Why IT Software Consulting is Flourishing?

By any account, IT software consulting is a flourishing business even in times when other industries are shrinking and many sectors are losing jobs. What are the drivers behind such a continuous growth in hard times for the global economy?

First, a growing number of enterprises worldwide need to focus of their core business and cannot afford to maintain on their payroll IT consultants who are usually amongst the most highly paid experts. In time when corporations are obsessed with cost savings and cost reduction, only large multinationals can afford to retain expensive IT consultants as full-time employers, while a growing number of mid-sized and small-sized businesses prefer to hire third party IT and software consultants should a need arise.

Even small family businesses are actually forced to rely on external IT software consulting for good reasons; reputable technology blogs can offer valuable free advice but one would need expert assistance when solving issues that occur during implementation and use of business software. Thus, IT and software consultants can rely on a broad, and growing, customer base worldwide, fuelled by the rising adoption rates of various business software.

On the other hand, the growing demand for IT and software consulting services has resulted in the emergence of myriads of IT consultants, independent and corporate, who offer on-premise or online consultancy services. This in turn has made the IT consulting services more affordable to both large and small-scale businesses.

The process of corporate restructuring and organizational optimization that is taking place globally aims to improve corporations’ efficiency also through access to knowledge and intellectual property provided by IT and software consultants. Hiring third party consultants or outsourcing an entire service to external consultants is no more considered an extravagant, and to some extent unsecure step but is regarded as a necessary move in the wider context of transition to a knowledge-based economy where intellectual property plays an important competitive role. Thus, the World Wide Web is now flooded with technology blogs offering advice how to cope with the challenges of ever-developing information technology, while IT consultants enjoy steady growth of their business.

Obviously, the shift to more technology oriented business practices can be a painful process, while many common mistakes can be avoided through hiring a reputable IT consultant. One would find useful readings regarding the adoption, configuration, and support of particular software on the Internet but only a reputable IT consultant can provide the required expertise to perform the software implementation in the best possible fashion, for example. Therefore, the demand for IT consultancy services is growing while the service price is going down on average.

Today’s risk management practices often require the use of IT consultancy services as well. As a rule, an IT or software consultant is better prepared to manage and successfully complete a procedure of business software implementation or upgrade to a more advanced solution. One should also bear in mind that the specific knowledge on the best practices regarding the implementation, support, and upgrade of business software is among the well-kept industry secrets and rarely an IT consultant is going to make it public and available online.

The expanding sector of IT and software consulting now provides more than consulting services, with IT consultants offering outsourcing, restructuring and optimization services, as well as services in the field of software development previously provided by software vendors only. The evolution of the IT consultancy can result in the emergence of brand new products and services based on cutting-edge technologies, while other IT consultants would prefer to stick to traditional software implementation and optimization services. In both scenarios, IT software consulting is going to play a crucial role in the knowledge-based economies that create more wealth.

Major Factors Making Outsourcing of IT Application Development to India a Wise Move

Outsourcing of IT application development to India is becoming widespread among Western organizations looking for reliable service at affordable price, while local software developers and vendors now have reputation as providers of world-class service. In fact, India invested heavily in education, infrastructure, and development of software research facilities before local companies, and India's economy as a whole, have become able to benefit from development of software under contracts signed with customers based abroad. It took years, probably decades, to build the necessary infrastructure allowing for uninterrupted Internet access, to develop educational institutions capable to train well-educated software experts and those professionals to gain the first-hand experience required to take part in complex and sophisticated projects on equal terms.

At present, Asia/Pacific region is leader in the field of software outsourcing services, also called software off-shoring, while India is the world's undisputed leader in this industry, accounting for more than a third of all software outsourcing contracts. There are good reasons for foreign firms to select India as their primary choice of IT application development outsourcing, including the aforementioned presence of well-developed infrastructure, but a major fundamental factor is the lower cost of software development due mainly to lower labor costs. Actually, remunerations of India's professionals involved in development of software are going up, but at slower pace compared to wage increases in the West, while local standard of living allows for far more flexible pricing.

The gradual increase of the average remuneration for a software developer in India resulted in a recent wave of foreign-educated experts who prefer to return and pursue a career in India rather than in the West, thus boosting the number of master's degree and PhD holders involved in software development. This in turn led to a sharp increase in the number of software research and development contacts heading to India from major private and public organizations abroad.

One should not underestimate the quality of locally educated software experts, though. India have poured money into higher and tertiary education for decades, creating a well-developed network of public and private educational institutions in the field of technology. The country lacks world-leading universities and institutes but the average computer expert graduated in India can easily find a decent job abroad, which means that local software firms are able to hire well-trained personnel and provide very competitive service in terms of quality and affordability.

Another major factor in India's success story is closely related to the ongoing process of technology proliferation in an inter-connected world. Educational institutions and individual researchers are able to share knowledge instantly, while the very nature of software outsourcing results in a situation where the software developers gain knowledge and familiarize with cutting edge technologies that are otherwise difficult to access. In this mutually beneficial process, the customers benefit from lower costs of software development, while software developers and software vendors to whom such projects are outsourced gain invaluable knowledge, which further boosts their competitive advantage.

Locations like Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune are topping the list of the world cities considered to be the best places to outsource software development, research, and consulting, while the country continues to invest in order to achieve sustainable growth of these industries, choosing to bet on knowledge-based economy. It is hard to foresee whether this will be a long-lasting process in a stagnating world economy, but India's wise investments in technologically advanced education and industries can only fuel further inflow of software outsourcing contracts from abroad. In fact, thanks to thoroughly planned long-term economic development, foreign business customers are not wondering whether outsourcing of IT application development to India is advantageous but how to choose the best fit for their respective project among numerous reputable service providers.

Three Reasons to Outsource to Software Development Center in India

Software development outsourcing, or off-shoring, is becoming a widespread business practice among enterprises across various industries; many businesses today are choosing to outsource to a software development center in India. Many things can be said describing why India is emerging as the world's leading software development outsourcing hub, but three major reasons include cost savings and cost restructuring, quality improvement and access to knowledge, as well as innovation opportunities offered by IT outsourcing, in general.

India, which ranks first on the list of software development outsourcing centers in the world, offers obvious advantages to enterprises in terms of well-educated professionals, growing number of research and development centers, which are capable of dealing with complex projects, and extremely lower production costs compared to Western countries.

The costs related to development of a sophisticated business application in an Indian software development center can be as low as three times cheaper than its equivalent developed in the West. This does not necessarily mean that the software vendor would sell the product at three times reduced priced, but markedly lowers overall price of software applications whose development have been outsourced to developers in India.

The second major reason for corporations to outsource to India is related to the fact that the country's research and development centers are now able to offer high-end research services, comparable to that in the West. Access to knowledge is crucial in the fast-paced IT industry; this makes it difficult for companies to cope with these technologies, relying solely on in-house resources.

Thus, India offers affordable alternatives to enterprises that are interested in gaining access to cutting-edge technologies at an affordable price and develop products that incorporate up-to-date functionality. In addition, a fair number of businesses rely on India's software development centers to enhance their existing software applications and embed advanced technologies and functionality.

An opportunity to get access to innovative technologies and innovations, in general, is considered another major reason for companies to look for the services provided by India's software development centers. While the Silicon Valley retains its position as a leading incubator of highly successful IT start-ups, India is emerging as a center where a growing number of U.S. and Europe-based corporations outsource their research and development activities. Naturally, many of the technologies developed in these centers are copyrighted; however, India's software developers have gained valuable knowledge and the country now boasts at least two generations of software developers who have been involved in highly innovative projects.

A reputable software development center in India can offer various services and benefits to customers but the major advantages are as follows: significant cost reduction, access to know-how, and opportunity to develop innovative products at affordable price.

IT Software Consulting Should Provide Applicable Strategic Solutions

Demand for IT software consulting is growing as virtually all and every enterprise tries to adopt a combination of software solutions that increase efficiency, help boost sales, and lower overall costs of running a business. It is a multimillion business that is well-developed in technologically advanced countries like the United States and most of Europe, while a rapidly growing number of IT consultants from outside these countries are emerging as major market players.

IT advisers and software developers based in Asia/Pacific region, mainly in India, as well as peers in Central and Eastern Europe are growing in strength and offer high-quality services at an affordable price, giving their Western counterparts a run for their money. IT consultancies based outside Europe and the U.S. and Canada gradually evolved into reputable service providers offering highly competitive services in the field of software estimation, management, implementation, administration, and deployment. Lower payroll costs, growing number of well-educated professionals as well as literally unlimited access to modern technologies helped IT consultants in India and other outsourcing centers worldwide in developing solutions that are applicable by small and medium sized enterprises and multinational corporations alike.

During the past couple of decades, IT software consultancy and IT outsourcing are among the main driving forces behind a flourishing worldwide market for software services as well as development and implementation of configurable and customizable software solutions aimed at business customers. Recently, cloud computing gave a boost to this sustainable trend, allowing corporations to outsource even more business processes and procedures to remote third-party IT consultants. Nevertheless, traditional IT consultancy services are still dominating the market for software consultancy services.
Usually, startup software consulting firms offer specialized services; but even seasoned Silicon Valley veterans admit that IT consultants from India and Eastern Europe managed to grow into full-scale services unbelievably fast, riding the wave of new technologies and enjoying lower business costs. Typically, payroll costs are responsible for a major portion of overall business costs of an IT consulting firm because IT experts are among the highest paid professionals.

IT professionals outside Western Europe and North America, however, earn significantly lower than their Western world counterparts, thus enabling IT software consulting service providers in India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America to price their services at highly competitive rates. On the other hand, one should bear in mind that different software outsourcing centers specialize in different types of services, with many U.S.-based corporations outsourcing their R&D activities mainly to India, for example.

Furthermore, modern IT consultancy services are covering many aspects of a business and often involve management advisory services as well as thorough due diligence required to estimate, plan, and implement the best fit. It was in the past when IT software consultants were engaged mainly in implementation, maintenance, and support services. Contemporary IT software consulting is more about deployment of applicable and working strategic solutions, rather than implementation of a single software product, thus making the IT consultants major players in today's business process.

Benefits of Outsourcing Software Consulting Service and Software Development to India

Outsourcing computer software development services, and related software consulting service, is a recent phenomenon that provoked heated debates in the United States and member states of the European Union. Nevertheless, contracting a reputable software consulting firm in India to conduct less expensive research and development or provide consultancy services is now a widespread practice in the West, with a growing number of enterprises realizing that they can only benefit from lower costs and acceptable quality offered by Indian software developers and consultants.

Traditionally, a large number of well-qualified software specialists graduated in India find a job abroad and relocate soon after graduation. Even so, local universities are able to fill the gap and produce well-trained software experts, hired by local software consultants, which in turn are able to provide extremely competitive services due to the markedly lower labor costs. India-based software development companies now account for over 30 percent of the global market of outsourced software services, with cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune creating and maintaining the necessary infrastructure to encourage the growth of the local software consultancy and development services industry.

As a result, the country has enjoyed an annual 30 percent growth of its software exports in the past few years, signaling that the exported products are able to compete on equal terms with software solutions provided by leading world software vendors. The low prices are just one side of the coin; demanding Western customers are looking not only for a less expensive consulting service but also for a quality one, while specifics of India’s labor market allow local enterprises to hire well-educated and trained experts and nonetheless offer competitive prices. Thus, computer software development services obtainable in India allow for marked cost savings through off-shoring of this otherwise expensive process.

Evidently, a software consulting firm in India is able to provide competitive prices but access to intellectual property and IT knowledge and expertise is a new driving force behind Western companies’ desire to outsource to India. Local universities and research centers enjoy good reputation in the field of information technologies while both academic and non-academic research centers compete for orders in the sphere of software development services. Such a healthy competition additionally lowers prices, without lowering the overall quality of services provided, and gives the West an opportunity to hire local talents without paying the high price for getting similar services at home.

The use of worth-hiring software consulting service usually requires a significant financial effort in the Western world, while Asia/Pacific software consultants have developed and apply wide-accepted best practices and possess operational expertise that can hardly be developed in-house by the vast majority of small and medium sized Western enterprises. Thus, contacting a software developer or consultant based in India looks like a reasonable move for business owners that have trouble sustaining their competitive advantage or abilities in the field of IT.

Computer software development is a relatively expensive service as well as customization of existing software solutions. Implementation of new business software like customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems requires significant investment and can be extremely time consuming, resulting in even higher implementation costs. Therefore, outsourcing the whole or part of the process to external consultants is a wise move whatever the case may be. Getting software consulting service provided by an India-based company can prove to be the best fit for both large corporations and small and medium sized businesses that want to get access to IT expertise at affordable prices.