What Is A Nearshore Development Company?

As an ever-increasing share of commerce, collaboration, socializing, and entertainment takes place online, companies are racing to develop powerful and attractive software products that can increase customer acquisition and retention via multiple platforms. This includes customer-targeted mobile apps, websites, video games, and multimedia as well as business productivity tools, e.g., a custom CRM.

Given the rapid rate of advancement in the IT landscape, competition is fierce when it comes to offering the most innovative features, the fastest performance, and the latest tech trends. The same goes for the competition for talent, as the demand for developers, QA engineers, UX designers, and other specialists has driven salaries up and contributed to a shortage of qualified IT workers in the US. In the current environment, North American companies of any size struggle to assemble a complete team with all the specialists necessary to develop a quality software product. Instead, they turn to nearshore outsourcing.

While outsourcing simply refers to contracting a business process to any company in a foreign country, nearshore outsourcing targets only countries that are nearby. In the US, this usually means the adjacent Latin American, or LatAm, region. Popular nearshore hubs in the area include countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. These countries are preferred because they work within broadly the same time zone as the US and can boast highly skilled IT professionals with good English proficiency at affordable rates.

Why Choose A Nearshore Development Company?

A nearshore development company is a business that specializes in providing software development services, either by handling a complete project from end to end or by supplementing a client’s existing IT infrastructure with the desired specialists. There are many advantages to choosing nearshore over in-house development or traditional outsourcing locations such as China or India. Typical reasons to select a nearshore software development company include:

• Seamless Staff Augmentation – Nearshore developers will have experience working on a variety of different projects as part of a remote team. This means that they can easily be slotted into an existing team to expedite product delivery or fill a skill or workload peak gap.
• Specialist Skills – Your project may require an expert in a particular technology, such as blockchain, AI, virtual reality, cybersecurity, or user interface design. A nearshore development company will have a talent pool that covers all the required bases for any kind of software project, so they can assemble or complete a team with the relevant specialists.
• Culture and Language Alignment – Communication is key to any collaborative endeavor. LatAm as a nearshore region shares many cultural similarities with the US, and nearshore developers will provide staff fluent in English.
• Proximity and Time Zone Alignment – The outsourcing process largely leverages remote work, but time zones are a factor–it can be frustrating to wait eight hours for a response while your partner company sleeps! By choosing nearshore, you can communicate with your team in real time during normal business hours. The geographical proximity also makes flights for in-person visits relatively short and affordable.
• Resource Optimization – Outsourcing a software project to a nearshore company frees up your own resources to focus on your business, marketing, and other important processes without getting bogged down in development work. Even if you have your own IT department, they are likely occupied with routine tasks that would slow down the project. Choosing nearshore can save time and money in the long run by letting you maximize the value of your company resources.

Getting Started With Nearshore Outsourcing

If you’re considering nearshore outsourcing, we recommend the following the steps below to make sure you find the best nearshore development partner for your needs:

1. Assess Your Needs – The process starts with outlining the requirements of your desired software product or the type of work you need and evaluating the capabilities of your existing IT team (if applicable). Then reach out to nearshore development companies that advertise the type of skills you need with your specifications and ask how they would handle the project.
2. Research Potential Partners – At this point, some companies will have made a good impression, but it’s up to you to do due diligence and research their case studies, reviews, and testimonials. These are usually available on the company site but you can follow up by contacting their previous clients.
3. Establish Project Management Methods – Once you’ve settled on a partner, it’s important to establish how the collaboration will proceed. Reputable companies will offer a project dashboard to monitor progress, but you may want to supplement this with your preferred task management platform (e.g. Jira, or Trello). Delineate responsibilities in the team and a schedule for meetings and progress milestones.

Choosing A Region For Nearshore Outsourcing

Latin America is a popular region for development outsourcing, but you also want to check where potential outsourcing partners are based. Look for positive indicators such as higher education institutions with a focus on digital courses, cultural/economic links to the United States, intellectual property (IP) protection (which are of concern in some places of Asia and Eastern Europe), and government support of the tech/outsourcing sector before making your decision.

Onshore-Nearshore Outsourcing – The Best of Both Worlds

One attractive option for contracting a development team is the hybrid Onshore-Nearshore outsourcing model. In this setup, the majority of the development team works from the nearshore hub but select team members, e.g., project managers, are based in the US for close collaboration with the client or to leverage native-level knowledge of the US market.

AccelOne offers Onshore-Nearshore development services based on this model, with proven success in a variety of industries and platforms. To discuss how our expert developers can help your business achieve its software goals, contact us online or call 800.863.6814.