Fabricio González Antuña
CEO
You may be in that phase in your tour operator or travel business in which your legacy systems and piecemealed technology are holding you back from reacting to the market demands that seem to change in the blink of an eye. Clients want you to be able to send a quote in minutes, not hours or days. Or maybe you have some software that you’ve purchased but it still needs to be specially tailored to your needs. You need to find a development partner, an IT company that won’t try to sell you something you don’t need, that gets what problems you’re facing and can help you to build the simplest, yet most effective solution.
Hiring in-house can be a daunting thought. It’s expensive and if you’re not a technical person, you may be uncertain as to what kind of qualifications like which programming language skills to look for in a candidate. So, your best option is to outsource, and in the world of outsourcing, you can either hire a local team or in-house personnel, a nearshore team (meaning, from a country in a nearby timezone), or an offshore team (that is half a world away, but is most likely the cheapest option).
In recent years, more and more North American businesses in the tourism and travel industries from DMCs to tour operators to travel booking engines are finding that hiring a nearshore team in South America is the ideal solution as it offers a happy medium between onshoring and offshoring. In this post, we’ll go over just some of the reasons why this is true.
5 Advantages of Nearshore Development:
CLOSE TIME ZONES
Remote work and distributed teams are on the rise, with an estimated 42.5% of the global workforce going remote by 2022, and most companies have employees across three time zones or more. These days, with video conferencing and instant messaging, being in slightly different time zones is like being two floors apart in the same office building, just a minor inconvenience!
But, when offshoring to countries like India, businesses may struggle to justify the 9-13 hour time difference that makes it nearly impossible to establish consistent, fluid, and real-time communication. Fortunately, when North and South American companies collaborate, they work together in real-time, which reduces the time needed to reach a consensus, attend to last minute issues, etc.
GEOGRAPHIC PROXIMITY
While it’s not an absolute must, one way to ensure that a development project starts off on the right foot with a development partner is to meet with the team in person. Fortunately, to travel to South America or vice versa is less onerous and costly than visiting Asia. For example, to meet a team in India traveling from the US would involve, on average, 25 hours of travel and would cost around $4,000, whereas a flight to South America may last 4 hours and cost $450. Not to mention the jet lag you avoid by moving north and south instead of east to west!
SAME CULTURE
When handing over development to a nearshore partner in South America, North American businesses can enjoy a greater ease of working together, as the Americas share similar western cultures, societal norms, organizational behavior, and values.
In South America, due to cultural tendencies, developers are known for being more transparent. Instead of agreeing with all of the client requests and suggestions and trying to hide any delays or errors on their end, South American devs are more outspoken and honest. They feel more comfortable consulting with you when unexpected challenges arise. In the end, this way of working saves everyone time and money and helps to build trust.
More and more travel companies from DMCs to tour operators are turning to nearshore travel software development to create critical business systems. Here's why.
HIGHER QUALITY TALENT
At Dynamia, we’ve had more than a handful of clients turn to us to fill in the gaps left behind by a former offshore partner. Today, the quality of Latin American software engineering and IT talent is on par with that of the US, with more non-profit and government programs cropping up to help form a more educated society with greater access to opportunity thanks to technology. And the proof of these program’s success is already here. The 2018 Developer Survey conducted by Stack Overflow, a site trusted by 4.7 million programmers, shows that the average reputation of its top users is higher in South American countries than those from Asian countries.
GREATER ROI
When you choose to partner with a nearshore provider, although the upfront costs (like hourly rates) are greater than those of an offshore provider, the entire project cost is likely to consume less budget due to a greater return on investment per hour. The work achieved in the same time with nearshore development will be both faster and higher quality, thanks to the reasons mentioned before (quick communication, better skilled talent, etc.)
And, when compared to hiring an onshore development company, nearshoring is more cost effective. According to the 2018 Deloitte Global Outsourcing Survey, 87% of organizations in the IT sector choose nearshore outsourcing for cost-cutting purposes.
For High Quality Software, Choose Nearshore
When it comes to receiving quality travel software development services for less, nearshoring is the best of both worlds as it blends the best aspects of onshoring and offshoring together. Enjoy real-time communication, quality work completed within a quick time frame, cultural affinity, and a greater proximity to you than offshore providers! And, there’s a development partner in South America for any kind of business. At Dynamia, we’re well-versed in helping clients from the travel sector, having worked with tour operators and rental companies to streamline their operations with custom technology, resulting in a greater bottom line.
If you’re interested in learning more about a nearshore IT partner, contact us today!
