Welcome to the world of 21st century business strategy.
In this blog, we will explore in depth the choice of IT Friendshoring as an essential tactic for managing people in the technology sector.
Dive in with us as we analyze the reasons, benefits, and key considerations that make IT outsourcing a strategic choice for business development and growth. Discover how this decision can be the key to maximizing efficiency, reducing costs and unlocking the potential of your technology team and projects.
Friendshoring meaning
Friendshoring is a term that combines the words “friendship” and “outsourcing”. It refers to an outsourcing approach in which companies choose to collaborate with offshore teams, but with a special emphasis on building close, collaborative relationships, similar to friendships.
Unlike traditional outsourcing, where the relationship is based primarily on commercial contracts, nearshoring – friendshoring promotes a closer, more personal connection between teams in different geographic regions.
This approach seeks not only to maximize efficiency and reduce costs, but also to build meaningful and lasting relationships between teams, fostering collaboration and mutual understanding based on cultural and meteorologic closeness.
Benefits of friendshoring
Friendshoring offers several benefits that go beyond traditional outsourcing. Here are some key advantages:
- Closer, more collaborative relationships: The focus on building stronger, more collaborative relationships between teams improves communication and mutual understanding.
- Shared work culture: By building close and stable relationships, teams tend to adopt and share a similar work culture, facilitating cohesion and effective collaboration.
- Time flexibility: The difference in time zones can become an advantage, allowing for greater flexibility in scheduling and the ability to achieve continuous work progress.
- Diversity of perspectives: Collaborating with teams from different regions provides diverse perspectives that can enrich creativity and problem-solving.
- Competitive costs: Although not the only consideration, friendshoring can provide competitive costs by leveraging talented teams in locations with lower costs of living.
- Cultural adaptability: Building friendships facilitates cultural adaptability, leading to greater collaborative harmony and project effectiveness.
- Loyalty and talent retention: By investing in closer relationships, companies can experience greater loyalty and talent retention as teams feel more connected and valued.
- Positive work environment: This strategy contributes to a more positive and motivating work environment, which can have a positive impact on productivity and job satisfaction.
Friendshoring is an IT outsourcing service that seeks to transcend the boundaries of conventional outsourcing, focusing on building lasting connections that benefit both the company and remote work teams.
Read: All You Need to Know About IT Strategies
Friendshoring VS Reshoring
What is reshoring?
Reshoring is the process by which a company moves its operations or the production of goods and services back to its country of origin, after having outsourced those activities to foreign locations, in a phenomenon known as offshoring. This trend can be motivated by various strategic, economic or logistical reasons.
Why friendshoring?
The choice between friendshoring and reshoring depends on several factors specific to each company, its IT staffing strategy and objectives. However, here are some reasons why some companies may consider friendshoring as a preferable option compared to reshoring:
- Competitive Costs: friendshoring involves outsourcing services to countries with lower labor costs without moving too far away geographically. This allows companies to benefit from competitive rates without sacrificing proximity and coordination.
- Leveraging Global Talent: Friendshoring, an innovative business strategy, not only offers companies access to diversified talent, but also allows them to leverage specific skills and knowledge present in different regions of the world.
This practice drives global synergy by capitalizing on the wealth of local skills and experiences, contributing to a more comprehensive approach tailored to the specific needs of each market.
By strategically connecting with professionals in different locations, companies can build robust and highly specialized teams, thus optimizing their operations and opening the door to a new level of innovation and business efficiency.
- Supply Chain Flexibility: As a form of outsourcing, friendshoring brings invaluable flexibility to the supply chain. This flexibility translates into the ability for companies to nimbly adjust their operations in response to changes in market demand.
By outsourcing certain functions through friendshoring, companies can quickly adapt their resources and processes to meet fluctuations in customer demand, giving them a competitive advantage by remaining agile and responsive in a dynamic business environment.
- Cultural Closeness: Friendshoring, while not as close as reshoring, generally involves greater cultural and linguistic proximity compared to outsourcing to more remote locations. This cultural closeness facilitates more effective communication and deeper understanding between distributed work teams.
By having a closer cultural connection, companies can overcome language barriers and improve collaboration, contributing to a more harmonious and efficient work environment in which teams can collaborate effectively toward common goals.
- Scale and Production Capacity: Outsourcing to locations capable of handling large volumes of production allows companies to leverage the scale and production capacity of those regions.
This strategy provides companies with the opportunity to optimize operations, reduce costs and improve efficiency by leveraging the expertise and resources available in specific locations.
By outsourcing production to specialized locations in large volumes, companies can maintain a constant flow of products or services, thus effectively meeting market demand.
- Risk Diversification: Outsourcing to various regions offers companies the possibility of diversifying their risks and decreasing dependence on a single market or supplier.
By expanding operations to strategic locations, companies can mitigate negative impacts that could arise due to economic, political or market changes in a specific region. This geographic diversification provides greater resilience and flexibility, allowing companies to adapt to changing conditions in the global business environment.
- Efficiency in Delivery Times: The cultural and geographic proximity associated with friendshoring facilitates faster and more effective communication between teams, which contributes to agility in project execution and prompt delivery of products or services.
This relative proximity helps minimize time and logistical barriers, enabling closer collaboration and faster turnaround times.
Opting for friendshoring and nearshore software development in Mexico companies, such as DigiTech, offers a safe and effective solution. We pride ourselves on rigorously complying with all the specific regulations of the countries in which we operate, highlighting our presence in Latin America.
We recommend: Exploring Nearshore Software Development Companies
Our highly specialized team represents not only an expert IT resource, but also a helping hand ready to collaborate closely with your team. We are prepared to provide the necessary support, guaranteeing an effective and efficient integration of technological solutions in your company. You are welcome to contact us to explore how our nearshoring and friendshoring expertise can be a strategic investment to drive the success of your IT team.
