-shore worker is isolated from this potential environment based issue. 

4. Flexible teams

With a no-shore approach, your teams can become much more flexible in size and skills than a fixed and traditionally in-house method of software creation.

Hiring without geographical restrictions and perpetual contract obligations mean that you can pivot the type of team, the blend of members and personalities to suit your project rather than the other way around. 

The flow of work becomes easier to manage and maintain the ability to reduce bottlenecks. Scaling quickly through a no-shore team is much easier and faster than recruiting from a limited local pool of potential talent. 

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With the growth of the gig economy and talents moving into the contracting space for better work-life balance, time and space mobility, a no-shore approach can lead to better productivity and production outputs.

When workers are challenged and motivated by their work, they are incentivized to produce higher quality output and maintain their focus for much longer. Your invoices become a better reflection of the hours that are sometimes lost in an in-house employee through various inefficiencies.

Co-authored by:

Dave Wesley ~ President, SRG
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Aphinya Dechalert ~ Marketing Communications, SRG
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