AI investment is increasing, but with limited enterprise value and growing inefficiency in its deployment. 

Many organizations have initiated AI pilots, with minimal success in converting them into operational capabilities. MIT’s GenAI Divide State of AI in Business 2025 report finds that most generative AI pilots do not deliver measurable P&L impact. 

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McKinsey’s State of AI 2025 report shows that 88 percent of organizations use AI in at least one function, with nearly two-thirds still in pilot mode without enterprise-scale adoption. Technical progress is outpacing enterprise execution, with AI remaining outside core systems and workflows. The breakdown emerges as pilots transition into production data and enterprise systems

‍

Why AI Pilots Are Easy, but Production AI Is Difficult

AI pilot success is routinely misinterpreted as enterprise readiness, with working models and proofs of concept treated as indicators of success. 

In practice, experimentation outcomes do not translate into operational capability, as model accuracy does not ensure business integration, and prototypes do not function as production systems. 

Most pilots produce isolated models, while enterprise value is realized only when AI is embedded into business decisions within live workflows.

Production success depends on production-ready data pipelines, governance controls, change management processes, and repeatable execution mechanisms that extend beyond the model itself. 

While rapid experimentation tools and cloud environments accelerate development, integration with legacy systems and cross-functional operations and data exposes underlying misalignment.

The limitation is rooted in a missing production system design rather than model development.

Structural Challenges Preventing AI Scaling

AI stalls reflect recurring patterns of systemic misalignment rather than technical failure.

Innovation teams operate in isolation, with ownership fragmented across data, IT, and business units.

Alignment with broader transformation programs is limited, and enterprise architecture does not support AI integration at scale.

Legacy systems impose structural constraints, and data pipelines lack production readiness.

Security and governance reviews introduce deployment bottlenecks due to late integration.

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AI remains outside core systems instead of being embedded within them.

Scaling is constrained by the absence of an operating model and architecture that treats AI as a capability layer.

Organizations continue to equate capability creation in controlled environments with enterprise deployment.

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These structural issues typically show up in four recurring patterns:

(Based on patterns in MIT’s GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 |  McKinsey’s State of AI 2025, and related Gartner analysis)

The Cost of Fragmented AI Adoption

The disconnect between pilot optics and execution reality introduces compounding hidden costs.

Teams repeat similar experiments across business units without sharing learning or reusing them.

Investments are duplicated across functions.

Executive confidence declines as expected transformation value does not materialize.

This fragmentation manifests in the following hidden costs:

(Source: MIT’s GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 and McKinsey State of AI 2025)

A Better Approach to AI Adoption

AI delivers value when positioned as a capability layer within existing transformation programs.

The operating model aligns AI with digital transformation, integrates it with cloud modernization and data architecture, and embeds it into core systems and workflows from the outset. 

In this approach, architecture enables integration and scale, transformation programs drive delivery, and governance enables controlled execution. 

This structure enables the transition from pilot activity to operational deployment.

What CIOs Should Look for in AI Programs

CIOs must evaluate AI programs through systems and governance alongside technology considerations.

The central question should often not be “Should we invest in AI?” but “Can our enterprise systems support AI at scale?”

Proshore’s Role in Enterprise AI Execution

Proshore addresses the structural causes that prevent AI pilots from scaling by designing every implementation as a production system from the outset.

Instead of developing isolated models, Proshore integrates AI directly into enterprise workflows, data pipelines, and governance frameworks, ensuring alignment with transformation programs and core architecture. ‍

‍At the same time, in Proshore AI is not only deployed within products but leveraged across the entire software development lifecycle.

Requirements are defined faster using AI-assisted interpretation and clear acceptance criteria. Prototyping and refinement cycles move quickly through rapid iteration and visualization, reducing back-and-forth and helping teams reach workable solutions sooner.

Crucially,Proshore operates within enterprise constraints. Private AI environments, DORA-aligned practices, and internal data standards are built into delivery from the start, ensuring compliance and consistency. 

Prompt and context optimization keep costs predictable while maintaining performance across managed AI systems.

In practice, this approach is reflected in projects such as MerchPIM, where AI is embedded into product data workflows.

This enables enterprises to scale data quality and consistency across systems without creating parallel processes or manual dependencies.

Proshore aligns ownership, integrates with existing systems, and embeds governance in execution from the outset, preventing fragmentation and deployment bottlenecks that stall AI initiatives.

Conclusion

AI becomes valuable when it transitions from experimentation into operational capability. 

The organizations that succeed are those that stop celebrating isolated pilots and start treating AI as an enterprise systems problem. 

By aligning AI with transformation programs, addressing architecture and governance as first principles, and building repeatable execution models, CIOs can move beyond pilot purgatory and deliver the enterprise value their investments were always intended to create. 

The technology is not the constraint. The operating model is.

Remote development challenges

From micro to self-managed remote software developers

Learn how one of our clients, CMNTY, was able to scale without intensive micromanaging through our self-managed remote software development model.

Book a call

Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our ready-to-code dev teams are a fit for you.

How does remote software development really work? Suppose your business is thinking about investing in software development beyond your existing in-house capacity. In that case, reliability, expertise, and team integration are key areas to prioritize – especially if the team you’re hiring is based in another part of the world.

What assurances do you have that they can meet your development needs? Will they require micromanaging?

Thankfully, Proshore’s proven solution of ‘ready-to-code dev teams’ is a lot more agile, competitive, and scalable than traditional models of ‘outsourcing’. So how does it work?

Let's take a closer look at how we partnered with CMNTY, a Netherlands-based Research SaaS, who were looking for an affordable solution to scale their software development – without costly talent acquisition and expensive onboarding.

1️⃣ Seamless onboarding and integration

CMNTY, like many businesses, leveraged our scalable solution to add a qualitative data product to their quantitative services. Proshore provided a ready-made development team that seamlessly integrated with theirs. Starting with one developer, CMNTY scaled up as needed.

Unlike some clients, CMNTY's CTO, a former developer deeply familiar with the product's ten-year development journey, understood the challenges. This extensive codebase, used for market research data collection, initially presented a hurdle for Proshore.

However, with an existing team member facilitating onboarding (around a month), Proshore quickly grasped CMNTY's workflow and deliverables.

How Proshore fitted into CMTY's development needs and helped them scale sustainably along with their data collection platform – from a single developer to a solid development team. Read case study

2️⃣ Boosting teamwork and technical expertise

Another advantage of working with a ready-made remote team from Proshore – a team who already know each other well – is that their team leader knows their strengths, and is, therefore, able to deploy developers effectively.

Additionally, we also offer the services of a scrum master who manages the agile process of daily, stand-ups, sprint reviews, and so on. This means that the team leader can focus on getting the technical details right.

Proshore's remote teams always have a separate team leader and scrum master to ensure that we quickly become self-managing once onboarded.

Additional tips

As with CMNTY, it is a real advantage to have a product owner who is a former developer. It helps cut down onboarding time and increase velocity, allowing the team to deliver more and meet targets each sprint.

When onboarding it also helps to allocate time for technical refinement, i.e. going through the existing code to understand what’s there, and making crucial updates where needed. By going through this additional process, the team can understand the depth of the task ahead of the next sprint.

3️⃣ Working across time zones

With Proshore's remote teams being based out of Nepal and CMNTY being based in the Netherlands, coordinating across time zones should have been a big challenge. But our teams have 15 years of experience in agile working and it's part of what we do best.

Agile working is an important facet of remote working and the methodology has always been part of how we operate.

Depending on Daylight Saving Time, the Netherlands and Nepal are either three or four hours apart. So, there is an overlap in working hours where necessary meetings are planned.

1

Longer meetings are focused on refinement, where the team leader mainly asks questions that can facilitate clarity across the sprints.

2

Once clarity is achieved, the team need only sync between themselves, via daily standups, to ensure sprint targets are being met.

3

Escalations that arise are tackled swiftly. However, they rarely occur with teams experienced in agile working.

Key takeaways from our CMNTY partnership

Something our team really enjoys is being made to feel part of the CMNTY company. It’s a recurring theme in many of our collaborations, and a sign of successful integrations.

So what have we learned from this experience?

1

In the early stages of a collaboration, it’s important not to over-commit and show flexibility in terms of priorities, and what needs to be delivered.

2

When there’s ten years of existing code, there’s a lot to learn from the architecture and that can be applied to other developments.

3

Having retrospective meetings helps you review what worked and what didn’t. And having a process helps us stay on the right track.

4

The process is essential, but so is flexibility in order to be adaptable to changes and deal with issues when they arise.

5

Working collaboratively facilitates shared learning. Both teams learn from each other, sharing ideas and architectures.

1

In the early stages of a collaboration, it’s important not to over-commit and show flexibility in terms of priorities, and what needs to be delivered.

2

When there’s ten years of existing code, there’s a lot to learn from the architecture and that can be applied to other developments.

3

Having retrospective meetings helps you review what worked and what didn’t. And having a process helps us stay on the right track.

4

The process is essential, but so is flexibility in order to be adaptable to changes and deal with issues when they arise.

5

Working collaboratively facilitates shared learning. Both teams learn from each other, sharing ideas and architectures.

Final thoughts

Whether it’s a single developer or a complete team, Proshore’s self-managing development teams enable our clients to scale without intensive micromanagement.

As a cost-effective, long-term service partner, businesses bring us alongside to accelerate their growth and utilize the technical talent and experience of our teams in Nepal.

Wondering if our remote software developers can help your business grow? Book a call to explore if we are a fit.

“IT students can do valuable internships at our company. During three months we give them real projects, and make them ready for their next challenge. I really believe that they can build our country.”

Roshan Bhattarai is co-founder and CTO of IT company Proshore in Kathmandu. He sees big opportunities for IT companies in Nepal, if only they give big opportunities to IT students. Like he does at Proshore: “We offer IT students a nice working environment and give them a task and a timeline, they can choose their own time to work. In the office, we provide free breakfast and lunch from our own kitchen and they can play table tennis and games. But the focus is really on learning to grow.”

How can IT students build the country?

“Nepal can become a big IT hub, if only things were better organized. There is no national IT policy and there are a lot of practical problems, for instance you cannot use the national credit card to log in. The export of software could also be interesting for our country: There is enough manpower, but education and business should be working together better. If you are a foreigner and want to invest in an IT company in Nepal, you have to invest a lot of money.”

“It is important for Nepal to create jobs, we are leaning too much on India. We import three to four times more than we export! I think that the biggest opportunity is in creating IT jobs so IT students don’t have to go abroad to earn money. At the moment, a lot of young Nepalese are working in other countries, which is a pity. The government should turn this around.”

How has Proshore contributed to the Nepalese IT sector?

“In IT, you need to have a good strategy and talent. We started with five people, now we have more than 60. We have grown from building websites to developing apps, for mobile but also desktops. At the moment we try to enter open source communities and think of ideas to develop further.”

“Right now Nepal needs to focus, there are no big IT companies. The people who are studying here shouldn’t look at higher grades, they should focus on developing skills. The internet is here, so you can start making money. But in Nepal, parents pay for education so students become lazy. They should recognize that if they develop a skill, they can support themselves. In this way, they can close the gap between education and business.”

“I went to college recently myself and I am now thinking a lot about how Nepalese IT can be improved, the gap between college and practice is huge. We try to work with schools to make them ready for business, but of course we can also spot talent there.”

“Students do not have a degree to work at Proshore, we look at skills. Degrees are less and less important. We value students for what they have to offer.”

Digital companies spend a lot of time, money, and effort on creating a website. Being the focal point for prospective customers to get information and buy products or services, a website plays a vital role in company awareness, sales, and growth. But sometimes even with a well-designed website, performance may not live up to estimations.

But why? Digital companies do their homework before launching their website, so, shouldn’t it perform as expected? This was a problem that our sister concern, Digital Product Labs (DPL), also faced with their Shopify solution - Etsy Integration & Sync.

Read on for the major pointers from Digital Marketer, Darpan Chapagain. In the recent hour-long KSS workshop, he explained how using Hotjar leveled up DPL product’s website.

Low-performing websites

There may be 1001 reasons why your website is not performing well. However, if you have allocated adequate resources to building and maintaining your website, then it is easier to narrow down your website’s low performance.

Now, look at the points below. Do you face similar problems on your website?

• No clarity of user activity/behavior.
• You see there are bugs and issues but can’t seem to find them.
• Hard time finding ideas to add new features.

Most of the problems revolve around an unmissable factor – users. If your website is not made for users, then your users will be less likely to convert. You may have followed all concepts of user-friendly design but at the end of the day, users decide if your website meets their expectations and needs.

This is where Hotjar can help.

User-validated design

Hotjar allows digital marketers, UI/UX designers, or any product or strategic owner to analyze why your users are behaving the way they do on your website. They have four major features that allow you to improve your website validated by your users!

1. Heatmaps
2. Feedback
3. Recordings
4. Surveys

Like how it helped Darpan and his colleagues at DPL, Hotjar can help you too. The expansive tool allows any strategic and project owners to,

• Understand why a client/customer may have stopped using a company product/service.
• Avoid reaching deadlock on app improvement.
• Know client reactions to a new feature release.

Hotjar provides the development team with invaluable insights into website usage, eliminating the guessing game as to why a website is performing poorly. The analysis of user behavior allows for the possibility of creating a website that is actually friendly for your target audience, i.e. user-validated design.

After seeing the tangible results brought forth by using Hotjar, it was certain that the DPL team would continue using the tool. Currently, they use the ‘heatmaps and behavior analytics tools’ for,

1. Daily user activity analysis
2. Daily user uninstallation analysis to identify bugs and issues
3. Analysis of user activity to identify possible new features
4. To see user activity towards newly released features.

Setting up Hotjar

First and foremost, you need to make sure your website is compatible with Hotjar. While it is compatible with most of the major platforms, platforms that do not support custom third-party Javascript will not be able to install Hotjar. These include names like Dribble, Google Sites, Amazon Seller Pages, and GoDaddy GoCentral among others.

If your website’s platform is compatible with Hotjar, follow the following steps.

During his one-hour workshop, Darpan also showcased Hotjar’s various features to demonstrate how it works and how it can help the workshop's participants.

You too can see Hotjar’s features in action, including the insightful Q&A interaction, on the full knowledge-sharing session's recording.

Workshop recording Level up your website or project with behavior analytics - Hotjar Get access

by Jeroen van der Horst Accounts Director, Proshore

Remote development

Remote Development Teams: what are the pros and cons?

Unlike traditional hiring and freelancing, remote development teams offer speed and scalability. Explore the pros & cons to decide if it's right for you.

Book a call Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our ready-to-code dev teams are a fit for you.

• Resources

In any software project, needing more development capacity is a situation that arises often – more times than not, the capacity needs to be filled as soon as possible. Traditional hiring, be it in-house or through agencies, usually falls short of speed. Freelancers, while quicker to engage, can require significant onboarding and micromanagement. Enter remote development teams.

Why Remote Development Teams?

Take a look at the questions below,

• Do I want to be able to scale up quickly and flexibly?
• Am I in need of expert knowledge and skills?
• What should be my budget?

If these important questions run through your head when thinking about building development capacity, a remote software development team could be the answer.

What are Remote Development Teams?

Unlike freelancers scattered across the globe, a remote development team functions as a cohesive unit working from a single external location. This team possesses the combined skills necessary to achieve your project goals and propel product development. They operate with a high degree of self-management, mirroring the collaboration and efficiency of an in-house team.

Now that you know what remote, dedicated, or offshore software development is – you should also know that this approach

• offers pros like scalability and cost-effectiveness, but also,
• comes with cons related to communication and cultural integration.

Let's delve into both sides of the coin to help you decide if a remote development team is the right fit for your needs.

Pros of Remote Development Teams

1

Speed and Scalability

Remote teams can start contributing quickly, often within weeks, and readily adapt to your project's evolving needs. You can easily scale the team up or down based on workload fluctuations.

2

Cost-Effectiveness

Building an in-house team involves significant upfront costs for salaries, benefits, workspace, and equipment. Remote teams offer a more predictable expense structure, allowing you to pay only for the expertise you require. Additionally, developer rates in certain regions like South-East Asia are significantly lower than Western counterparts.

3

Access to a Global Talent Pool

You're not limited to local talent when searching for the perfect skill set. Remote teams open doors to a wider pool of qualified developers, potentially leading to a better fit for your project.

Cons of Remote Development Teams

1

Communication and Collaboration

Physical distance can create communication barriers. Time zone differences and cultural nuances require extra effort to ensure clear and timely information exchange. Strategies for effective remote collaboration become crucial.

2

Integration and Team Building

Fostering a strong team spirit can be more difficult when team members are geographically dispersed. While virtual team-building activities are possible, they may not replicate the camaraderie built through in-person interaction.

3

Control and Visibility

Some businesses may feel a loss of control over remote teams. Establishing clear communication channels and project management processes becomes essential for maintaining visibility over progress and deliverables.

How to set up your remote development team?

Explore strategies to mitigate the cons generally associated with remote development teams.

Learn more

Hire Remote development teams from Proshore

Building a successful remote development team requires careful consideration of both the benefits and drawbacks. By understanding your project's specific needs and priorities, you can determine if the advantages outweigh the challenges.

With Proshore, we help you map out your project needs to embark on the best remote development journey possible. Book a call today and let us know your business needs – we’ll take care of the rest.

How can you make sure that your remote team performs optimally and that they deliver the highest possible output? In this article, we will discuss two factors that play a major role in this regard.

Everyone must be familiar with the business case and the roadmap

The best results are achieved when your team is constantly thinking along with you. For the Product Owner (the person monitoring the quality of the output), that means they should refrain from constantly providing new information and changing the assignment. Instead, they must brief their team very carefully. Everyone must be intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the business case and the roadmap. At the very least, the first year of that roadmap should be clear to all involved. Likewise, it is important that all developers understand who will be using the system once it is done. Even if a developer only works on a single requirement or module, they must know exactly how and where their piece of the puzzle will fit into the big picture. It is essential to maintain a constant focus on that critical information. During the backlog refinement meeting held at the start of every sprint, you must therefore clarify the requirements in the backlog. You discuss the desired output of the sprint and the best, smartest and fastest way to achieve that result. During these meetings, you not only focus on what needs to be built and why, but also devote some attention to the technical details. This ensures your remote team will actually develop what you need.

It is important that everyone strictly adheres to the process

Especially when working together remotely, it is essential to follow a good process. If your remote or virtual teams are not meeting their deadlines, that is usually because you have not recorded and agreed upon a clear process. Alternatively, it could be because people are not experiencing the consequences of failing to follow the process closely. This may sound a bit harsh, but that strictness is absolutely essential. It helps to schedule ceremonies (the meetings) on standard days and times. Secondly, it is important to keep your team up to date on developments within the organisation (e.g. why certain priorities are changing). This helps to keep people optimally involved. Of course, the Product Owner must also strictly adhere to the process. For example, they must always be present during important ceremonies, such as the schedule and evaluation. This helps them maintain their connection to the team and allows them to keep setting the right priorities from a business perspective.

If you ask us, remote agile development teams are an excellent solution to the scarcity on the technical labour market. However, having your people stationed thousands of kilometres away does demand something from your organisation.

What are the commonly heard challenges of remote development and how can you best deal with them? Are they even real challenges or just misconceptions that keep getting repeated? In this article, we will bust three myths regarding the use of remote agile development teams.

1. The time difference is a major hurdle

When you hire people abroad - specifically in Asia - the time difference does come into play. That can be difficult at times, especially when scheduling meetings or discussing urgent matters. However, the advantage of working with a self-managed team is that you do not have to be there when your developers are working and vice versa.

The Agile development method that you use with a self-managed team prescribes standard consultation moments. In the meantime, the remote development team can keep working on its own. If your project has reached a critical stage, your remote team can take care of everything while people in the Netherlands are still asleep. Besides, if you opt for a remote team in Nepal, the time difference is just three hours and forty-five minutes. That means there is considerable overlap between your respective working days.

2. Communication is a challenge

Language, distance and sometimes culture can get in the way of communication. Sometimes, intelligibility is a factor as well due to people's accents, especially in countries such as India. On the other hand, understanding our Dutch accent can be quite a challenge for many Asians as well. It can be hard at times to understand each other properly. A fast internet connection and good cameras and microphones will make conference calls a lot easier already.

It is also very important to make sure everyone has a good enough command of English. That goes for the developers, but also for yourself (and any of your colleagues who work with the remote development team). Fortunately, verbal communication will be a relatively rare occurrence. Any communication about truly important matters, such as user stories and requirements, will happen in writing after all. During the development process, there will be plenty of “writing” as well. Tools like Jira and Slack make that process a whole lot easier. In other words, verbal communication is generally only used to make sure you understood everything properly.

“We have been working for Dutch companies for around nine years now and have had few problems with communication so far. Every remote team always has plenty of people with an excellent verbal and written command of English. During the onboarding process for new employees, we test their linguistic abilities and we help colleagues improve their language skills if they want to. On the other hand, some developers just want to sit behind their computers and build excellent software. You need that kind of talent as well.”

Babish Shrestha, Project Manager at Proshore in Nepal

3. Testing, briefing and managing take too much time

The third and final challenge associated with remote development that we will cover in this article has to do with "time.” It is often said that things like testing, briefing and managing your team all take a lot more time and effort, compared to working with an in-house team. Is that actually the case? The great thing about Agile development is that you do not have to write out your requirements in full.

You specify what the user stories are, what you expect and what goals you want to realise and the team will then draw up the requirements and the acceptance criteria. All they need from you is your verification of their work. A self-managed remote team does exactly what the name implies: it manages itself. That means you can keep your project management efforts to a minimum.

The team should also do its own testing, which forms part of the development process. You can use the “four-eyes principle,” for example. This means developers always have their work tested and evaluated by a colleague before it is sent to the client. Furthermore, any team should include a tester and automated tests should be embedded in the development process itself.

It goes without saying that we at Proshore offer our clients smart, up-to-date services and products. However, gaining an online edge requires more than that. It also calls for a fast and flexible way of working (together). I have already discussed sprints and Scrum in a previous article, so today I want to talk about the magic of collaboration: synergy.

Synergy: specialists working together

Specialists generally tend to focus largely on their own area of expertise. If a client's project requires you to work together with other specialists and achieve results quickly and efficiently, you need specialists who excel in their respective fields and have mastered the fine art of collaboration. That means being able to listen to others, ask the right questions, not lose sight of the common goal and - above all - trust in each other's expertise. We pursue this degree of collaboration from the very beginning. We want to sit down with all other stakeholders at the start of a project. The marketing department, sales, designers, communication, users: they all have their own professional perspective and contributions that they bring to the table. This can lead to synergy, to the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. When that happens, it is an amazing experience for everyone involved.

No room for politics

As you work together with your stakeholders, there will be times at which certain external specialists can add value to your project and improve your results. Think of specialist knowledge of the field of marketing strategy, for example. A fresh external perspective can also be valuable. Bringing in an outsider with a background in design at the right moment will allow you to make great progress in that regard. We have various external partners with whom we frequently collaborate and with whom we have had excellent experiences in the past. Bringing out the best in yourself during a project is one thing, but being able to do the same for others is quite another. Such a close collaboration requires trust and transparency. If those are missing, you - and everyone else involved in the project - will notice immediately. That is no way to get things done. This form of collaboration calls for a great degree of responsibility. By conducting these reviews together every two weeks, you push for a certain degree of transparency. You show the others what you have been working on. There is no room for politics. Even if something like that were to happen, Scrum has an ace up its sleeve to help stimulate synergy: the retrospective. You look back on the process together to evaluate how it went and you give each other feedback in an open and positive manner - all in an effort to help each other grow. That is important, because it keeps everyone's eyes on the ball. We conduct these retrospectives every two weeks, because we have had some excellent experiences with them. Unlike many other organisations, our retrospectives take place during the process itself, so we can take action if necessary. There's little point to it if everything is finished and you cannot change anything anymore. We ask all stakeholders to indicate what they believe went well and what can be improved. We then formulate concrete actions that the entire team can support.

Good cooperative partners, the right tools and a desire to excel are all elements that you can develop and invest in. They are all equally important. Lastly, there is that one intangible element...

Let's call it chemistry.

“What you are trying to do with your little IT company in Nepal from the Netherlands won't work, Haico. You have to be here and stay on top of things yourself.” Haico Duisters, co- founder of Proshore, was given this advice by a Belgian entrepreneur when he was in Kathmandu for business. “In the end, he had to pull the plug, while our company continues to grow!”

“We owe the success of our company in part to the way in which we work together with others. By giving our employees freedom and inviting them to provide input, we create an active and involved business culture.” We have applied the Dutch approach in Nepal - and it works. “Only new employees address me as ‘Sir,’ but they stop doing that in less than two weeks.”

Last week, I attended a presentation about process optimisation. They told me that the process takes precedence and people come second. I believe that people make the product and that they should be able to bring out the best in themselves. What that is, exactly, differs per person. Someone who comes to work for us straight out of school needs knowledge, so that must be available in the company. Sometimes, there are people who already possess the knowledge they need, but now they want to continue their professional development. We do our best to help them as well.

There are even some Nepalese colleagues who want to come work in the Netherlands. We are currently exploring the possibilities of facilitating that. Apparently, there are few Dutch entrepreneurs in Nepal and the consulate in in favour of the idea, so we are launching a new programme for this.” Nepalese people working at a business park in the North Brabant town of Heeze - you don't see that every day. Haico laughs: “Who knows, we may end up moving to the city!”

Moving competences around

Haico sees the company as a large collection of desired and available competences: “Our business partner Roshan is a technician. He has far more affinity with technology than with HR policy, for example. We have therefore assigned that task to someone else. In this manner, you can move the necessary competences around between people. By making managers owners of tasks they are good at, things will work out eventually. The same goes for lower levels of the organisation. We have someone who is an authority in the IT world when it comes to WordPress and we therefore support him in that role. For example, he gets to train two of his colleagues for an hour every day. That investment will pay for itself. I ask people what their personal goals are and how I can help them achieve those goals. You can tell that people appreciate having someone listen to what they want. The latter is even more important than one's salary, which is quite remarkable for a country like Nepal where a high wage is still seen as a status symbol.”

Some hierarchy to boost motivation

“Way back when, we started out with just six people. Before long, we had a team of fourteen or fifteen. There came a time when Roshan and I could no longer handle everything by ourselves. We then introduced a department structure: application development, front-end development, mobile development and e-commerce, with managers at the head of each department.”

That is uncommon, because it is said that managers should be kept away from knowledge workers. “In many cases, hierarchy doesn't actually add anything. For us, however, one layer of it resulted in far more initiative. On the one hand, people see that there are career advancement opportunities available to them, because the manager used to be one of them. On the other hand, it creates a far more active business culture. For example, they have weekly knowledge sessions in which people exchange ideas that others then develop further. The managers have their own meetings. They bring issues from their respective departments to the table, which the company actively seeks to resolve. People see that something is being done with their ideas. The threshold to approach me or Roshan was too high; people in Nepal are more likely to talk to someone whose hierarchical position is closer to their own.”

Haico has great respect for his Nepalese colleagues. “People in the Netherlands still think they follow us in everything, but that is not true anymore. In fact, they sometimes lead the way in the right composition. They take initiatives that make me think: “You took care of that well!”

[:en]“What you are trying to do with your little IT company in Nepal from the Netherlands won't work, Haico. You have to be here and stay on top of things yourself.” Haico Duisters, co-founder of Proshore, was given this advice by a Belgian entrepreneur when he was in Kathmandu for business. “In the end, he had to pull the plug, while our company continues to grow!”

A Dutch approach in Nepal

“We owe the success of our company in part to the way in which we work together with others. By giving our employees freedom and inviting them to provide input, we create an active and involved business culture.” We have applied the Dutch approach in Nepal - and it works. “Only new employees address me as ‘Sir,’ but they stop doing that in less than two weeks.”

Last week, I attended a presentation about process optimisation. They told me that the process takes precedence and people come second. I believe that people make the product and that they should be able to bring out the best in themselves. What that is, exactly, differs per person. Someone who comes to work for us straight out of school needs knowledge, so that must be available in the company. Sometimes, there are people who already possess the knowledge they need, but now they want to continue their professional development. We do our best to help them as well.

There are even some Nepalese colleagues who want to come work in the Netherlands. We are currently exploring the possibilities of facilitating that. Apparently, there are few Dutch entrepreneurs in Nepal and the consulate in in favour of the idea, so we are launching a new programme for this.”

Nepalese people working at a business park in the North Brabant town of Heeze - you don't see that every day. Haico laughs: “Who knows, we may end up moving to the city!” Moving competences around

Haico sees the company as a large collection of desired and available competences: “Our business partner Roshan is a technician. He has far more affinity with technology than with HR policy, for example. We have therefore assigned that task to someone else. In this manner, you can move the necessary competences around between people. By making managers owners of tasks they are good at, things will work out eventually. The same goes for lower levels of the organisation. We have someone who is an authority in the IT world when it comes to WordPress and we therefore support him in that role. For example, he gets to train two of his colleagues for an hour every day. That investment will pay for itself. I ask people what their personal goals are and how I can help them achieve those goals. You can tell that people appreciate having someone listen to what they want. The latter is even more important than one's salary, which is quite remarkable for a country like Nepal where a high wage is still seen as a status symbol.”

Some hierarchy to boost motivation

“Way back when, we started out with just six people. Before long, we had a team of fourteen or fifteen. There came a time when Roshan and I could no longer handle everything by ourselves. We then introduced a department structure: application development, front-end development, mobile development and e-commerce, with managers at the head of each department.”

That is uncommon, because it is said that managers should be kept away from knowledge workers. “In many cases, hierarchy doesn't actually add anything. For us, however, one layer of it resulted in far more initiative. On the one hand, people see that there are career advancement opportunities available to them, because the manager used to be one of them. On the other hand, it creates a far more active business culture. For example, they have weekly knowledge sessions in which people exchange ideas that others then develop further. The managers have their own meetings. They bring issues from their respective departments to the table, which the company actively seeks to resolve. People see that something is being done with their ideas. The threshold to approach me or Roshan was too high; people in Nepal are more likely to talk to someone whose hierarchical position is closer to their own.”

Haico has great respect for his Nepalese colleagues. “People in the Netherlands still think they follow us in everything, but that is not true anymore. In fact, they sometimes lead the way in the right composition. They take initiatives that make me think: “You took care of that well!”

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The benefits of hiring an Offshore Software Development Company

Discover how hiring an offshore software development company can reduce costs, access a global talent pool, and get to market faster. Learn the secrets to successful offshore development and how it can benefit your business.

Book a call Talk to our Accounts director, Jeroen, to see if our ready-to-code offshore teams are a fit for you.

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Both software startups and scaling companies can benefit from hiring an offshore software development company. One can benefit by gaining quick traction, while the other can get expertise and extra capacity at an affordable price.

Not only that, hiring software developers will help you free up your time so that you can spend more time building the business around your product instead of building the product itself.

There’s always the option to build your own in-house team, but that will cost you a lot and might not always be feasible. Hiring and managing individual remote developers is also possible, but that can get complicated quickly.

On the other hand, with an offshore development company, you get a fully-fledged dev team that can handle everything for you.

What is Offshore Software Development?

Offshore software development is a type of outsourcing. It involves hiring developers in another part of the world to help code a software product. That could be anything from the front end of an app to the back end of a website.

Regardless of whether your offshore developers are responsible for all or part of the development process, the objective remains the same: build the best software product in the shortest possible time frame.

Under Agile principles, this objective gains an even leaner edge ensuring offshore software developers deliver on (or even before) time – enhancing the benefits of adopting offshore software development.

Benefits of Offshore Software Development

Now let’s take a closer look at the main benefits of hiring an offshore software development company, starting with the cost-benefit.

1

Cost-effectiveness

Hiring a team of software engineers – even if that team is just two people – is an expensive outlay. When you factor in local labor costs, the time and money needed to recruit, onboard and train the right employees, plus the additional ongoing costs of keeping them as company employees with sick pay, annual leave, pension contributions, and more – it soon adds up.

The benefit of hiring an offshore software development company is that you have a single cost agreed upon upfront. And when your project finishes, there’s no further cost unless you wish to retain their services.

2

Experience on-demand

You can obtain the exact skills and expertise you require using an offshore development company. In today’s world, technology is always advancing. For that reason, there is an ongoing shortage of IT specialists in certain fields, including the latest programming languages.

Hiring offshore opens up the global talent pool. When hiring in your own country becomes difficult, you can look abroad to find experienced and well-educated software engineers. Choosing the right offshore software development company means they already have the experience and understanding of your challenges.

3

Ease of recruitment

When it comes to offshore software development, you don’t have to worry about the recruitment process. Your offshore software development company handles all aspects of recruitment for you like

• selecting candidates with the right profile to suit your needs
• dealing with all the formalities

Because of this, you can completely focus on your core business and ways to grow it. Also, you don’t have to worry about maintaining an in-house team at the project’s end.

Not only this, there will be times in your business when you might have to let go of some of your employees to scale down a bit. This is definitely a challenging task and comes with additional costs.

Also, there is a chance that your team member might leave you. Again, you need to start your costly recruitment process.

4

Sustainable scaling

Like any business in software development, there are peaks and troughs.

• During peaks, you might need additional capacity to keep up with growth.
• In troughs, you might need to reduce your team to cut costs.

When you might need to add new features quickly or move towards a new vertical, you need a new team as quickly as possible.

The beauty of hiring an offshore development team through a dedicated company, as opposed to individual developers, is that they can scale with you, providing the right skills and the extra capacity you need when you need it the most.

And should the time come when you need to scale down because that piece of development is now complete, you’re not left with the difficult decision of letting employees go.

5

Faster time-to-market

Speed and accuracy are essential when you’re trying to stay ahead in a competitive market. Making the most of world time zones and the global talent pool, you could have developers working around the clock, helping you to take your product to market much sooner.

Adding capacity with a self-managed team of developers working with an Agile mindset means you don’t need to worry about day-to-day project management. Someone else handles that for you.

In addition, because developers working in Agile take an iterative approach to product development, it means you can focus on bringing core functionality to market sooner and then build it out over time.

1

Cost-effectiveness

Hiring a team of software engineers – even if that team is just two people – is an expensive outlay. When you factor in local labor costs, the time and money needed to recruit, onboard and train the right employees, plus the additional ongoing costs of keeping them as company employees with sick pay, annual leave, pension contributions, and more – it soon adds up.

The benefit of hiring an offshore software development company is that you have a single cost agreed upon upfront. And when your project finishes, there’s no further cost unless you wish to retain their services.

2

Experience on-demand

You can obtain the exact skills and expertise you require using an offshore development company. In today’s world, technology is always advancing. For that reason, there is an ongoing shortage of IT specialists in certain fields, including the latest programming languages.

Hiring offshore opens up the global talent pool. When hiring in your own country becomes difficult, you can look abroad to find experienced and well-educated software engineers. Choosing the right offshore software development company means they already have the experience and understanding of your challenges.

3

Ease of recruitment

When it comes to offshore software development, you don’t have to worry about the recruitment process. Your offshore software development company handles all aspects of recruitment for you like

• selecting candidates with the right profile to suit your needs
• dealing with all the formalities

Because of this, you can completely focus on your core business and ways to grow it. Also, you don’t have to worry about maintaining an in-house team at the project’s end.

Not only this, there will be times in your business when you might have to let go of some of your employees to scale down a bit. This is definitely a challenging task and comes with additional costs.

Also, there is a chance that your team member might leave you. Again, you need to start your costly recruitment process.

4

Sustainable scaling

Like any business in software development, there are peaks and troughs.

• During peaks, you might need additional capacity to keep up with growth.
• In troughs, you might need to reduce your team to cut costs.

When you might need to add new features quickly or move towards a new vertical, you need a new team as quickly as possible.

The beauty of hiring an offshore development team through a dedicated company, as opposed to individual developers, is that they can scale with you, providing the right skills and the extra capacity you need when you need it the most.

And should the time come when you need to scale down because that piece of development is now complete, you’re not left with the difficult decision of letting employees go.

5

Faster time-to-market

Speed and accuracy are essential when you’re trying to stay ahead in a competitive market. Making the most of world time zones and the global talent pool, you could have developers working around the clock, helping you to take your product to market much sooner.

Adding capacity with a self-managed team of developers working with an Agile mindset means you don’t need to worry about day-to-day project management. Someone else handles that for you.

In addition, because developers working in Agile take an iterative approach to product development, it means you can focus on bringing core functionality to market sooner and then build it out over time.

Offshore Software Development challenges

Whilst there are obvious benefits to offshore development, there are some common challenges associated with it:

1

Time zone differences

While your chosen offshore software development company might be self-managing and autonomous, there will still be times when you and your team will need to communicate with them.

You can always schedule daily or weekly meetings. But, there might be a problem when you need to get hold of the team in case of emergencies like your application stops working or gets hacked.

This is especially true when they’re handling one piece in a more extensive software build, and you might have different development teams working on different areas.

To overcome this challenge, always look for an offshore team who can provide continuous support per your time zone.

2

Communication barriers

In software development, English has become the language of choice. But just because people speak the same language doesn’t mean they will always fully understand each other.

In a field like software development, with its unique and complex terminology, miscommunication can occur – especially when multiple communication channels are in use simultaneously, from email to video calls.

Communication issues can cause bumps in the road that slow down development. That’s why finding an offshore development company with English-speaking developers is important.

3

Cultural differences

As with any external organization, ensuring a cultural fit with your offshore software development company is important. Different cultural values can result in different communication styles and ways of working and mismatches around expectations.

Misaligned cultural values can result in strained working relationships, which will become detrimental to both productivity and the quality of the code. You will also need to factor in things like festive holidays, which will impact development.

4

Quality control

One of the biggest fears around hiring offshore developers is poor code quality. Your code is your most valuable asset. The developers you hire could be inexperienced or recent graduates without the relevant skills or training.

Working with developers you don’t know, located in another part of the world, could result in poor code quality. This could lose you valuable time and also require a costly fix. As the offshore team handles everything, you might have no idea about how your product is built. They might be using outdated or vulnerable code. Using a reputable offshore software development company with proven examples of their work can eliminate these fears.

1

Time zone differences

While your chosen offshore software development company might be self-managing and autonomous, there will still be times when you and your team will need to communicate with them.

You can always schedule daily or weekly meetings. But, there might be a problem when you need to get hold of the team in case of emergencies like your application stops working or gets hacked.

This is especially true when they’re handling one piece in a more extensive software build, and you might have different development teams working on different areas.

To overcome this challenge, always look for an offshore team who can provide continuous support per your time zone.

2

Communication barriers

In software development, English has become the language of choice. But just because people speak the same language doesn’t mean they will always fully understand each other.

In a field like software development, with its unique and complex terminology, miscommunication can occur – especially when multiple communication channels are in use simultaneously, from email to video calls.

Communication issues can cause bumps in the road that slow down development. That’s why finding an offshore development company with English-speaking developers is important.

3

Cultural differences

As with any external organization, ensuring a cultural fit with your offshore software development company is important. Different cultural values can result in different communication styles and ways of working and mismatches around expectations.

Misaligned cultural values can result in strained working relationships, which will become detrimental to both productivity and the quality of the code. You will also need to factor in things like festive holidays, which will impact development.

4

Quality control

One of the biggest fears around hiring offshore developers is poor code quality. Your code is your most valuable asset. The developers you hire could be inexperienced or recent graduates without the relevant skills or training.

Working with developers you don’t know, located in another part of the world, could result in poor code quality. This could lose you valuable time and also require a costly fix. As the offshore team handles everything, you might have no idea about how your product is built. They might be using outdated or vulnerable code. Using a reputable offshore software development company with proven examples of their work can eliminate these fears.

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Explore our resources on offshore software development

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Benefits of hiring Proshore’s offshore teams

Ten years ago, software companies were cautious about using offshore developers and needed convincing as to the benefits of hiring an offshore development company.

Today, it’s the industry norm. What’s changed is that forward-thinking offshore development companies have addressed the potential challenges and turned them to their advantage.

At Proshore we’ve got a proven track record of helping to build high-quality software – including apps and SaaS – by offering our experienced development teams as a service.

The advantages of hiring Proshore as your offshore software development company include:

1

Ready-to-code English-speaking remote development teams based in Nepal

Everyone on the team has a good grasp of English, so communication won’t be an issue. The only issues will be focusing on will be related to your software development needs.

2

Everything you’d expect from an in-house team (minus the office space)

Since we operate from two different locations (Nepal & the Netherlands), clients from different time zones get continuous support – meetings are conducted as per the overlap with your time zone plus software development takes place even outside your working hours.

3

Hand-picked, coached, and self-managed tech talent bespoke to your needs

All talents working as part of your extended offshore team are mutually selected along with you and can be changed or scaled up/down a need. Furthermore, they operate on new and future-proof technologies, thus ensuring high-quality results.

Cloud spending continues to rise sharply in 2026, yet many enterprises capture only modest returns while facing mounting operational complexity and waste.

Flexera’s 2026 State of the Cloud Report shows estimated waste across IaaS and PaaS has climbed to 29 %, the first increase in five years, largely because surging AI workloads and newer pricing models make forecasting and control far more difficult.

At the same time, organizations are placing greater weight on measurable business value delivered to operating units, up 12 % age points year-over-year, yet pure migration efforts still struggle to translate infrastructure moves into sustained P&L impact. 

Gartner continues to forecast that 25% of organizations will experience significant dissatisfaction with their cloud strategies by 2028, driven by unrealistic expectations, incomplete execution, and uncontrolled costs.

The disconnect widens once workloads move into production. Infrastructure has shifted, but underlying processes and optimization disciplines often remain rooted in pre-cloud realities.

Why Cloud Migration Success Doesn't Equate to Business Success

‍

Migration projects frequently reach completion on schedule and within scope, yet the anticipated gains in cost efficiency and innovation rarely follow at scale.

In practice, lift-and-shift approaches deliver functional environments without the deeper redesign needed to unlock new operating models. 

Applications run in the cloud, but they often carry forward the same inefficiencies and manual interventions that existed on-premises.

Real enterprise value emerges only when cloud platforms power reengineered end-to-end processes, real-time decision-making, automated scaling, and seamless cross-functional collaboration. 

That level of impact requires mature cost governance, cultural shifts toward shared accountability, and an architecture that positions cloud as a strategic capability rather than simply a lower-cost hosting layer.

Modern migration tools and automation speed up the initial transition, but they cannot overcome fragmented ownership or the lack of continuous optimization routines. 

The fundamental constraint often is the missing connection between infrastructure readiness and enterprise-wide performance improvement.

What Structural Issues Limit Cloud Migration Success?

Most cloud migration challenges are not technical and come from misaligned ownership, governance, and execution.

These shortfalls trace back to consistent organizational patterns rather than one-off technical issues. 

Migration initiatives often proceed in isolation from business strategy teams, while architecture, risk, and governance functions engage only after major decisions are locked in.

Legacy operating assumptions persist, and hybrid or multi-cloud environments quickly become sources of hidden complexity. 

Geopolitical pressures and data sovereignty requirements are accelerating rapidly, introducing late-stage rework that should have informed architecture choices from the outset.

Value at scale remains elusive when the cloud is managed as a tactical IT exercise rather than a core enabler of enterprise transformation.

In 2026, with AI workloads reshaping the economy and sovereign cloud demand growing at 35.6%, organizations that treat migration checklists as sufficient proxies for strategic change continue to underperform.

Four patterns appear repeatedly:

(Based on patterns in Flexera’s 2026 State of the Cloud Report | Gartner cloud trend analysis)‍

The Compounding Costs of Migration Without Full Value Realization

When migration concludes without an embedded value framework, inefficiencies compound across the enterprise. Discovery and planning efforts are duplicated across units.

Post-migration environments experience resource drift, with AI-driven workloads amplifying underutilized capacity. 

Leadership confidence erodes as promised improvements in speed, resilience, and financial performance remain only partially delivered.

These frictions usually appear in several consistent patterns.

(Source: Flexera 2026 State of the Cloud Report)

How Can You Make Cloud Migration Deliver Real Business Value?

Cloud generates durable enterprise performance when it functions as an integrated layer inside broader digital and operational transformation initiatives. 

The operating model connects cloud efforts directly to strategic priorities, modernizes applications in parallel with infrastructure shifts, and embeds cost governance, risk management, and continuous optimization into the foundation rather than layering them on afterward.

Architecture, delivery processes, and performance routines reinforce one another from the beginning.

This structure converts migration from a discrete project into an ongoing driver of competitive capability.

Critical Factors That Determine Cloud Value Realization

Enterprise cloud programs are evaluated through the lens of strategic alignment, execution readiness, and sustained performance rather than migration milestones alone. 

The decisive consideration shifts from whether workloads have moved to whether the organization possesses the structures required to capture and maintain value at scale.

Proshore’s Approach to Enterprise Cloud Performance

Proshore targets the systemic issues that prevent migrations from translating into lasting value by designing every program as a fully optimized, value-focused initiative from the outset. 

Rather than executing standalone infrastructure shifts, the approach integrates application modernization and governance directly into business workflows and architectural decisions, ensuring tight alignment with enterprise goals and long-term scalability.

The work with De Heus, Powerledger, and CYS Group shows how this is executed in practice.

At De Heus, Proshore replaced spreadsheet-driven workflows with a cloud platform on Microsoft Azure. Legacy systems were consolidated, and 13 applications were built to standardize operations. The result was cleaner data and a platform that scales without added complexity.

For Powerledger, Proshore built a cloud marketplace on Google Cloud using Java and Kafka. The system supports real-time data flow and stable transaction performance under scale.

With CYS Group, Proshore developed cloud-native .NET services and a modern data layer. Reporting became consistent, and decision-making moved faster without manual intervention.

AI is applied across the complete delivery lifecycle to accelerate outcomes. Requirements gain clarity faster, and optimization opportunities surface early, shortening timelines and minimizing rework.

Projects operate strictly within enterprise parameters: sovereign or private environments, DORA-aligned practices, and internal standards are foundational. 

Accountability is unified, systems integrate purposefully, and governance operates by design, eliminating the fragmentation and drift that typically undermine cloud programs.

How Can Enterprises Get Better Results from Cloud Migration?

Cloud platforms create meaningful enterprise advantage only when migration evolves into a comprehensive transformation.

Organizations that move beyond migration completion metrics and treat cloud as a strategic operating challenge, addressing architecture, governance, cost discipline, and cultural alignment as essential requirements, consistently achieve stronger results.

By embedding cloud strategy within larger modernization efforts, establishing repeatable optimization practices, and designing for value from the outset, enterprises can break the pattern of high expenditure and limited returns.

Enterprises that treat cloud as infrastructure will continue to overspend. Those who treat it as an operating model will outperform.

As more and more companies seek to reduce operational costs in areas such as managing enterprise applications and software development, the IT outsourcing sector is experiencing a period of sustained and steadily increasing demand.

But there’s a world of difference between IT outsourcing that leverages the benefits of external expertise, and expensive outsourcing which overruns and potentially damages customer relationships, and your business reputation.

So what can you and your business do to mitigate the risks of things going wrong? I, Jeroen van der Horst, share what I've learned from experience as a co-founder at Proshore.

The future is IT outsourcing

There’s no denying it. With the IT outsourcing sector expected to show a compound annual growth rate of nearly 9%, there’s a clear and obvious trend of businesses seeking a competitive advantage through outsourcing software development. 

This is a worldwide phenomenon, with revenue from application outsourcing alone set to reach €94.53bn in 2022. Getting software development outsourcing right can help you overcome technical challenges, and give you a competitive edge. Getting it wrong can lead to a product that doesn’t meet your expectations, or worse, one that’s unfit for purpose.

1️⃣ Planning

"If you're not properly organized, your management efforts are going to be much greater than the results you’re gaining from outsourcing IT."

Taking a ‘hands-off’ approach to software development outsourcing can often come back to bite you in the long-term, with mistakes or misunderstandings needing extensive micromanagement to get development back on track, or even salvage it entirely. For that reason, vision is everything.

Without a clear vision, your outsourced software development team won’t have a clear sight of the project’s direction. So before the project gets underway, ensure you know exactly what you’re outsourcing. Give developers a roadmap  – it’s worth putting in the extra planning time to ensure that you know your requirements for the short-term and the long-term. 

Provide a clear scope to ensure your outsourced team knows exactly what functionality they are responsible for developing. Expect questions and be concerned if there aren’t any – questions are a sign of engagement, and the desire to fully understand your business goals and the project itself.

2️⃣ Alignment​

Choosing the wrong partner, because they’re cheaper or because it saves you time searching for the best fit, can have ill-fated consequences for software development outsourcing.

Remember, you’re not only outsourcing the capacity for software development – you’re also buying-in outside expertise and experience. Spending more time finding the right outsourcing partner to begin with can save you time later on. And selecting the provider most closely aligned with your business needs, culture, and industry will mitigate problems further down the line. 

The cheapest option may cost you more in the long run, so as with any major expenditure, make sure you see social proof in the form of previous clients’ feedback, reviews, and projects – so you can judge for yourself whether they’re a good fit.

3️⃣ Expectations​

Whilst no one really enjoys getting bogged down in contract negotiations, at the same time, not setting out a detailed statement of work alongside a clear service level agreement will result in ambiguities and confusion about who’s responsible for what. 

Your contract should be clear and precise to prevent management and technical issues from arising in the future – and to avoid conversations like: “We thought you were handling that”.

4️⃣ Ownership

Depending on how you plan to deploy your outsourced team, it can sometimes be unclear as to who has ownership – especially if you’re bringing in a managed team. If the team is self-managed, then there might be a lot of internal decision-making without necessarily involving you as the client.

On the other hand, if your outsourced developers are working alongside an in-house team, it’s important to establish who’s managing the project from the very beginning. And if your outsourced team is taking ownership of a particular area of the project, you need to be clear about the lines of communication, and the management structure – so everyone is clear about who has responsibility for what.

5️⃣ Communication

"If you only have one conversation at the start, when you speak again in a few months time you might end up with something completely different. Regular communication is key."

When you’re not all in the same room, conversations get missed. As priorities change, you need to ensure they’re being communicated across your teams, whether they’re in-house or outsourced. A lack of communication really only leads to one outcome – and it’s one that’s best avoided. 

It’s a good idea to establish clear channels of communication before your collaboration begins. Taking an Agile approach to software development, you should schedule daily and weekly meetings, together with regular one-to-ones, to help overcome blockers. Face-to-face meetings can be highly effective, but if you’re working across time zones, you may find alternative forms of communication more suitable. 

Whichever way you choose to organize your communication, you need to sustain it beyond your initial conversation to ensure that important information about the project is getting through, and is understood. Otherwise, you could end up with a different product from the one you planned.

6️⃣ Culture​

If you ignore the ‘soft stuff’, things can get hard pretty quickly, especially if you’re working with a remote team in a different part of the world. 

No matter where your outsourced team is located, for your collaboration to work, you need to ensure you share the same core values. Your outsourcing provider might be an expert in the type of project or industry you’re in, but they won’t be familiar with your company culture – unless you onboard them. 

At the same time, it’s essential to onboard your in-house stay with new ways of working alongside your outsourced team. That might mean changes to the project management process, new software, and even strategies for working around different time zones.

7️⃣ Integration

All too often, outsourced software development teams are seen as an additional piece and not a collective of individuals. They might be working remotely in another part of the planet, but if you want them to help build great software, you’re going to need to build great relationships. 

With advances in technology, the barriers to effective communication have been well and truly broken down. That means you have the opportunity to build trust, respect, and positive relationships, which in turn offer the potential to increase motivation and energize team members. 

By treating your outsourced team as part of your organization, you’re not only creating additional motivation, you’re also investing in the potential for future collaboration.

IT outsourcing: getting it right ​

Businesses, trying to balance operational costs with the need to efficiently scale-up capacity, are increasingly looking outside their organization for software development solutions. Their need to find the right team of software developers might be simple, but in a competitive global market, it’s a challenge that is easier said than done.

"Sometimes companies, have an idea, or they have a project – so they throw it over the fence and hope it will be right. That approach often ends in disappointment."

When it comes to outsourcing software development, you can mitigate the risks by avoiding common pitfalls. And as part of an effective business strategy, IT outsourcing is a risk worth taking for cost-effective, streamlined, and expedited software development that reduces the time taken to get your product to market (and iterate it once it’s there).  

Getting IT outsourcing right can create real value for money and a positive return on your investment. By forging deeper personal connections with your outsourcing partners, you’re also investing in longer-term collaborations, and setting up scope for future projects that might require the expertise and skills of an extended team – with the added advantage that they’ve already familiar with your company culture and ways of working.