Nearshore vs. Offshore Development Staffing

Nearshore vs. Offshore Dev Staffing: Which is the Right Fit for Your Healthcare Company?

As healthcare technology advances rapidly, it’s now imperative to staff the right tech talent to stay ahead. Yet, finding and retaining skilled software professionals can be a challenge. This is where staff augmentation can come into play, offering a flexible solution to address fluctuating workload demands or fill skill gaps.

Staff augmentation involves hiring external talent to supplement your existing team for a specific project or time frame. Unlike traditional hiring—in which you bring on full-time in-house employees—staff augmentation can add more flexibility and scalability to your team. 

When considering staff augmentation, one big decision is whether to choose nearshore or offshore staffing. It’s crucial to first understand these two approaches to determine which is the right fit for your organization’s unique needs.

Nearshore Staff Augmentation

Nearshore staff augmentation involves hiring developers from regions that are geographically close to your own. The benefits of nearshore staffing for healthcare companies include:

• Proximity and time zone compatibility: With nearshore staff augmentation, teams are typically based in the same time zone. This promotes smooth collaboration and communication between the in-house team and the augmented staff. Teams can schedule meetings, coordinate tasks, and address issues without significant time differences hindering productivity.

• Similar work culture and practices: A third-party tech staff augmentation provider can vet nearshore software developers to ensure they align with an organization’s culture and practices. This can help simplify the onboarding process and reduce the time needed to jump into a project. With a familiarity of the region’s practices and work structures, nearshore teams can seamlessly integrate into existing workflows and adapt to development processes. This can enable faster ramp-up times and smoother project delivery.
  
• Regulatory compliance: Sometimes projects may mandate that a company’s dev team has specific experience and knowledge of regional regulations and standards. This facilitates compliance with data protection laws and security regulations. Nearshore staff augmentation providers can ensure all vetted professionals are familiar with local regulations and can navigate compliance requirements, giving hiring companies peace of mind.

At Shrine Development, we have a track record of providing nearshore staff augmentation services. Namely, we have helped to recruit and onboard front-end and back-end software developers, data science specialists, DevOps leaders, and QA engineers for Allergan Data Labs, a part of AbbVie. Most recently, our efforts have focused on recruiting nearshore tech talent for a team based in Costa Rica. They have sought specific expertise to develop and deploy SaaS solutions that are fast, reliable, and secure.

Offshore Staff Augmentation

Offshore staff augmentation involves hiring software developers from regions that may be geographically distant. Offshore staffing can offer these advantages:

• Access to a larger talent pool: Offshore staff augmentation can widen the talent pool to include niche skills that may be more challenging to find locally. Broadening the search outside of a geographic region can help companies connect with tech professionals who have the specific expertise and experience needed. This specialized expertise can help fill skill gaps on existing teams and give companies a competitive edge in their markets.
• Cost savings: Given the access to a larger pool of talent, offshore staff augmentation can be more cost-effective compared to hiring local talent. This cost advantage can allow a company to stretch their budget further, especially when facing a larger project or time crunch.
• Enhanced flexibility: Offshore staff augmentation offers the ability to quickly scale teams to adapt to evolving project needs and timelines. Depending on a project’s scope, it can be advantageous to work with software engineers in different time zones to keep moving a project forward. 

At Shrine Development, we connect companies with pre-screened offshore software engineers to meet workload needs. This can especially be helpful when faced with a fast-paced timeline that requires top software expertise quickly. We saw this firsthand during the COVID-19 pandemic when Skedulo, which offers cloud-based scheduling services, needed to rapidly upscale its software operations to launch vaccination scheduling. Over a 12-month period, Shrine’s managed staff augmentation services supported program efforts in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

Finding the Right Fit for Your Company

When deciding between nearshore and offshore staff augmentation for your healthcare dev team, it’s important to step back and assess several factors. You can start by considering the following:

• Budget and costs: What are your budget limitations? Should you explore the potential cost savings of offshore staff augmentation or does your project require nearshore professionals in your region?
• Project complexity and timeline: What is the level of complexity for your project? How will the timeline influence your staffing needs?
• Regulatory requirements: Does your project involve sensitive data or the need to comply with certain geographical regulations? Consider how this could influence the type of talent you need on board.  
• Communication and team dynamics: What are your communication preferences and how will your dev team members need to collaborate?  

Getting the Talent You Need When You Need It 

Whether you opt for offshore or nearshore software development, partnering with the right staff augmentation provider can help to ensure you get the right external talent on your dev team. 

If you’re ready to explore staff augmentation options for your healthcare company, then Shrine Development is here to help. We will start with a free consultation call where we can learn about your healthcare software staffing needs. Then, we’ll discuss how we can help you hire and onboard top software talent faster. You can have confidence in our services with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee on any talent placed. Schedule a free, no-obligation consult here.