Offshoring is a business term to describe shifting work to a distant organization that usually means a company 12 time zones or more away from your business. The philosophy behind this practice is to improve the company's bottom line.

Nearshoring (nearshore outsourcing) is the same practice, but much closer to your geographic region, perhaps even in your same time zone. It has the advantage of reducing costs, but overcomes the disadvantage of time shifting that can be a serious challenge in terms of communication with traditional offshoring to a remote service provider.

Some of the factors described below help make nearshoring a successful model for the software industry:

Time Zone

Building software is not an easy task. Teamwork, interpersonal communication, and ownership are critical success factors. Software development is a collaborative process that is difficult enough without throwing time zone differences into the mix. Our well located US, Bolivia location allow us to work with our clients during their normal working hours as a single team. Real-time interactions between teams are crucial for the success of any project. The TRUEXTEND team is aligned with your team, available to talk throughout the entire day via phone, IM, or video conference.

Communication

Language barriers or cultural differences lead to poor communication that can negatively impact valuable project development time and cause a mismatch of expectations and deliverables. For example, in the US and Latin America, “yes” confirms agreement with what was spoken, while In many offshore locations “yes” is often used to confirm an understanding of what the speaker said, but not the statement itself and its point or assertions. Accents, intonations and cultural differences can all affect the understanding of not just the words, but their underlying meaning and intent.

The goal of effective business communication is not just comprehension of the words that were spoken, but an understanding of what is being communicated, and ultimately reaching a conclusion such as confirming agreement, or achieving consensus or a common understanding. This is especially key for a successful outsourcing engagement and best when accomplished with the least amount of effort or frustration.

All TRUEXTEND staff is fluent in English and Spanish, so our clients can communicate their needs without concern about misunderstandings or heavy accents. “Yes” doesn’t just mean “I understand what you just said,” it also means “I agree and commit to what you said.” In addition, our US office provides local staff that oversees all engagements and has direct responsibility for customer relationships and project success.

Culture

Software development means collaboration, and increasingly this collaboration must cross boundaries of organizational and national cultures. The effect of different cultures involves countless challenges, from collaboration, to existing project planning and management, and even simple communication.

Our warm Latin American culture facilitates respectful and straightforward communication. Our regular working day, food, entertainment, customs, education, ethics and values are very similar to those of North America. Our people are nice, very enthusiastic and passionate about what they do. That’s why our clients like to work with us, to visit us and truly make us part of their team.

Continuity of Resources

Big companies like Google, Microsoft, and others have development centers in outsourcing countries like India, China, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Instead of being good news for the outsourcing business, big companies are taking the majority of good engineers and leaving other outsourcing companies with inexperienced resources and huge rates of turnover. Companies outsourcing to Asia have always had the challenge of “training good resources for others” which adds significant risk and overhead to their projects.

As a new outsourcing spot, Bolivia has the advantage of not having large technology companies competing for its high quality technical resources, resulting in a loyal employee base with minimum turnover.

Distance

Face-to-face interaction is an important ingredient for most outsourcing engagements to build chemistry, trust and effective relationships. Our geographic proximity to the US makes travel easier and less expensive, thus facilitating personal interaction.