1. The team doesn’t have enough experience.
In the last decades, Latin America has grown as an offshore provider, especially in technology companies that have become the best partners of US and Canadian companies. The last 20 years have also witnessed how big players in the technology industry such as Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft have opened new offices in Latin America and have also partnered with local governments to increase the number of professionals each year and also raise the level of preparation they have.
2. The company will not fit into the time schedule
Latin American companies have seen in partnering with American companies a great opportunity to grow and learn from the business culture. So after all these years more and more companies are fine-tuning their processes to meet the high standards that the North American market requires. There are definitely companies with less experience and some that are more established to work with foreign clients, but in general they have a very professional standard.
3. The project will not be executed by the people I’m hiring.
Latin American companies have a great competitive advantage, as development rates are much lower than those of other countries, so they can hire the best professionals in the country and remain highly competitive in prices. So they do not need to outsource their projects, but usually have a large team that takes care of the projects.
4. The project will have cost overruns beyond my budget.
There are different types of projects, but in software development most companies use agile methodologies so that customers can easily see the plans and progress of the project. Usually you interact with a project manager or a product owner who will give you access to the status of the project at each stage and you can define the objectives of each stage to be able to detect early and easily if something is going off schedule.
5. The team I’m hiring doesn’t have all the experience they said they had.
Nowadays there are some platforms that satisfy that need like Clutch, where companies are verified and receive open opinions and ratings from their former clients and show in detail the type of technologies used in previous projects. So you can check these platforms to verify if the company you are hiring really has experience in the type of projects they are offering you.
6. If something goes wrong, who will respond?
Many Latin American companies are legally incorporated in the United States, so for the negotiation issue, you are working with a local type of company. The Latin American culture is very open and friendly, so when you hire a company you will probably have a long-term relationship with the CEO and other professionals involved in the project. So you will be able to easily interact with the owner of the company and have personal contact with the decision-makers in the company. Since their success in the offshore market depends on their reputation, they are really dedicated to craftsmanship and small details in order to have fully satisfied clients who could give them recommendations for future ones.
7. I’m not sure I could communicate appropriately with the team because of the language barrier.
Latin American countries from local governments are really committed to increasing bilingualism in their countries, they know that this will improve their opportunities in tourism and international business. Countries like Colombia are implementing social programs in the last decades that have already started to pay off in the new generations. Even private companies are investing in the bilingualism of their employees.
These and other common fears are preventing you from having the experience of working with great companies in Latin America with excellent quality and very competitive prices. Daniel Apps is a Colombian Software Development Company with more than 10 years of working hand by hand with companies and end customers all over the U.S. You can take a look at our Clutch references. We enjoy long-term relationships with our clients and love to become an in-house development team for all of them.
