IMPAQ Offshore Dedicated Team

IMPAQ Offshore Dedicated Team for IMPAQ Co.

For 12 years IMPAQ had employed a nearshore outsourcing model, using resources from Eastern Europe to support their in-country teams in Western Europe. Over the past three years some of the nearshore regions had matured economically which caused significant increases in costs. In 2005 IMPAQ planned to broaden their Marketing Technology Services and started to assess new Eastern Europe regions and possible partners. Intetics went through a competitve bid process and was chosen on the basis of both price and quality.

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IMPAQ Offshore Dedicated Team

Client

IMPAQ UK, (www2.impaqgroup.com), a consulting and IT services firm.

Challenge

For 12 years the Client had employed a nearshore outsourcing model, using resources from Eastern Europe to support their in-country teams in Western Europe. Over the past three years some of the nearshore regions had matured economically which caused significant increases in costs. In 2005 IMPAQ planned to broaden their Marketing Technology Services and started to assess new Eastern Europe regions and possible partners. Intetics went through a competitve bid process and was chosen on the basis of both price and quality.

The challenge for Intetics was to establish stable, cost-effective and high quality processes for rendering the following services: Infrastructure Management, Performance Management, Security Monitoring, Support & Maintenance, Application Development, System Design & Integration, and Testing.

Solution

The partnership started with several projects in the sphere of software development. The pilot project was not large, but very important for IMPAQ. The end customer (one of the Top 5 football clubs in UK) wanted to create a new web service in a very short period of time. The project was launched in time and within budget, but the risk plan put together in conjunction with the customer was never adopted. The customer was satisfied and extended the contract for additional 2 years. Simultaneously, several new projects were completed. In August 2006 it was decided to switch to a new working model. Before that, the companies had been working on a project-by-project basis, but then we signed a contract for an Offshore Dedicated Team. The Offshore Dedicated Team (ODT™) business model provides dedicated development teams along with complete infrastructure and administrative services at one of our Offshore Development Centers to work exclusively on the Client’s projects. The Client gets its own remote development department for a fixed monthly fee. Currently, the team includes about 20 members (on an annualized basis).

The most substantial challenge in the implementation phase was the nature of the business in which the Client operates: the marketing sector. Their customers are not familiar with software development processes, requirement gathering and technical documentation, and prone to quickly changing their requirements. Together with the Client, Intetics created a set of agile practices and knowledge transfer processes and managed to lower communication barriers between the IT engineers and the operational marketing divisions.

We have established an open communication on all levels, starting with team members on both sides and ending with company executives. Company executives meet in person every 2-3 months to discuss their cooperation in detail, and telephone conferences are held every 2-3 weeks to exchange the ideas and discuss the results of the previous period.

Results

The client acquired cost effective resources in contrast to employing local staff. They now operate an 80% / 20% model of nearshore to off shore staff. Each partner not only helps the other on work related issues, but also provides consultation in similar areas of expertise, subject to relevant experience.