Your Nearshoring Vendor’s Size Does Matter
Choosing a Nearshore software development partner, you must ask about the company size of your vendor.
Here comes the logic behind this need:
Case 1. You are BIG, your tentative Vendor is small.
You may accept this only in the following cases:
- you hire them specifically to gain their advantage of being fast and furious, having no bureaucracy and having that much loved by you startup mind. Do this but before that – make sure they are indeed fast, furious and so forth :) as the size alone does not guarantee that
- you outsource some part of your business operations, in a scale matching this Vendor’s size. Do this but make sure you do not become the major client of them, as if your project brings them 30%+ of their business – you get risks of losing your vendor unexpectedly once
Case 2. You are of alike size as your Vendor is.
A good fit as to me, and, in general case, you may expect your Vendor having alike mentality as you do. They would be understanding your problems, as most likely they have or recently had alike.
Case 3. You are way smaller than your Vendor.
A major risk and point of concern to you must be whether you will still be important to your Vendor, and whether their processes (tuned to tentatively bigger clients than yourself) would be a fit to you. A good move here would be talking to 2 clients of your tentative Vendor, who are of small/alike size, and seeing if their demands overall are alike you would have had.
Choosing a Nearshoring Vendor is usually strategic. You won’t want to change one unless they screw up badly. Speaking of size constraints here is more of what I recommend:
- Learn on their previous growth curve. Forecast how they will grow further
- Learn on models they offer. If models vary – learn on a size of “yours”, to know one will remain their focus now and in time
- Try accessing someone higher by position than a person you received by default. Not essentially to take much of his/her time but to see if they will still be on the same page with you, and if you are even able to get this access, at all. As one day, when the need will arise, you may need alike access on purpose
Happy (Vendor) Hunting to you! :)
