IsoSkills Oy is the go-to company for organizations looking to find professional IT development, testing and management services in Finland and nearshore Romania.

This article presents:

       I.           100 years of successful bilateral cooperation Finland – Romania

     II.           Outsourcing, Nearshoring benefits

   III.           Nearshoring to a Partner in Romania (general considerations and particularities)

   IV.           Setting up your branch (benefits and challenges, steps to take)

     V.           Reflection, and more about IsoSkills services

(Link to the detailed guide, https://bit.ly/363sYYS, a 15 minutes read)

     I.           100 years of successful bilateral cooperation Finland – Romania

Year 2020 has marked the anniversary of 100 years of Romanian-Finnish diplomatic relations. Institutions of Foreign Ministry Affairs from both Finland and Romania have expressed their desire to continue to consolidate bilateral, European and global cooperation.

Romanian IT market volume reached EUR 5.9 billion in 2019, 5.5% of the GDP, with 78% consisting of exports, IT services make up almost 20% of Romania’s total export volume. It’s estimated that by 2022 the market volume of IT will reach EUR 7.3 billion, meaning a 25% yearly growth rate.

Romanian-Finnish relations are very good, developing constantly largely in recent years, both on the level of political-diplomatic dialogue, as well as at the economic and IT sectorial level.

     II.           Outsourcing, Nearshoring benefits

Outsourcing

It is important for companies to have a smart and right outsourcing strategy, a good understanding of why they need to outsource, nearshore, why they need to go abroad. These reasons will be the drivers for their decisions and for the next steps. The reasons will differ from running business at reduced costs, including the raw materials and labour at lower costs, access to local marketplace, taking benefit of particular skills, better logistics hub, reducing new recruitment risks especially during difficult economical period, or outsourcing repetitive skills abroad while taking on more value-added activities in the origin country.

Offshore and Nearshore models utilization has slightly increased during last year in the context of standardization of the IT work from home procedures.

Outsourcing allows companies to focus on core business development while solving their capacity issues. Outsourcing offers a competitive advantage and there is a rise of the multi-vendor trend.

IT services that usually fit to outsourcing (either project based or managed delivery):

• Software Development and DevOps
• Software Testing (manual, automation, performance, security)
• IT infrastructure and Cloud management services, including IT monitoring
• Datacenter and Callcenter services, User support
• Security services

See in the detailed guide linked to this article a calculation example of the total costs of engagement compared between inhouse-onshoring-nearshoring models.

Nearshoring

Nearshoring is the outsourcing of business development or operational processes, especially IT activities, to another company in a nearby country, taking advantage of the geographical proximity which translates in less expensive travel, fewer time zone differences, fewer cultural discrepancies and a higher degree of control and speed in decision-making processes.

Nearshoring ensures a more sustainable business climate with fewer drawbacks than offshoring.

Transition to nearshoring is also easier due to proximity of transfer activities without to compromise on their quality and schedules.

Nearshoring to EU area countries it also makes it easy nowadays to adhere to similar high Corporate Social Responsibility standards and especially the new enforced GDPR policy.

If you decide to nearshore, the biggest challenge is to find the right partner. It is your business risk and investment, so make sure you get a trusted productive partner. Once the agreement starts, you’d need to keep an open communication and collaboration, harvesting on the partnership and gaining the nearshoring advantages.

Searching for a nearshoring partner on internet it will yield a lot of results, but how to trust and clarify who will be the best fit? You can of course use referrals from a trusted source and talking to others who went through similar experiences. Or, you could contact local agencies who could direct to outsourcing companies in the area. If applicable, you can also consider multiple partners for your services outsourcing, especially big companies could consider a combination of onshoring, offshoring and nearshoring to maximize the benefits of all worlds.

See in the detailed guide linked to this article a series of factors to consider in your outsourcing analysis and nearshoring planning.

     III.           Nearshoring to a Partner in Romania

Romania has been for some years now, a county of interest for companies to outsource their software development in Europe, due to important factors as having a large pool of talent skilled on latest technologies, competitive prices and excellent timely delivery.

General benefits of nearshoring to a partner in Romania:

• Cost savings
• Access to considerable large workforce and talent pool
• Good communication, English language skills
• Cross-cultural old collaboration
• Proximity of on-site expertise
• The right price-cost ratio
• Flexible delivery models (dedicated/shared teams, T&M/fixed price)
• Fast time to market and flexibility
• Economic and politic stability, as an EU member state simplifies financial and legal matters

Particular benefits of nearshoring to Romania:

• Good infrastructure for office spaces and internet
• Access to Romanian and to the Eastern European markets
• Transparent and good processes governance
• Good mixed technical and soft skills expertise
• VAT deductions for IT sector, resulting in well paid competent and happy workforce
• Reduced cost of required oversight
• Low travel expenses
• Short travel trip, about 2 hours direct flights anywhere in Europe
• Easy cooperation, effective and efficient real time alignment due to same EET time zone with Finland.
• Trustworthy suppliers that can guarantee privacy for customer data and the integrity of the projects.

See in the detailed guide linked to this article a bit more what makes Romania the preferred partner for European countries when it comes to cultural, communication, talent, costs and living considerations; plus a comparison to some other Easter European countries.

     IV.           Establishing own branch in Romania

See detailed facts, steps and consideration about opening your own branch in Romania in the detailed guide linked to this article.

     V.           Reflection, and more about IsoSkills services

Reflection

Romania is one of the most attractive markets in Europe for technology investment and outsourcing, with a highly skilled and diversified workforce, competitive prices, and a stimulating business environment. Despite some political turbulence, Romania’s economy and IT sector has seen continuous growth over the past decade. Known for their broad technical expertise, their flexibility, enthusiasm and excellent language skills, Romania’s software service providers are a great choice for long-term collaborations in nearshoring business.

Finland is the happiest country in the world (UN World Happiness Report 2019), also Romania is well known for its people’s good humor and hospitality, so there is a good synergy in between, in both work and life situations.

If you decide on outsourcing and nearshoring, our smart-shoring recommendation is to invest in collaboration with a well-established partner, preferable one with existing experience operating within Finland or having knowledge of Finnish culture, being eventually capable to help with both onshoring and nearshoring to easily bridge the activities, a partner with good business acumen, technological and soft-skills competences, a passionate achiever with growth potential and long term cooperation interest.

Benefits of nearshoring to IsoSkills

IsoSkills is an international IT engineering and management company offering outstanding solutions, outsourcing and consulting services.

We provide high-quality solutions and services by ensuring that exceptional delivery is our absolute focus. We are specialized in Software Development, Quality Assurance and IT Management consultancy.

We are helping many companies to implement and scale their IT projects with our specialists or develop their vision into viable IT software solutions and services. Our teams are experienced in providing excellent consultancy services to our clients.

Growing our services in Nordics, IsoSkills has built the reputation of leveraging new technology and methodology, engaging talent for our clients efficiently and effectively.

Our policy statement: ¨We put Customers and Consumers at the heart of everything we do. We provide excellent service by ensuring collaboration, innovation and exceptional delivery are our absolute focus. ¨

(Link to the detailed guide, https://bit.ly/363sYYS, a 15 min read)

Contact:

Jaana Vaananen, Business Development and Sourcing Director, IsoSkills Oy

jaana.vaananen@isoskills.fi

+358505253693

Bogdan Papuc, Executive Management, Global Services, IsoSkills Oy

bogdan.papuc@isoskills.fi

+358405953380 / +40753404588