India has always been the destination of choice when it comes to outsourcing software development, Central and Eastern Europe are now hot on their heels as up and coming IT hubs are appearing over the region and bringing a wave of talented freelancers with it. These countries that were isolated by the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union prior are now gaining traction as strong competitors against India and other Asian countries when it comes down to companies choosing workers for their IT labor forces.
A recent report prepared by Qubit Labs shows the current rates of software developers and other IT professionals across Europe, it also provides detailed by-country information which can be a great help for clients when planning their outsource budgets.
10 Reasons to Outsource to Eastern Europe
- High levels of English proficiency
One of the most difficult challenges which scare international companies from making the jump into outsourcing talent from their own countries is often the language barrier. It can be problematic to reach goals when you are unable to communicate effectively with your staff, but this is not the case in Eastern Europe as the majority of coders here are proficient in English.
- Broad choice of coding talent
The ever-growing and increasing number of programmers with solid technical and engineering backgrounds can be explained by the long-standing emphasis on access to high-quality education in Eastern Union. Higher education is proportionally cheaper here than in many other neighboring regions and around the world, it gives young people the ability to follow tech trends and thus acquire the necessary skill sets to enter the global IT workforce.
- Affordability
Eastern Europe has the best of both worlds for companies when it comes to outsourcing talent, price, and quality. The skill sets of workers in this region are second-to-none and when combined with the rates they charge, they can cement themselves as serious competitors to Western programmer’s rates. The costs of office space, equipment, software, and other supplies needed are also cheaper in these regions, further showing how outsourcing is highly cost-effective in this region.
- Cultural fit
Outsourcing IT will always involve communication and interaction between the staff outsourced and the headquarters of the company, which can become harder in the case of culture misfits. Representatives seen across different cultures will have different attitudes towards punctuality, conflict resolution and management to name a few. So clashes between the two could lead to failures of projects, Western clients will not have to worry about this as much if outsourcing from Eastern Europe as freelancers here often have highly similar mindsets to those in the west.
- Focus on innovation
Local developers often show great potential when keeping pace with the latest technology and they often process a broad array of skills in high demand. Their compliance with modern technology demands is meticulously proven through the international awards and prized coders from this region within their IT sector.
- Ease of team scaling
Most European countries available for outsourcing have large pools of talent for companies and individuals to choose from and large numbers of experts in various tech stacks to add hires to your existing team. As a result, companies looking for IT outsourcing can easily make decisions by hiring one or more developers and then expand the team when demanded in the same location. Once the team has grown to a level of being an independent and functioning outsourced unit, its easy to establish these in most states of Eastern Europe which then adds to the comfort and cost-effectiveness that the region can offer the rest of your company.
- Easy arrangement of business travel
Clients from Western and more distant regions will also find it incredibly easy to visit their outsourced teams and offshore development centres in Eastern Europe mostly due to the highly developed transport infrastructure and flight schedules available. Every country in Eastern Europe has large amounts of transportation hubs, making it easy for any business traveller to get to where they need to be hassle-free.
- Convenience of time zones
The region is extremely convenient for outsourcing as having teams across different states would not affect a business like it would doing the same thing in the United States of America, for example. In this manner, both in-house and outsourced teams are able to operate in conjunction with minimal interference it allows for team meetings to be scheduled without the need for overtime hours at any of the offices.
- Growth potential
Since CEE labour markets are still quite young on a global scale and are only just beginning to enter the IT sector, they already contain enormous growth potential. At present Ukraine, for example, offers over 160,000 skilled IT professionals ready to offer their services and Romania has in the region of 95,000 IT experts available for outsourcing projects.
- Comfort of geographic locations
One of the biggest advantages that Eastern Europe offers when compared to Asia is the low-risk levels of natural disasters and calamities that happen each year, it minimizes the amount and risk of delays or data losses that an outsourced team might come up against if in an area of Asia prone to this.