Web development should be considered one of the core support functions for most businesses, however all too often small to medium-sized businesses overlook web development simply because of the cost of developing and maintaining a web development team. Many cities in Australia lack technical talent, which is why offshoring web development has become a viable choice for Australian businesses. Analysts expect web development offshoring to have a compound annual growth rate of 5% through to 2020.

The Benefits

Offshoring web development is a good opportunity for businesses to explore. It is proven to be a great money-saving strategy for many companies. Mainly, it reduces costs while giving you time to focus on core aspects of your business.  No wonder it has become the go-to strategy for companies who want to improve their business productivity and quality.

Below are some of the benefits of offshoring web development:

• Reduce costs – Offshoring web development reduces costs, particularly on labor. Companies can save up to 90% with offshoring versus in-house developers.
• Improves productivity– By offshoring web development companies can re-focus and align more resources to important in-house business functions.
• Improves quality – Handing over the development work to experts ensures less errors or bugs in production. Companies are able to capitalise on the high level of talent, skill, and competencies available in the Philippines and enhance the quality of their projects.
• Flexibility – Resources are available according to your time zone, this eliminates issues of communication. Transparency can be maintained by using project management tools.
• Focus – Offshoring web development allows your business to focus on new opportunities and partners for growth and development.

A double-edged sword

Offshoring web development has its pros and cons. It will reduce your costs while improving other opportunities for generating revenue. However, you also need to be mindful of how you handle your remote team.

From our experience, most projects fail due to two basic reasons:

1. Lack of proper planning
2. Insufficient or ineffective post-development communication and negotiations

Most web development offshoring fails due to a lack of proper planning and post-development communication. When working with remote development teams do not underestimate the importance of specifics and documentation. To make a web development project successful, a detailed description of everything which needs to be done is important. You must define use cases, UI/UX design, ED diagrams, DB schemas, coding guidelines, SEO, etc.

When clients or companies kept on adding more features and functionalities as the project progresses, the development project gets delayed or can even reach a stalemate. These additional tasks compromise the project management and change a project’s architecture mid-development, which is a nightmare for the remote developer. This kind of pressure stresses out both sides of the project. Therefore it is essential that you and your remote team are absolutely clear about your expectations before beginning any project together.