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By Martin Hartley, Managing Director

Implementing a Nearshore team that works for you

It might surprise you to know that emagine Consulting is the second biggest provider of Nearshore outsourcing services in Poland, something we’ve worked very hard to achieve. We’re not stopping to rest on our laurels however, we’re looking to double our offering in the next two years – it’s a big area of growth, with huge benefits for our clients.

We’ve learned a lot from growing our operations and development teams, not least that our Polish colleagues are a joy to work with, thanks to incredibly high levels of education, unrivalled English-speaking skills, and a culture and work-ethic that feeds well into the high standards and expectations of the UK’s finance and banking sector. Suffice it to say, we’re impressed.

But Nearshore is not a matter of training up the teams, farming out the work, and sitting back to reap the benefits. Yes, it can be very cost-effective, but it takes careful management and integration, and training and development, with strict protocols to ensure the levels of security and safety required by our sector.

The teams are also fully compliant with all the IT competencies you’d need, and the cost is around 40% cheaper than in London.

Agile for your convenience

The benefits of a well-managed Nearshore team are manifold. First up, speed and agility. Imagine trying to skill up and secure and deploy a team of 35-40 in London within a month. Your HR team have homes to go to, and even with the best will in the world, it’d be a near-impossible task in the current employment market.

We have around 1,400 consultants in Poland working on projects for clients every day, and the capability to help businesses scale either up or down, very quickly; the ramp-up time is 30 – 45 days, and ramp down as little as 30 days.

The burden of interview times can also be outsourced. For example, you could interview the lead, and we take on interviewing everybody else that comes under them. Our now famous extensive interview process has brought us the best talent, and includes technical tests, production presentations, and non-technical suitability screenings.

This represents a huge saving in management time for our clients.

The teams are also fully compliant with all the IT competencies you’d need, and the cost is around 40 per cent cheaper than in London. Another advantage we bring to the recruitment process is that you can routinely control the length of the contract – you’re not necessarily going to be tied in for one to three years, so you can make the finances work for you. A 30-day notice period is standard, as we believe in our ability to deliver.

Getting the strategy right

While the costs are very attractive, it’s important not to compromise on strategic alignment and cultural fit. We all know how much human interaction is the magic ingredient in team performance, and we place a lot of value on that.

Every client has a UK account manager. They'll have a service delivery manager from the UK, and then in Poland they will have the equivalent who as the local single point of contact.

Our model is to then place team leaders who are there to manage, motivate, and ensure day-to-day delivery from the consultants who will actually execute the work. So, governance and ease of integration is of crucial importance to a Nearshore model. We know that banks want their external partner teams to act and look like their internal teams.

Success to us is if an end-user or a client calls that team, and they have no idea it’s an emagine Consulting team they’re dealing with.

Clients just want it to be seamless, and that’s why Poland has proved to be so effective. We’ve been so impressed by the high-quality education system and language skills in Poland, with around 15,000 new engineering and IT grads coming onto the market annually.

Success to us is if an end-user or a client calls that team, and they have no idea it’s an emagine Consulting team they’re dealing with.

Seamless integration

Once we have everything up and running for you, the project management model is designed for seamless integration. A portal allows for feedback, one-to-one reviews, and the ability to generate against your own P&L, which is a huge benefit.

It’s essentially a one-stop-shop.

Culturally, interaction really works, with expectations being met and relationships being built.

It can happen that working with very different cultures can end in a disparity of understanding, with delivery times and promises misunderstood or misinterpreted, and projects failing or falling behind.

We have found that this is absolutely not the case with Poland which shares a similar time zone and geographical proximity to the rest of Europe.

Security for peace of mind

Very real concerns over security and safety protocols can be mitigated by a good Nearshore operation, too. The pandemic has somewhat accelerated the ‘work from home’ trend in banking, and many banks now have protocols in place.

Where these protocols are not available, there will be some set-up time taken in shipping costs to ensure encryption and kit is up to standard, but again, a good Nearshore offer can handle all this for you. Often the costs involved can be offset against savings on office costs, and that’s something to weigh up when deciding on the best package for you.

Certainly, the banking and finance sector is depending on technology consulting and Nearshore services more and more, and it’s only going to get bigger. At emagine Consulting, we’re looking to double our capacity by the end of next year, and as long it’s properly set-up, it complements UK operations perfectly.

Looking to the future, we think that Nearshore will mean we’ll see a levelling of developer costs across neighbouring countries in Europe, but also an uptick in niche disciplines, just as employees look to differentiate themselves, which will all serve to enrich the talent pool and capability available to us in the long term.

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