How to select the right near-shore partner – and minimise your risks

But how can you tell one potential partner from another? Here are some key questions to ask during the selection process:

How do you know you can trust them?

Nothing matters more than this. If you have any doubts whatsoever, walk away. A good first step towards finding a reliable partner is to seek recommendations, demand references, and ask their customers questions like: What are they like to work with? Have they delivered the right outcomes for you? How have they dealt with problems? How collaborative are they?

How good are their technical skills really?

Every potential partner will tell you that they have amazing technical skills. Really, really talented people. The best in the industry. But how do you know how good they are in reality? It’s important to talk to the technical leadership to see if they genuinely understand your technology and what good looks like. It can also be worth interviewing the people who’d be working in your team. 

Do they understand how to build secure systems?

Today, all systems need to be secure – and by using tooling as part of the build process, teams can ensure security is embedded throughout the development process. So, are all the people in your partner’s team security aware? And are they given appropriate training on the subject?

Are they focused on delivering value?

Too many near-shore teams will prioritise billable hours over delivering genuine value to their clients. However, for both you and your potential partner, value – rather than actual cost – should be top of mind. In particular, going with the cheapest option might not always result in the best value for your organisation. If your partner doesn’t have the right technical or collaborative skills, for example, poor outputs and delays could end up costing you dear in the long-run.

Is there a commercial awareness right across the business?

The advent of the public cloud has introduced a completely novel dimension to designing new systems. Architectures must be cost-effective in their use of cloud services, which means those designing them must have a current knowledge not only of the services available, but also the pricing implications which may depend on usage patterns.

Are they in a suitable near-shore location?

Here, you’ll need to consider issues like cultural alignment and time zone differences. It’s really hard to make agile development processes work well if your teams’ working days barely overlap or your potential partner doesn’t have an ethos of close collaboration.

Do they have good English language skills that run deep in the business?

Check that everyone speaks good enough English to enable peer-to-peer contact between your team and theirs. If all communication has to go through a project manager, as they’re the only one who speaks your language, misunderstandings and delays will become inevitable.

Do their people collaborate easily?

Having a naturally collaborative culture will make communication at all levels much more straightforward. Everyone needs to be able to communicate easily and transparently so that issues and opportunities can be discussed openly.

The best way to find answers to all the questions above, and reassure yourself that you’re selecting the right partner, is to spend time with them. Find out if they’re happy for you to visit their offices as often as you wish. Insist on meeting the people you’ll be working with – and not just the senior management and sales team – and ask them some tough questions. The more time you spend doing this, the more you’ll find out what the business is really like to work with.

Finally, once you’ve selected your potential partner, or drawn up a shortlist, it’s often a good idea to put them to the test before committing to a contract. For example, you could give them a problem to solve – and even if it’s not a live issue, the way they go about finding a solution can be very revealing as to the way they operate.

Alternatively, you could engage them on a small, live project and measure them on how they handle it. This is a very low-risk way of assessing whether the potential partner is likely to be a good fit for your own organisation. Here at Damilah, we’d be more than happy to discuss any of the above questions with you and explain our ‘partner-shoring’ model to you – where our near-shore team will collaborate seamlessly with you to deliver high levels of shared value.

To find out more, get in touch now to discuss our range of services.

Iain Bishop, founder and CEO, Damilah