Potential advantages and implications of moving your BA offshore
Software has beendeveloped offshore for years now and the trend is increasing. However, when itcomes to one’s Business Analysis necessities, people have been more reluctant.
Countries like the US,Canada, Germany, France, Australia or UK are sending their software developmentrequirements in the Eastern parts of Europe and the results are more thanpositive. Centers like Romania and Ukraine are overcrowded with overseascompanies that employ professional IT services. Yet, Business Analysis is notso willing to jump offshore although these centers have experts in BA.
Does it make sense and isit convenient to take this part of a business offshore?
The Consof moving BA offshore
- Professionalsoftentimes consider that only a team that is up and personal with the insightsof the business can better plan and understand its position and ramifications.
- However,there’s also the scenario in which the in-house experts might have blind spotsand be biased on certain aspects of your business’s plan development.
The Prosof moving BA offshore
- Just like you need many developers to build a project with each of them mastering a different coding language and overall set of skills, you also need different types of specialized Bas. Depending on your project, its magnitude, and requirements, you may need an actual team of business analysts. For a big company with large staff divided into departments, employing BAs locally might make sense.
- But when it comes to smaller companies like startups with a few permanent employees, you benefit more from contracting and offshoring various parts of your project. This is when offshore BAs come into play with all their diverse expertise. Hiring such a team locally would cost a lot.
- In another scenario, you are running multiple projects in your company. Each of these projects has different needs which means that your BA team should constantly change or cover a large area of expertise to keep up with the many projects. Instead of hiring and letting go of people on a regular basis, you can just contract offshore professionals who have the flexibility of assigning the proper BAs for each project. This kind of move would cut your costs drastically.
- An offshore provider of services juggles with business analysis expertise with ease and in the end, it documents anything you need for paperwork and legal purposes. You can have all your affairs in order just as easy as if your BA would world in an office next to you.
- Specialists who work for contracted projects have dealt with such a wide range of situations and problems that they can tackle almost anything you throw at them. And they can do it faster than your in-house team member who needs to figure his/her way around.
- Their toolset is better and broader. Having to adapt to all sorts of projects and requests, they have the skills and knowledge to employ proper tools and use them at maximum potential.
- If you outsource big parts of a project or the better part of it, moving your BA in the same hub will only make transitions and interactions better. What is the point of breaking a project apart and potentially facing problems with the final assembly?!
Hesitation to go all in is natural, so if you’restill unsure, you can take baby steps and start by outsourcing your PM. You buythe time to see how collaboration works, establish strong connections and gainsome trust in your contractor and the overall development of your project. Thenyou can consider jumping in with both feet.