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Outsourcing software development to Infotech Financials

Offshore outsourcing comes of age

The US market for outsourcing information technology services is about $100 billion. With the shortage of IT professionals available in the country reaching acute proportions, companies of all sizes and in all industries are increasingly outsourcing software work to offshore vendors. And India is emerging as a key destination for these companies to outsource their software development needs.

Though managements have a fair understanding of the risks and challenges that come from offshore outsourcing, they are very dissatisfied with their present IT organisations, as well as the costs involved.

Picture this: While you're busily trying to manage yet another application development project that's six months behind schedule, the marketing VP of an Indian outsourcing firm is meeting with your CIO upstairs in the executive conference room.

`` How many development people do you have in your organization?'' the marketing VP asks. `` Three hundred? Fine, no problem. We'll dedicate 300 of our people in India to work on your projects. We'll replicate your hardware, your operating system, your database, and network environment, and whatever procedures and methodologies you're using. You can be confident that we'll do all of this properly, because we're ISO-9000 certified, and we just got an SEI level-4 assessment.''

``So what you're telling me,'' the CIO says, a smile spreading from one ear to the other, `` is that I don't have to deal with the visa problems and headaches of having a bunch of low-cost programmers camping out here at my own facility - and I don't have to try to achieve the cost savings on a project-by-project basis. I can move the entire software development organization overseas, and cut my costs in half. Is that what you're telling me?''

``Absolutely,'' says the marketing VP. ``Trust me!''
 

Why Outsource?

If your software development project tends to fall behind schedule and over budget, then consider sending the whole project overseas, to a vendor in India where the project will be delivered at a fraction of what it would cost in North America.

Offshore outsourcing, to India, gives you a range of benefits.

  • Outsourcing saves money
  • Helps cut time to market
  • Capital expenditures can be avoided
  • Gives access to a pool of highly educated people with specialized skills, rather than having to train in-house people or hire new employees.

Why India?

  • Highly educated manpower

    • India has some of the finest technical and management institutions producing a large pool of highly educated technical manpower with degrees in computer science and software engineering.

  • India is a democracy

    • In contrast to China or some of the other East European or Southeast Asian countries, India offers the benefits of a democratic set-up, which means that when you do business with India, you are sure of your rights and how to protect them.

  • Political stability like in the U.S.

    • Unstable governments and political instability lead to an unpredictable business environment. India offers a stable democratically elected government and great stability on the political front.

  • Financial stability

    • India does not risk downgrades and defaults on its loan repayments and hence currency devaluations and wild fluctuations will not upset the project's financial budget and cause failure in terms of profits.

  • English speaking work-force

    • The widespread use of English, in business communications is a barrier for anyone whose native language is not English. "One of the top three reasons for choosing a software team is spoken-language abilities (the other two are specific operating-language skills and telecommunications connections)".

    India enjoys the benefits of having a predominantly english speaking work-force.

  • India has a strong cyber law regime in place.

  • An increasingly large number of fortune 500 clients are increasing their outsourcing to India.

Important factors for outsourcing

Based on a 1996 issue of Ed Yourdon's newsletter ``Application Development Strategies'', and a report on software benchmarking conducted by Ed Yourdon and Dr. Howard Rubin, editor of IT Metrics Strategies, factors that are important to outsourcing software development are listed below.

Sr.No. Critical factors Non-Critical factors
01 Familiarity with the client's language Location convenient to customer's preference for establishing an offshore development center
02 Telecommunication infrastructure Tax consequences 
03 Large pool of educated manpower ISO 9000 certification
04 Price High rating on the SEI process maturity evaluation
05 Rapid start Prior experience with the customer's organization
06 Credentials Familiarity with the client's network environment
07   Ability to adapt quickly to new, unfamiliar technology

 

Infofin as the preferred outsourcing vendor

Infotech Financials (Infofin) is a provider of financial engineering expertise to the fund management industry and the capital market intermediaries. We offer a unique combination of industry experience, state-of-the-art technical and analytical skills and tools needed to provide risk analysis, valuation and hedging solutions on the most complex problems. Infofin also has the necessary knowledge to implement business transformation projects for mid-sized companies.
 
 
How does Infofin score on the critical factors?
  • Familiarity with the client's language

    • All employees and partners of Infofin are comfortable with communicating in English, proving to be one of Infofin's key advantages.

  • Telecommunication infrastructure

    • At Infofin we have always laid great stress on building a solid telecommunications infrastructure, comprising of the following: a 128kbps leased line, a backup DSL line and ISDN modem bank. Besides, we have invested heavily in teleconferencing facilities which facilitate communication between the development team in India and the client.

  • Large pool of manpower

    • At our India development center, there is a large pool of highly educated technical and domain experts who are ready to take on a project and get down to the drawing board immediately. Since we specialize in projects related to finance, our staff is geared to take on virtually any finance project and deliver on the same.

  • Price

    • At Infofin we focus on providing the maximum value for money to the customer. In line with this objective, we work to a plan to reduce the cost of development of the project.

    • Development of the project takes place at our modern development centre in India, where the cost of manpower is a fraction of the rates prevailing in the U.S.
    • Since the whole project is done in India, we prefer to have only a few persons from our side at the client's location, thereby bringing down costs considerably.
    • Using teleconferencing facilities, and PC to phone communications we avoid travelling to the U.S. and also peg communication costs down to acceptable levels.
    • Our labour hour rates are competitive, resulting in the client paying reasonable amounts for the complete development and deployment.

  • Rapid start

    • If you are looking at time to market as an advantage, start by handing out the whole project, from design to delivery to Infofin. Once the project is handed over to Infofin, a team is formed; comprising of the project manager, project leader, domain experts, testers and programmers to develop and deliver on the promise of good quality software on time, on schedule. This team is dedicated to the project and continues to be so till the completion of the project, resulting in rapid start and finish.

  • Project management at Infofin

    • Experience proves that a software project executed offshore needs tighter control mechanisms to ensure its success. At Infofin we have the maximum controls in place to deliver quality software. We communicate with clients regularly, have a project progress web-site for the client, the latest project management and version controlling tools, and a web-based bug tracking software.

  • Credentials

    • Profit making company
    • Focussed domain expertise and service offerings: Has concentrated on niche market segments, index funds, derivatives and risk management. Sole software vendor offering software to manage index fund operations in India.
    • Cheaper yet robust technology solutions: Infotech Financials has developed applications on Linux and open source technology which give the clients the advantage of using robust scalable technology at economical prices.

    For the last three years, Infofin has successfully developed and deployed software applications from its modern facility in Mumbai, India for U.S. based clients, leveraging the offshore development model successfully. To further reduce costs for our clients, even support and maintenance are provided out of the India center.

In Conclusion

In our fast paced and ever changing business environment, all organizations need to evolve to address the challenges and opportunities before them. Outsourcing your systems, processes and application development can help you provide greater value to your stakeholders by becoming more responsive to costs, providing better value to customers and shareholders, enhancing efficiency and increasing integration across systems and divisions.

Finding and engaging the right partner will help you maximize the business value of your efforts, while reducing the risk, time-to-market and cost of delivering the effort. An experienced partner will support you through the strategy, tactics, execution, deployment, and support phases of your transformation initiative and guide you through the challenges of picking the right projects, devising the optimal strategies to implement those projects and ensuring that all factors needed to achieve success are covered.

We offer a unique set of services to handle all phases of a transformation effort. Our offerings provide you with a roadmap and services to transform your data, functioning, and processes to support your business objectives. We have achieved our enviable record of near 100% project success through a combination of domain and technical expertise, experienced staff, a focus on our core values and the use of state-of-the-art technology.

As you consider your options, please contact us at (info@infofin.com). We could be your partner for a complete outsourcing of your software development requirements.