Value Proposition - Cost, Quality, Service Dilemma

All companies big and small would like to have the maximum impact in any vendor relationship by attaining cheaper price, better quality and timely delivery. But many say that you cannot effectively get them all. You can shoot for any two of the three. You can get either better, cheaper and not faster or cheaper, faster and not better.

This is a bigger challenge for small and medium sized software development companies. Whether they provide solutions or products, they do not have the economies to scale and the capital required to open offshore development and testing centers and invariably shy away from taking advantage of cost differential.

There have been companies that are started by returning citizens to countries like India, who understand the corporate culture of the west and high discipline in process control and delivery mechanisms. They are able to effectively provide the quality, the superior skill and timely delivery to their customer partners. Many such companies have presence in multiple countries and offer depth of knowledge and turnkey services. For example, Symbioun has operations both in the USA and in India. The development can take place continuously and the resources can be spread out from onsite to offshore taking advantage of best of both worlds. On top of it, you should looks for services companies that have specialization. Symbioun for example, specializes in Internet, Desktop and Mobile applications in eLearning, Publishing, data warehousing, data mining, Banking & Insurance and others, using Microsoft .Net, Java/J2EE, RIA in Flex, Web2.0 and LAMP stack. They also keep in mind the total cost of ownership of the solution once it is developed.

With the right understanding of options available to manage risk of off shoring software development, the small and medium sized companies will be able to take advantage of what these companies can offer and effectively reduce cost for their customers and compete successfully.