Software Integration Support can be local or based in a far-off country that is known for software development. It’s quite possible you will save some money on the front end, but then comes the heavy lifting of producing something from nothing.​

Sure, there are platforms out there to help with your goal of getting the best bang for your buck, but how reliable are those reviews? Today, we break down the biggest challenges of working with a resource from a remote location and circle back to the “shop local” aspect of things.​

Table of Contents

First disagreement

You can’t walk over to their desk or office. They claim to be in one country and mostly are, but a VPN can share your location from anywhere. So how do you optimize for the best communication and the best results when they are potentially so far away?​

Local contracts vs remote

In the United States, there are firm fixed contracts requiring the client to pay up front, because you have a multitude of channels for getting the best results from a vendor, whether threatening to write a bad review, going to small claims court, or simply driving over to their office to vent and not leave until the vendor has met your reasonable demands. But remote workers do not offer this kind of connection to your vendors.​

Communication and time zones

Reaching out becomes a full-on battle for a simple reply. They may have a face representing themselves as the developer but a whole team performing the work. Between the time zone difference and slow response times, a three-month project can easily fester into three years and burn countless dollars.​

Phased approach to payment

We usually provide three up-front payments for each phase to break up the project into measurable results and make it much easier to afford the project. However, as mentioned before, DO NOT PAY UP FRONT if you offshore your talent.​

Sad offshoring stories

The first call is with a savvy sales engineer who establishes know, like, and trust, but it then becomes a tug of war of time, constant bad communication, results you weren’t looking for, or no results at all from someone potentially posing as them. Not all contractors are like this, but there are a large number who slow-walk the development process because they know the client does not know what they are doing.​

How to avoid poor Software Integration Support: Choose local or offshore summary

We are not shying you away from anything. There are obvious pros and cons to whatever direction you choose, but performing one of your first software integration support or development projects requires a lot of due diligence, and even then you may get burned.

Doing your first software integration project and want a second set of eyes? Reach out to our team to sanity-check your plan before you commit.