Why It's Worth Looking Abroad for A Reliable Software Consulting Firm

Contracting a software consulting firm that is located round the corner is not the smartest business move one would make although good number enterprises do not pay enough attention to the process of selecting the best fit for their software projects. A popular fallacy is that local software consulting companies are best equipped to meet the requirements of enterprises that are situated in the same vicinity. In fact, modern-day technological solutions require a lot more than in-depth knowledge of regional specifics although it is an important factor to consider when looking for a reliable software consultant.

The world of technology has changed markedly in the past decade, with countries previously not considered technology leaders now enjoying strong positions in the markets for technology related services like hardware and software consulting. Nations in Latin America and Asia/Pacific have emerged as world leaders in the field of software consulting through outsourcing of technology projects, while India has established herself as world leader in terms of software consultancy projects outsourced to local firms.

India now has a long tradition in software development and software consulting, given that the widespread use of software solutions in business and households is a young market, and the country continues to invest in infrastructure required to boost development of local technological hubs. At present, such world class centers are located in New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and other large cities across India, thus providing the basis for further rapid development of software-related services.

Business across the economically developed nations started moving their software research and development departments eastwards, while others outsourced software consultancy to foreign-based firms, looking not only for more affordable service cost but for quality those companies in Asia/Pacific now can provide. Slowly but steadily, world economy is recovering but those foreign businesses that benefited from software consultancy services provided by India-based companies are very unlikely to start looking to replace those service providers with local ones. Of course, no business in the this world would replace a beneficial service or product with a less affordable one that does not provide better service quality unless it is forced to do so by external factors like government regulations or regional hostilities.

Thus, most industry analysts agree that India is set to retain its world-leading position in the field of software outsourcing, software consulting services including. Whether the country will be able to widen further its market share is debatable and depends on a number of internal and external factors like continuous investment in proper infrastructure and sustainable development of local educational institutions in the sphere of technology. Nevertheless, there are no signs that foreign-based companies should be careful when hiring an Indian software consulting firm for long-term projects.

Government regulations in the United States and within the European Union may influence the future of outbound software outsourcing in these huge markets but adoption of strict regulations in this field is unlikely, market analysts agree. Both Washington and Brussels advocate free market economy which does not bode well with restrictive measures that can reshape an entire industry, therefore local enterprises will continue to look abroad in search of advantageous software consulting services.

In fact, a business in, say, Europe, might experience more difficulties selecting a software consultancy based in India due to the wide choice of reliable and experienced consultants in the region. How this came to happen is an interesting topic but undoubtedly one should bet that a software consulting firm in India can give good ride for the money to a software consultant based in the US or Europe which are traditionally considered strongholds where technological advancements are made.

Why A Software Consulting Firm in India Can Provide Better Service at Competitive Price

During the past decade software development outsourcing has become a widespread business activity and a software consulting firm in India is far better positioned to get a business contract from abroad and for good reasons. Global economic downturn has played a role in India's emergence as leading world provider of software development services within outsourced projects but other factors like government-backed investments in appropriate infrastructure and education have been the major drivers of such a development.

India inherited a relatively well developed educational system based on a British system that has a proven record in the course of centuries. The country managed to expand its reach nationwide and meanwhile created a number of technological educational centers that served as the stepping stone for development of modern research and development centers in the field of software and hardware engineering. Later on, India invested heavily in modern infrastructure required to maintain those facilities and attract foreign investors interested in outsourcing in part or in whole their software development and software support services abroad.

In the course of a couple of decades, software consulting companies in India gained enough professional experience to compete on equal terms with counterparts in leading technological nations in the West, backed also by the rapid expansion of local software development industry and the growth of India's economy as a whole. As the number of outsourced projects grew, local software consultancies gained not only valuable experience but got access to cutting edge technologies that are rarely accessible even to leading Western software consultants. Within a few years major world software vendors and hardware manufacturers set foot in India through local consulting firms or through direct investment in regional research and development facilities which hire local software experts. A good number of software professionals later moved to locally-owned software companies or established new software consulting firms that possess both the required professional know-how and cheaper labor resource to provide extremely competitive service.

India's software consulting firms are much better positioned when it comes to payroll expenses due to some specifics of the country's economy which provides great opportunities for career development of locally-grown software expenses but still can offer more affordable services in terms of labor costs involved in a technological project. Local software consultancies have been forced to increase remunerations due to prevent brain-drain of well-trained experts but are still able to prevent India-educated software engineers and consultants from fleeing the country, while providing decent standard of living to them.

Local companies involved in computer hardware and software industry have enjoyed a stable rate of growth for more than a decade, a growth rate much higher than the industry average across the world, thus they piled significant strategic financial reserve that can be used for further service enhancement and strategic investments in infrastructure development and continuous employee training programs. During a very short period of only a few years, foreign-educated Indian software experts started to flow back to India, attracted by markedly improved work environment, more lucrative remuneration packages, and last but not least possibility to work on complex projects that involve latest technological developments in the field of hardware and software research.

That said, a software consulting firm in India is better positioned to attract projects from abroad compared with peers in the region or any other country in the world. In fact, a software consulting firm in India can afford to lower the price of its service without sacrificing quality, backed by a combination of strategic reserves piled in the past and smart investment in locally-grown experts who are well-prepared to provide world class service to customers at home and abroad.

Benefits of Outsourcing to Software Consulting Firm in India

Software consulting has many faces, making it hard to provide a universal suggestion whether a particular project should be outsourced, but a consulting firm in India can offer to benefits that rivals based in the United States and Western Europe can hardly afford to provide to their customers. Service price is a fundamental factor in evaluation of all and every service, and India’s IT consultants are well known for their very competitive pricing and first class service based on first hand experience with both large scale and niche projects in the field of software development, customization, and implementation.

Traditionally, India’s software developers and vendors have been a major force in the region of Asia/Pacific, which in turn resulted in a flourishing software consultancy industry that provides advisory services domestically and abroad. According to various reports, local market for software consulting services is set to grow markedly within the next decade, while a steadily increasing number of foreign companies outsource projects and services requiring software consulting coverage to India-based consultants. In fact, India is the leading world power in the field of software outsourcing service, mainly offshore software development and research and development services, but also software consulting covering all and every aspect of the multifaceted software development and implementation process.

The country competes with behemoths like China and Canada to attract foreign-based companies, but virtually all reports by market analysts position India as a leading world power in the sphere of offshore software consulting, along with the Philippines. The two countries jointly hold over 50 percent of the world market for outsourced software development and consultancy services, with India leading the pack by a marked margin.

This development is result of wisely planned government policy of investing into knowledge-based services and industries like software and hardware research and development, with cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune cited as world-leading destinations for software outsourcing and software consultancy services thanks to global connectivity, developed infrastructure, and availability of well-trained software professionals. Thus a software consulting firm in India, especially one positioned in the above mentioned R&D centers, can rely on underlying infrastructure similar to those in the West while enjoying significantly lower payroll expenditures, for example.

Software consultancies based in Europe and the United States have to deal with highly regulated domestic labor markets, strict legislation in the field of human resource protection, and traditionally higher remuneration packages within the IT industry, and all those factors combined result in loss of competitive advantage compared with India-based software consultants. In contrast, India’s software consultancies enjoy a liberal market, where a combination of relatively low wages in the IT sector and availability of highly educated professionals in the field creates unparalleled market growth potential. Even the brain drain of domestically educated IT professionals to companies and universities abroad does not harm noticeably India’s ability to provide unrivalled software consulting services in terms of quality to price ratio, which signals further steady development of those services in India.

Software development and consulting outsourcing is mutually advantageous process, in which the service provider gains access to technology and particular know-how it would not be allowed to access otherwise. Thus, India-based software consultants gradually gained experience in fields that were previously restricted to U.S.- and Europe-based companies only, which in turn gave a marked boost to their competitiveness in terms of possession and access to cutting edge technologies.

Finally, a software consulting firm in India can benefit from the country’s unique location in the very heart of Asia/Pacific region, making India a preferred place for hiring a software consultancy firm to deal with regional software and hardware developers and vendors.

The Economic Crisis and India’s IT, Software Consulting Growth

Looming economic crisis and continuous recession disillusioned many customers looking for affordable yet reliable services related to IT and software consulting. Numerous business customers left their former service providers in search of a reliable service that is better adapted to meet the challenges of ongoing economic troubles on a global scale, creating gainful opportunities for entrepreneurial-minded IT and software consulting based in developing markets.

Thus, a number of countries in Asia/Pacific region emerged as serious contenders in the race for consumers of IT and software consulting services worldwide, setting foot in new markets, and replacing established market players. The map of the IT consultants that are considered reliable and are in high demand among business customers changed dramatically in the past decade or so. Of course, each country and region has its own leading players in the local market; nevertheless, a global shift toward IT and software consulting services based in India is more than evident, with India boasting some 50 percent of the global market for offshore software consultancy.

Such a development was not unexpected, really, yet it did not happen overnight. It took years to educate a generation of highly skilled professionals in the field of IT, while it took even longer to overcome prejudices related to the reliability of local consultants and the quality of their service. Well-established Western corporations are slow when the matter in question is to choose a new service provider or IT consultant, but when the economic crisis hit Europe and North America cash stripped enterprises were fast to realize they should adjust their budgets to a new reality.

In fact, India’s software consultants have been ready to face the challenge, with numerous IT consultancies already providing services to a broad customer base in Europe and the United States, competing on equal terms with IT advisories based in Canada, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Moreover, the country is now having trouble to fill the gap in the demand for outsourced services and the number of IT professionals its educational institutions are able to produce within a short period.

Naturally, North American and European governments are experiencing growing pressure from local business communities to adopt measures restricting the outflow of IT related jobs abroad, including IT consulting, software development, . On the other hand, regulatory measures are destined to be unsuccessful in a market environment where corporations compete in a liberal market in which fundamentals like productivity, efficiency, costs, etc., matter. Those are largely populist measures intended to preserve local jobs but they rarely succeed in doing so for good reasons: labor costs in the West are very high, productivity is not among the world’s highest, social benefits of workers burden corporate budgets, to name a few.

Thus, India’s software consultants are the big winners amidst an ongoing, and heated, debate whether outsourcing of services, mainly in the field of IT, is good or bad for Western economies. Demand for such services is growing rapidly worldwide, Western consultants, however, are not able to supply affordable service to an increasing number of mid-sized corporations on a tight budget.

Therefore, the whole debate is heading in a wrong direction, blaming corporations for looking eastward for affordable and reliable IT services, while not realizing that underlying issues of productivity and payroll costs undermine the very competitiveness of the West. In any case, India’s IT and software consulting sector is now in position to gain even greater share of the world market for software consulting services.

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.