Benefits of Nearshore IT Outsourcing in Costa Rica
If you decide to nearshore outsource your IT projects, you’ll be outsourcing to a nearby country in the same or similar timezone with similar communication styles and approaches to work. While you may have concerns about geographical proximity, language barriers, cultural differences, and time zones, nearshore outsourcing can often provide the solution while overcoming these challenges. With top quality work at a reasonable price, nearshore it staff augmentation partners are within a 2 hour time zone of the United States and have minimal cultural differences as they leverage American products, consume American media, and interact with Americans quite frequently. While there are various nearshore locations that you can outsource to from the US, the benefits that Costa Rica has to offer make it a fantastic option for nearshore outsourcing.
Why Costa Rica
With spectacular outsourcing support from the government, strong technology skills, work in the Central Time Zone, and similar work cultures to the US and Canada — Costa Rica is a top choice when augmenting your business with nearshore IT resources and provides a plethora of nearshore outsourcing benefits.
Time Zone
Optimum communication and collaboration relies on your in-house and outsourced team members to have a shared work schedule, at least for part of the day. Costa Rica is in a highly convenient central time zone for all regions of the US and Canada with only one to two hours time difference between Pacific Time or Eastern Time (depending on daylight savings). Collaborating with IT staff augmentation teams in Costa Rica means you’ll have synchronous communication and overlapping working hours. It’s easy to schedule calls and meetings during normal business hours. You won’t need to schedule daily standups at 10 PM or wait a full business day to receive project updates since your contract software development team will be working the same hours as your in-house team.
Affordable software development
By augmenting your software development needs to Costa Rica, you’ll achieve top-quality engineering talent without paying the high cost of U.S based services. Costa Rica has a strong pool of technology professionals that work at affordable rates. The lower cost of living and a large supply of labor translates to software development costs that are much less than the high wages in some markets. Costa Rican workers are also highly skilled, with the most skilled workforce in all of Latin America according to the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Competitiveness Report. By outsourcing to Costa Rica, you will gain access to high-quality talent at a lower rate than in the US, helping to lower your IT costs.
English Speaking
English is a key component of Costa Rican education, and the country comes in first in both the TOEIC and TOEFL IBT English exams so you can expect all high-level software developers to speak fluent English. The accent is also relatively easy for someone from the U.S to understand unlike other popular outsourcing countries like India or Eastern Europe that can be more difficult.
Similar Working Culture
Working with our Costa Rican software development company, you’ll be pleased with the similarities between our employees’ work culture and that of the U.S., as Costa Rica has adopted many cultural aspects and working habits from the U.S. Within Costa Rica, there are a plethora of U.S multinationals, shared TV, and Radio media which strengthens ties with the U.S. There’s also a strong expatriate community which helps to promote cultural awareness and create further ties with U.S. culture. As a committed long-term staff augmentation partner, Excel Nearshore encourages IT training programs and certifications for employee’s professional development. Ongoing training not only helps our employees, but it strengthens the skills needed for our client’s development needs.
Work with Agile Methodology
Working with Agile Methodology is common among most teams working for our client companies. Applying Agile Methodology to your software development projects means your teams have more contact with the product owners and end-users throughout its development, resulting in better products and services. Sprints designed for your teams, daily standups during regular business hours, and highly visible and specified tasks for each team member keeps things organized. Using this methodology, you can be sure that your project stays on track and meets deadlines.
Significant Government Support
As a nation, Costa Rica has put a strong focus on technology exports since the 1980s. Major enterprises HP and Microsoft have been operating in the country since the ’80s and have trained and employed thousands of technology workers strengthening Costa Rica’s affinity for technology. The Costa Rican government continues to encourage investments in technology, and services companies are able to leverage support from NGO CINDE (Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency). CINDE is a free and reliable resource connecting local talent and companies looking to outsource to Costa Rica — providing support to outsourcers even after talent has been hired. Excel Nearshore is an active member in the IT services association called Procomer. Procomer provides professional development and support to Costa Rica IT companies and foreign companies seeking services and support.
Countrywide Stability
Costa Rica is known to have a very stable political environment and a strong democracy just like the U.S., making it a safe choice for long-term partnerships and projects. Although unrest is sometimes associated with the Central American region, Costa Rica is committed to a peaceful society. In fact, Costa Rica hasn’t had an army since 1948 but rather has partnered with the U.S. for military defense. Costa Rica also places healthcare and education as top priorities, investing 9.9% and 7.6% of GDP in these sectors respectively. These elements play key factors in stability, by ensuring that citizens are healthy and educated. If you choose to augment your staff with our IT resources in Costa Rica you can count on our stability as a company and as a US and Costa Rica based company.
Sustainable Country
With an ever-increasing awareness of how our daily business decisions have the ability to positively or negatively impact the environment, it’s even more important to outsource responsibly and conscientiously. In the current environment, businesses cannot simply ignore the trail they leave behind them when it comes to environmental impact. Costa Rica is one of the world’s most sustainable countries with over 90% of energy coming from renewable sources. Beyond sustainable energy, Costa Rica values and respects its natural environment that contains 5% of the world’s biodiversity by setting aside 26% of its territory as protected land. If your company is looking to achieve green goals and reduce your carbon footprint, outsourcing to Costa Rica is a fantastic way to do so.
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