How to Leverage Dedicated Teams to Reach your Innovation Goals?

Most companies are now operating (or planning to operate) as software companies. Hence, it is imperative that they should also have a software wing. This wing is dedicated to building software that simplify processes and digitalize operations. The software team can be in-house or an offshore team. These days most companies prefer offshoring for its several advantages like reducing costs and access to good talent. However, regular offshoring to technology service providers doesn’t give the base company enough control or visibility. Hence, a third alternative, Dedicated Teams, has been gaining wider acceptance. It offers the benefits of offshoring while offering control and transparency. As with any business model the dedicated teams model too should be implemented with caution. Here are some tips that will help you establish the dedicated team that’s most suitable for your business and make it work.

Why Should you Choose a Dedicated Teams Model Over Others?

The reason lies in its very name; well, it’s dedicated to your business and innovation goals. It is suitable for all kinds of businesses, from start-ups to established ones. It helps them build fast a skilled team that can expand their business goals and implement their innovation initiatives. The team boosts productivity and can be scaled up on demand easily. The team association usually stays longer and hence it retains and transfers back the knowledge of your product. These advantages are in addition to the regular outsourcing advantages like minimal CapEx and overhead costs. It is no surprise that most companies now prefer Dedicated Teams engagement model over the other options like remote teams and outsourcing to Technology Service Providers.

If it is so Good, Then What Might go Wrong?

Cultural Non-alignment – Cultures of the outsourced locations and the base countries usually defer a lot. The difference in cultures may lead to miscommunications. They may also perpetuate cultural biases too.

Tough to manage the team – The resource agency only helps you establish it. Nevertheless, managing the team remotely can be quite challenging.

Lose control of development process – When working remotely, controlling development process to maintain the required standard of software is an arduous task. Manytimes the resource agency can’t help much for lack of required knowledge.

Expensive – Dedicated teams is many times expensive when compared to the other engagement models. The returns of investment may be low if the teams are not managed properly. However, you can still make them work as explained below.

How to Make it Work?

Transparent Communication

Transparent communication is very important especially when dealing with a remote team. It helps if you define the scope of the remote teams’ work as accurately as possible and how their work aligns with your vision and helps you reach your business goals.

Build Trust and Long-term Relationships

Dedicated teams work best for long-term projects. It is important to see that the team’s attrition is as low as possible and that the skills are nurtured and transferred to the base company. In due course, the team, if managed well, can grow into a company allied to the base company. Hence it is very important that the team understands the business goals well and works towards reaching them.

Promote Cultural Tolerance

It is important to understand cultural differences and give all the team members the freedom to follow their culture as far as it doesn’t disrespect other’s. That freedom is important both at the base company and the offshore team. They can participate in cultural exchange programs to help them understand each other better, and to avoid any misunderstanding that may arise.

Choose a co-creator, not just a Resource Agency

It takes a good outsourcing vendor with technical and domain knowledge to manage the dedicated team seamlessly. Managing the team remotely without the help of the outsourcing vendor is too arduous and risky.

The outsourcing vendor should not only help you manage the team seamlessly, but also ensure proper communication channels, good control, and coordination. It is even better if they take the responsibility of aligning the team with the organizational model of the onsite firm.

Add Additional Revenue Channels

Yes, it is true that dedicated teams may cost you a little more than other outsourcing channels for all the advantages they provide. However, most of the teams can be the base company’s innovation team with a bunch of software experts. The team can build software products that can become the base company’s assets, their intellectual property, and can open new channels of revenue. That is how dedicated teams are leveraged to boost innovation, productivity, and at a considerably low cost.

We’re Here for you

For all the advantages and complexities of dedicated teams, the success of the model largely depends on the resource agency. A typical outsourcing vendor is not enough to build a successful dedicated team. It takes a lot of experience in the software development field and the ability to provide expert advice on technical matters to build a team that can boost innovation.

For about sixteen years coMakeIT has been helping organizations around the globe establish their dedicated teams at Hyderabad, India. Many of the teams grew into bigger Offshore development centers and some of them into a separate private limited company that they’ve full ownership of. Irrespective of the size of the team, our customers totally agree that their dedicated teams helped strengthen their innovation capabilities. 

Here’s how our dedicated team model is different from others’.

For more details of our engagement models, please visit us or write to us at info@comakeit.com.