Outsourcing BizTalk Developers
Outsorcing BizTalk developers to a Belgium-based BizTalk consultancy - a case study.
Cooperation between the EUVIC Group and a Belgium-based BizTalk consultancy has enabled the latter company to get an easy and flexible access to EUVIC’s cost-effective and highly skilled BizTalk programmers. In this way the consultancy has been able to strengthen its support and development capabilities around the BizTalk integration product and to keep the fast pace of growth.
Initial situation
The Belgium-based BizTalk consultancy was founded in 2007 by 3 industry experts in business integration. The company employs 15 staff and serves more than 25 national and international customers to connect their business applications and partners. The company is a Microsoft Gold Application Integration Partner and Windows Azure Circle Partner. Its offices are located in the area near Brussels, Belgium.
In 2012 the consultancy felt that its rapid growth was limited by a shortage of skilled BizTalk programmers. For this reason the consultancy started to search for other companies specializing in BizTalk that could provide external development and support resources around the BizTalk platform. The consultancy came across EUVIC via Google search. After the initial contact, EUVIC’s representatives visited the consultancy at its offices in Belgium at their own expanse and proposed a trial project. Although the consultancy was talking to several potential partners and had many concerns about how it would work, the company decided to give it a try with EUVIC.
The trial task
The first task assigned to EUVIC by the consultancy involved relatively simple BizTalk development work. The project was easily completed by EUVIC but it also revealed a serious problem in the potential cooperation between the companies. The preparation of the task specification by the consultancy took moretime than the actual development, thus killing potential savings from outsourcing programmers on a nearshoring basis.
“We were really troubled with such concerns as ‘Wouldn’t we spend more time on creating a job specification than on the actual development? Would they be able to work at the same pace as we do?’ However, as we were very pleased with the quality of work provided by EUVIC in the trial project as well as with its awareness of our concerns and ideas how to get rid of them, we decided to go ahead with our cooperation,” said CTO at the consultancy.
Cooperation after the test project
At the beginning of cooperation after the test project both companies put a lot of effort in creating a communication model that would enable the consultancy to work with EUVIC’s developers like with its own employees. The accepted model assumed appointing a senior developer for daily contacts at the EUVIC’s side. His task – apart from the development work – is also coordinating with a counterpart on the consultancy’s side, which includes specifying jobs to be done and setting time frames for given tasks.
“Two senior developers with similar experience and knowledge usually get along with each other very well, and so it was in this case. We have also managed to work out rules to enable our people to easily and quickly get familiar with any new technology they come across while working with our client. In such a case we determine whether there are any online or self-paced training materials, tutorials or past projects we have done and then give our developers relevant chapters to go through prior or during the assignment. If there are no such materials, the consultancy provides our outsourced developers with its own online or onsite training,” said Andrzej Biesiekirski, Vice President of EUVIC.
As constant communication is always key to good cooperation, it was also agreed that managerial meetings would be held once or twice a month, either in person or online (using Lync or Skype), depending on the consultancy’s needs. Outsourced developers were supposed to work from EUVIC’s offices in Poland on the nearshoring basis and to report their actions directly to the consultancy’s and EUVIC’s pay sheets.
With the rules of communication set, it was easy to formalize the cooperation. The consultancy began purchasing blocks of days for support, development and maintenance from EUVIC, according to its needs. When it did not need EUVIC’s resources the cooperation was suspended to be resumed later on, when the resources were needed again.