Improved connectedness and onsite Western management are leading to an increasing amount of UK and US Tech companies hiring offshore dedicated Developers.

The world becomes smaller and more connected with each new technological advance that we make, leading to a new standardization throughout. While cultural differences remain, the landscape of business has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades, and business standards and practices are far removed from what they used to be. These developments can be to the advantage of the business owner.

Nowadays, geographical location is not the barrier it once was, and many companies are taking advantage of the fact that you can reap the benefits of access to entirely new talent pools whilst reducing cost and risk in other countries to help your corporation gain an edge. Dealing with offshore providers has been considered sometimes risky and problematic, improving internet speeds, better foreign education and the rapid progress made in technology, has streamlined it and made it into a viable and profitable practice which can be of massive benefit to US and UK organizations.

The Philippines, with Cloud Employee leading the way, are at the forefront of this new standard of offshore development.

The most obvious benefit of the Philippines is the fact that English is widely spoken all over the country, and, for many, it is indeed the first language. This eradicates communication problems and speeds up the interaction between employer and employee, all the while simplifying the consultation process.

More importantly, the Philippines is a country which has seen unprecedented growth in the last couple of decades, with a huge talent pool which any prospective employer can now access via companies with established offices like Cloud Employee. While most countries are at the moment experiencing a shortage of skilled IT professionals (The UK and US IT unemployment rate is less than 1%) the Philippines are witnessing an unprecedented rise in its skilled technical marketplace, with more and more highly qualified people being available every year.

And this will only increase in the future. There were over 130,000 Computer Science university graduates last year, and this number is increasing year on year, which means that this availability of capable, trained and eligible workers will only swell in the coming years. When this is combined with the fact that more and more foreign companies are making use of this fantastic talent acquisition opportunity, it means that this workforce is only getting more experienced as time goes on. And it gets even better when you factor in the average wages earned by most skilled professionals compared to wages in the UK, which means that you can get the same workforce for your company, via companies like Cloud Employee, at a fraction of the price ensuring your company remains competitive and can take on more business.

This is part of the most significant benefits of offshoring to the Philippines; expansion without significant monetary outlays. Lower running workforce costs means you can expand your team without any increase in your fixed and capital costs, and without having to expand your facilities or make any further capital outlays locally. This means significant savings, which in turn can allow you to make new investments or increase expenditure in other parts of your company such as marketing budget or hiring people in areas such as sales and marketing which can increase productivity and profitability.

This, in turn, leads to an increase in the depth of your staff which gives your company a better foundation for growth, as well as more support to previously undermanned departments. It basically means that people already employed by you do not have to overload themselves with projects, thus avoiding delays in production, communication or meeting deadlines, and freeing themselves up for additional projects.

This way you will have more control over quality and better scope for an organization, at no further costs. While outsourcing may have been the cheapest option before, it was often somewhat lacking in direct control of the employer, as well as raising quite a few transparency issues. Setting up an offshore office means that you have direct control over who you hire, what benefits and training they receive, and what incentives or bonuses they get for work they do or targets they reach. You can also now hire specific individuals for specific jobs, without having to ask a current employee to take on a task that they may not be qualified for.

It also means that, over time, you get to know your employees and are thus in a better position to motivate them or to make better use of their respective abilities. This means that when a new project comes in, you know exactly to whom to delegate the various jobs involved in order to deliver a quality product or service to the customer, as well as to maximize your profits. It then also frees up your local employees to work on other more pressing jobs or to work on the developmental aspect of your company, while your offshore employees take on the more time-consuming tasks. It also helps in improving your local workers by developing their managerial skills as they manage their offshore support team over at the Cloud Employee office.

One very important factor that has to be considered is the fact that, in the Philippines, it is not difficult to find workers who are prepared to work to your own customized schedule. There is a long history of outsourcing and call centers in this country so people are generally used to working night shifts or whatever time they are required to do so. This allows you to have all your staff working to the same schedule, or to have a workforce which is constantly working 24/7, which means that your company is always operational, and any problems can be dealt with instantaneously at all times. It also means that you can deal on a global scale and cover hours which may be difficult to do so from a strictly local base.

All this adds up to one thing; competitiveness. More specifically, competitiveness for the smaller independent businesses in order to keep up with the bigger conglomerates. Large companies have been outsourcing or offshoring for years, which has always given them an edge over the smaller companies which have been operating on a strictly local level. Technological advances, like vastly improved internet speed in developing countries and cloud-based data storage and computing, now allow SME’s to join the offshore revolution and thus to be better placed to compete with their bigger counterparts.

Basically, you can increase your workforce, as well as diversify it, increasing your productivity and thus profitability without any extra costs. And, what more and more people are now realizing, is that the Philippines is the perfect place for this.