Guidelines to outsource IT vendor in Vietnam

In recent years, Vietnam has become well-known for IT outsourcing on international market. Indeed, according to a report from Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) in 2017, IT industry achieved a breakthrough with approximately $2.2 billion in revenue. In fact, what really draws attention of foreign clients is the low-cost labour, which is 90% less than US and 40% less than India. Moreover, the Vietnamese IT workforce are known to be high-qualified as well as hard workers. These facts explain why the number of foreign clients looking for IT vendor in Vietnam climbs bigger and bigger every year. However, many are struggling in actively seeking for a quality and suitable Vietnamese outsourcing company. This article will illustrate three main steps to select a desired IT vendor for foreign clients.

1. Carefully consideration before outsourcing

Despite the fact that outsourcing is an alternative to solve certain problem, most firms need to carefully consider pros and cons of outsourcing. Below are a few useful questions for company leaders to further understand their demand before making decision:

Does my company need to outsource?

With several businesses, outsourcing is just an option and their internal team do have enough resources to do everything of high quality. In these circumstances, obviously, there is no need to outsource. Nevertheless, this is not the case for all organizations. Some small enterprises and even big corporates get a third-party IT vendor to solve their problems in order to win the competitive advantage.

Which part of business to outsource?

After deciding to outsource, project manager needs to think of “What is needed to outsource?”, simply that they can not give the whole thing to a vendor to handle. To answer this question, looking at the planned process that the team will go through and pick out what people are struggling or not have skillset for it. This strategy helps maintain company’s advantage while having most problems solved excellently by outsourcing partner.

2. Qualification

After determining to outsource certain part of the project/business, it is time to find an appropriate partner. Usually, there are two main outsourcing options: get a team from an outsourcing vendor or a freelance developer group.

Outsourcing vendor

If you are first time coming to Vietnam and barely know about its IT outsourcing network, try consulting firm Accelerance for a few qualified names. It is a US-based firm which connects and investigates over 6,000 outsourcing vendors globally, including those in Vietnam. Talk to consultants at Accelerance about your project, requirements and they will find you suitable vendors for your demand.

Freelance developer team

If you are familiar with online platforms such as Freelancer.com, Upwork.com, Toptal.com, it is not difficult to find an IT team to collaborate. Just create your request in very detail together with clear budget and wait for several offers to come. Those marketplaces also provide skills test to freelancers, as well as tool to upload their portfolio to clients.

While researching and contacting software outsourcing team/vendor, try to obtain answer for the following questions:

Do they have a set of portfolio in the past?

It is easy to evaluate level of experience of a team through what project and who they worked with previously. For example, Adamo Digital has a clearly diverse portfolio set in different areas: ecomerce, traveling, education and entertainment.

Do they get across all of your requirements?

Along with expertise, the ability to understand clients’ requirements is vital to any future partnership. Perfect candidate is the one who can fulfill duty of highest quality.

3. Suitability evaluation

Having found a few vendors and teams with great competence and years of experiences, you also need to understand people about to work with you as much as possible. This process can be done through indirect (asking previous customers) and direct (test period) method. One of the best way to know about the software outsourcing team or vendor is to ask their past clients. You can contact them for some basic information such as team’s work attitude, response rate, deadline admiration, ability to follow direction and requirement fulfillment. Opinions from these customers are so far the honest description of your future partner. If the outsourcing team are trustworthy and professional, they would not hesitate to connect you with their former clients.

Another way is offer them a test period (i.e 1-month) to get them into common working schedule and see how they can adapt it. Of course you can deal with the vendor about the amount paid for this test and some conditions if they can not meet your requirement after that. This is to make sure a consistent workflow when jumping in seriously major project.

To sum up, in order to select an IT outsourcing vendor in Vietnam, first carefully consider your demand, whether it is necessary or not; determine which part need to outsource and select partner with the help of consulting firm as well as different online freelance hiring platforms. Expertise and suitability are the two main factors to choose the most appropriate candidate.

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Adamo Digital is based in Hanoi, Vietnam,which is a forward-thinking software company with a well-deserved position in Vietnam’s IT landscape.