IT managers, since decades now, consider outsourcing as the most convenient solution for a company to reduce costs and gain access to the latest technology without spending too much on research and development. Still, big software companies in the world have used outsourcing especially to India to such extent that questions such as “the balance between pros and cons when outsourcing” arise.

At the beginning, India proved to be a beneficial environment for outsourcing companies, important deals being contracted here. Lower production costs, smaller salaries paid and skilled IT workforce soon became just one side of the coin, the other being the inconsistent service quality. Issues such as wage fluctuations, security and financial ambiguities and scandals resulted in lowering of customer satisfaction levels increased. The need for better answers and more adaptive outsourcing solutions became imperative when studies conducted in the US showed that "the average cost savings are slightly below 10 percent".

The result was the perspective change when outsourcing, “near” turned to be the next “off-shoring”. Countries such as the Eastern European ones are worth being analysed as an alternative to India. Better price-quality balance, closer geographic position especially to EU, continuous improvement in infrastructure and knowledge of foreign languages not to mention better mentality and cultural compatibility are advantages that can’t remain unmentioned.

So how come “nearshoring " became such a viable option when evaluating opportunities in outsourcing? In "nearshoring”, the client has greater control over the work process than in a traditional outsourcing contract, transport costs and communications are still lower for the clients due to smaller geographical distances. Moreover the cultural affinity helps create a tradition of IT clusters based around major clients in North America and Western Europe.

More about nearshoring can be found at http://www.levi9.com/en-US/Pages/nearshoring.aspx