IT outsourcing in Poland
Finding an appropriate IT outsourcing team is not a piece of cake. We have already written a small guide whether to hire or to outsource, where we described pros and cons of both approaches.
This time, we would like to convince you that cooperating with Polish team would be beneficial for you. In our opinion, there’s no better proof than a satisfied client. Do you want to know our story? Keep reading.
After a few months of working remotely, without knowing each other before, the day has come. He was to arrive in Poland. On the one hand, we were complete strangers, on the other hand – long-term partners.
We were very excited to meet our friend. It’s really amazing what kind of possibilities the modern world offers.
You must be interested how this whole thing started. Here you go. In this exclusive interview with Alick – entrepreneur and owner of Dadda platform, you will find all information about our cooperation and problems that entrepreneurs encounter when looking for an outsourcing team.
Q: Could you please say few words about the project itself?
The website will connect different people across the globe to provide services to one another. We have seekers which are the people looking for a service and the producers that are providing answers or services.
The goal is to connect them real-time, have them get answers in a matter of minutes. It’s like performing a ‘google search’, but you perform a search within DADDA. Seekers pay a small fee of 2$. Producers earn a dollar for every time they answer a question.
Q: What challenges were you facing that made you look for a web development company abroad?
Mainly the cost. If I did this in the US it would probably be 4-5 times more expensive than doing it abroad. And I tried to do it abroad once through an Indian company. That didn’t work out.
Another challenge was the technical skills of the web development company. So I decided to move away from India and look for another country and that’s how I ran into your company here.
Q: What criteria did you have in mind while looking for a web development company?
Main criteria would be the skill sets. I spoke to different web development companies after my unfortunate experience with India. I probably spoke with at least 10 different companies.
Michał – the owner of Dotinum, was pretty technical I thought. He really understood the project. I have like a 10-20 page documentation for the project, I knew after speaking with Michał he actually read it. The questions he was asking were really related and made sense unlike the other companies. So the skill sets was the biggest criteria, second was the price.
Q: How did you search for a web development company and how did you hear about our services?
Online. I searched locally in the US after that India escapade again, just to see if I could find another company that, you know, maybe expensive but could do it locally but the price was still pretty high.
I searched online. I searched in Asia. I search at countries that I knew have good technical skill but somehow I run into a forum section that one of your employees was answering and that’s when I realized that in Poland there are also good developers. It was QUORA.com. I guess someone posted a question about looking for a web development company and which countries would have good developers.
Q: Can you tell me about previous experience with offshore software houses?
At that time I think (it was 2008, 2009…) when I was searching for a web development company most of them ended up in India.
I flew over there, 3 different parts of India: Bangalore and 2 other sites. I met with whoever I was speaking with. I looked at the company, the people… The company was pretty large. It had hundreds of employees doing graphic design, front-end coding, software development. And I felt confident at that time with them and I decided to move forward with that company.
But after I saw the website, the first mock up of what they came up with… I saw a lot of bugs. When I asked them to fixed it, they were able to fix, but there was a lot of back-and-forth communication: they didn’t get what I want or they didn’t understand the entire concept of the website. That was a big challenge for me.
Unlike this team right here… I could tell right away when they developed and they fixed problems. They look ahead. They know what they’re doing and they predict possible problems or possible outcome of what they’re doing.
There were cheaper companies. But at this time, after previous failing I was really after the technical skills with Michał being really involving. He was asking the correct questions. He was making the correct suggestions. And even if I wanted things done, he was not afraid to tell me that what I am asking is not really ethical or it’s not the right way of doing it or the best way of doing it, that there are other options.
I like that we had that back-and-forth communication that’s also a big factor why I decided to work with your company.
Q: Are you satisfied?
Yes. Definitely. When I created this business plan, that was back in 2007. It took me 2 years to come up with the plan. When i did the study and all of that. Another 6 years… and I still don’t have a website.
That’s when I ran into Michał and 2 years later, or about a year later, I’m getting ready to launch it. So that’s why I am excited.
I’m concerned though about the after service. After I launch the site I’m hoping that they will still be there to support it the way that I expect them to support it. Cause some companies once you pay them, once you get whatever services you purchase from them, the after service is not that good anymore.
This is just a 1 version of my website. I have 5 different versions of it. So there are different improvements that will be done after this. Plus: when issues start coming up I’d like to be able to see them jumped into issue right away and solve it and not me have to open up tickets and wait a couple of days to get response, so I am hoping the after service would still be good.
One year later…
We wanted to check what Alick thinks about our after-service. According to him:
“I have absolutely no complaints about the after-service. I specifically like the ticketing portal that they let me use so I can just open tickets for my issues and we can communicate over a centralized system with everything documented. The response time is quick too.”
It turns out that there was no need to be worry about after-service. At least not in the case of cooperation with us. 🙂
And what about you? Are you still undecided if Poland is a good choice for IT software development? Share with us your experience with that topic in the comments below.