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Nearshore Software Development Outsourcing
In IT since 1989, ScienceSoft provides end-to-end development, partial outsourcing, and staff augmentation services to help US enterprises and software product companies obtain high-quality solutions quickly and at a lower cost.
Nearshore Development: Summary
Nearshore software development outsourcing is gaining popularity among US companies due to the favorable rates of nearshore talents and lower engagement risks compared to offshore sourcing.
Trusting development to a vendor from an established nearshoring destination can typically save a company 40–70% of overall project costs (Accelerance, 2023).
Steps to establish a nearshore development outsourcing process
- Conduct a nearshoring feasibility study (we assist at this and all subsequent stages).
- Pick the nearshoring hub that fits your rate expectations and preferred collaboration form.
- Analyze your project needs and decide on the feasible outsourcing model.
- Choose a nearshore development company ready to prove its experience.
- Sign NDA with the vendors you consider and request proposals.
- Formalize cooperation terms and expected deliverables in the service contract.
- Organize knowledge transfer to the vendor and plan the collaboration.
A Texas-based IT company with full-scale development centers in Mexico and Europe, ScienceSoft offers flexible outsourcing models and multi-domain development competencies. We apply our proven project management approach to drive software initiatives to their goals no matter what.
Benefits of Nearshore Software Development Outsourcing
Affordable rates
The average hourly rates for skilled nearshore developers are 2–3x lower than in the US, which makes nearshoring a budget-friendly choice. Accelerance stresses that while the US and LATAM IT markets are experiencing a parallel rise in rates, the margin for cost savings still remains extremely attractive.
Close time zone overlap
Popular nearshoring locations usually have zero to just a few hours’ time differences with the US. It allows for frequent real-time communication between the project stakeholders, contributing to easier collaborative planning and minimizing delays in decision-making.
Broad talent pool
By choosing to outsource to Latin America, you get access to over a million professional developers. LATAM’s strong educational focus on STEM subjects ensures that the local talents are well-versed in modern programming technologies, including advanced techs like AI/ML and blockchain.
Setting Up a Nearshore Development Outsourcing Process
Below, ScienceSoft’s consultants share a sample roadmap to nearshore software outsourcing and point out the best practices for picking a trustworthy vendor.
1.
Assessing the feasibility of nearshoring
First, assess the feasibility of nearshore development for your needs. What are your project priorities: fast launch, low upfront investments, minimized risks? What about the tech stack and quality expectations? Do you have any specific requirements for the collaboration form? Would you require onsite visits? The answers to these questions will help you evaluate nearshoring vs. onshore and offshore options and pick the right development location. For your convenience, ScienceSoft’s consultants have composed a comparison of popular outsourcing destinations in LATAM.
Sources: Accelerance (2022, 2023), YouTeam, proprietary market research by ScienceSoft.
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2.
Selecting the outsourcing model
At this stage, you need to decide which part of your development initiative (a particular task, several tasks, the entire project) you want to outsource. Depending on the outsourcing scope, you may choose between the following delivery models:
The nearshore vendor provides remote development talents with the required competencies to work as part of your team. Project management, quality control, and risk management are fully on your side.
- Partial outsourcing (Dedicated teams)
The vendor dedicates a team to co-source the project with your in-house or third-party talents. The team shares your responsibilities and risks. You preserve a large degree of control over the overall flow.
The vendor provides a full-scale team to handle the entire development process and takes 100% responsibility for the teamwork organization, project management, deliverables, and risks.
Explore the detailed outsourcing model comparison table prepared by ScienceSoft’s consultants to learn the specifics of each outsourcing approach.
Choosing between these models can be challenging. While staff augmentation is often seen as the most budget-friendly option, in most cases, full outsourcing generally results in lower overall costs. This is due to the vendor’s established development practices and streamlined team coordination. Even if you’ve already chosen your preferred option, don’t dismiss the alternatives just yet and compare the costs and conditions first. At ScienceSoft, we are ready to provide precise estimates for all possible arrangements to help you make an informed decision.
3.
Choosing the vendor
Now that you have settled on a nearshoring destination, ScienceSoft recommends paying attention to the following aspects during vendor shortlisting:
- Overall years in business and experience in building the software you need.
- Experience in working with your industry and the tech stack relevant to your solution.
- Support for your preferred sourcing model and availability of the required development roles.
- Language and cross-cultural collaboration skills.
- The vendor’s portfolio and testimonials to confirm its background and reliability.
- Available quality and security certifications and technology partnerships.
- Compliance with standards and regulations you need to follow, e.g., HIPAA, PCI DSS, NYDFS, SOC 1 and SOC 2, etc. (critical in case your software is supposed to deal with sensitive data).
After you’ve picked several fitting companies, reach out to vendors for more details:
- Send a request for information (RFI) to learn about the vendor’s approach to nearshore collaboration, data security, quality assurance, and risk management.
- Send a request for proposal (RFP) to study possible service options, cooperation models, staff CVs and rates, and the development time and cost.
What to expect from a vendor
At ScienceSoft, we typically process an initial RFP within 24 hours. We may need an introductory call to discuss our client’s needs in detail and identify value-adding opportunities. After the call, we analyze the client’s requirements and prepare a tailored proposal, which includes the solution's technical design, project scope, team composition, cooperation timelines, cost estimates, risks, and our ways to mitigate them. If our client wants to evaluate the team’s competencies individually, we arrange interviews with candidates.
4.
Signing a service contract
Alongside the service and dispute resolution terms, the contract should include a tailored set of KPIs to measure cooperation efficiency and facilitate project control.
At ScienceSoft, we sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and an intellectual property (IP) rights protection agreement in addition to the core contract to legally protect your business information and digital assets. We are ready to sign an NDA before the introductory call to ensure the full confidentiality of your sensitive data.
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5.
Development project kick-off
Depending on your development project progress and the preferred nearshore sourcing model, this step may include:
- Providing the vendor with access to your project infrastructure, software documentation, code repositories, and business and IT process descriptions.
- Determining the responsibility split between your stakeholders and the vendor’s talents.
- Deciding on the communication modes, schedule, and channels.
- Setting requirements for the reporting forms and frequency to maintain the desired level of control over the development process.
Even when the vendor takes over the whole initiative, you shouldn’t lose track of the project's progress. Monitor their adherence to the agreed-upon communication and reporting schedules to ensure everything stays on track. Many of our clients who had poor experience with a former vendor faced increasing communication gaps, starting with minor issues that eventually grew into complete disconnection. My general advice is to never hesitate to voice concerns if something goes wrong. And if you need to adjust or re-outsource your nearshore project, feel free to turn to ScienceSoft for help.
Explore ScienceSoft’s Featured Success Stories
ScienceSoft’s Nearshore Development Offering
Team augmentation
We provide our best talents (0.5–150+ FTE) for your preferred cooperation term – from 1 month to 10 years. You promptly get access to the required competencies:
- Front-end, back-end, full-stack developers.
- Solution and integration architects.
- QA and test automation engineers.
- DevOps engineers.
- Data scientists.
- L1–L3 support engineers.
- Niche competencies, e.g., blockchain developers.
Dedicated team
We need only a few weeks to assemble the dedicated team and start the cooperation. We guarantee compliance with the agreed service KPIs and can flexibly up- or downscale the team when needed. Our team is ready to handle:
- Business analysis.
- Project management.
- Architecture design.
- UX/UI design.
- Software development, integration, deployment, maintenance, revamp.
- Quality assurance.
Full outsourcing
We arrange a Mexico-based team and involve consultants and PMs from our HQ to develop your software end to end. We ensure fast delivery and high quality of your solution thanks to:
- Software engineers with 5–20 years of experience.
- 60+ certified PMs experienced in projects for Fortune 500 companies.
- Teams experienced in your industry.
- Proficiency in AI/ML, big data, blockchain, IoT, VR.
- Established Agile and DevOps cultures.
What Makes ScienceSoft a Reliable Nearshore Software Outsourcing Partner
As a nearshore development partner, ScienceSoft brings its tried-and-true development practices to fulfill project goals despite time and budget limitations, changing requirements, and emerging risks.
Quality-first approach
All our development centers rely on a quality management system backed by an ISO 9001 certificate to maintain service quality across SDLC. The value of our approach is recognized by IAOP, which put ScienceSoft on its Global Outsourcing 100 list in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Focus on security
Under our ISO 27001-certified security management system, we stick to strict data protection policies and procedures to safeguard your digital assets.
Mature collaborative culture
ScienceSoft is a US-based company with a development center in Mexico. Our multi-lingual talents apply the US culture, business ethics, and communication style to maintain onshore-like engagements. We offer flexible communication models tailored to each client’s preferences.
Risk management
We have well-established procedures to timely identify and mitigate common development risks like scope creep, budget leakage, and release delays.
Project documentation
Consistent software and process documentation helps us maintain a predictable project flow and prevent service misalignment with customer expectations.
Reporting
We compose a tailored set of KPIs to control project health and software quality and promote nearshore development service transparency via regular reports.
Our partnerships and recognitions
What makes ScienceSoft different
We achieve project success no matter what
ScienceSoft does not pass mere project administration off as project management, which, unfortunately, often happens on the market. We practice real project management, achieving project success for our clients no matter what.
Our Clients Say
Bob Penland
CTO
With ScienceSoft, we've been able to reduce our development costs and decrease the timeline on new features and updates. ScienceSoft's attention to detail in how everything is documented and communicated is by far the best of any agency that I've worked with. The communication and agreement process when starting a new project has been by far the easiest to handle and most professional I've seen.
ScienceSoft is a professional and dedicated mobile app development company. Over the past 10 years we've worked on about ten mobile app development projects with them. Their developers performed really well and have rescued us when we were late on delivery. We would certainly recommend ScienceSoft as a highly skilled and reliable service provider.
We appreciate how smoothly ScienceSoft’s developers integrated into the project team. We care about our reputation and we are very grateful to ScienceSoft’s team who maintained a friendly attitude and showed much respect to us and our clients. We can certainly recommend ScienceSoft as competent SharePoint developers and excellent team players.
ScienceSoft's Technology Competencies
Software Development Nearshoring Costs
The cost of nearshore software development outsourcing may vary greatly depending on the chosen sourcing model, nearshoring location, the scope and complexity of development tasks, and integration, security, and compliance requirements for the software.
ScienceSoft’s average nearshore developer rates range between $50 and $95, compared to $120–$210 for US-based engineers.
Wondering how much your nearshore development project may cost?
Typical Roles on ScienceSoft’s Managed Nearshore Development Teams
Business Analyst / Software Development Consultant
US-based
Analyzes your business needs and end-user expectations and engineers requirements for the software.
Nearshore Project Manager
US-based or Mexico-based
Ensures the project is delivered on time and on budget and the deliverables correspond to expectations, coordinates the team(s), monitors the project progress, and reports it to stakeholders.
Solution Architect
US-based
Architects new software and its integrations with the required systems, rearchitects legacy solutions.
DevOps Engineer
Mexico-based
Configures the IT infrastructure, sets up a DevOps environment.
Front-End Developer
Mexico-based
Delivers the application interfaces, fixes the issues reported by the QA team.
Back-End Developer
Mexico-based
Delivers the server-side code of your software (including APIs), fixes the issues reported by the QA team.
QA Engineer
Mexico-based
Designs and implements a test strategy, a test plan, and test cases for your software, reports the detected issues.
FAQ about Nearshore Software Development Outsourcing
How long does it take to establish a nearshore development process?
At ScienceSoft, the entire process – from a client’s initial request to project start – takes 1–3 weeks on average. For urgent outstaffing requests, we offer team augmentation in 2–4 days.
What is the optimal nearshore IT outsourcing location?
Mexico is arguably a top nearshoring destination for US companies, offering the closest geographical proximity and 2–4x lower developer rates than in the US. With the second-largest talent pool in LATAM, Mexico provides a well-educated workforce that follows the US technology trends and is skilled in advanced techs. Regional agreements like USMCA facilitate trade between the US and Mexico and set a unified intellectual property (IP) protection framework.
Other popular nearshoring hubs close to the US are Panama and Costa Rica. These countries are politically stable and have skilled IT professionals. However, they charge 20–50% more and have way smaller talent pools than Mexico.
How do you price your nearshore development services?
ScienceSoft offers flexible pricing models depending on the required development services:
- Time & Material, Time & Material with a cap – for consulting activities, Agile development with frequently changing requirements, and after-launch support.
- Fixed price – for a feasibility study, proof of concept development, developing a small software module, or other short-term engagements with a fixed scope of work.
- Monthly subscription fee – for regular support activities.
How can we verify your client testimonials?
We can provide relevant references from our client base so that you can contact our clients directly, verify their feedback, and ask them about particular cooperation aspects.
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is a global IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. Having a full-scale development center in Mexico, we help non-IT enterprises and IT companies get reliable solutions at a reasonable cost. In our nearshore projects, we rely on robust quality and data security management systems backed by ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications.