Questcon Onshore Test Center

According to CFO magazine, " A lot of people who jumped on offshoring for the cost purposes never truly understood the market. They got some savings, but generally not as much as they thought.There were unexpected outlays-error ratesthat rose toohigh,or more frequenttrips to India or elsewhere-that effected underlying cost assumptions. Toss in wage inflation overseas and wage deflation at homeand suddenly the calculus shifts again."

Questcon technologies was quick to identify this shift. Using the Expertise of American Employees “Questcon Onshore Test Center” is an ideal way to achieve a higher ROI for outsourced Testing.QOTC drives excellence for your enterprise QA needs by consolidating people, process, tools and Infrastructure.

Process/Deliverable Quality

A common complaint from organizations that have offshored their testing functions is a lack of quality in the level of test analysis performed.  This may be related to poor analysis and review processes on the part of the offshore vendor or analytical capabilities on the part of the resources used.  In either case, the results are low-value, inefficient test scripts. 

Knowledge Transfer

Many organizations assume that if they have well-documented requirements the offshore vendor will be able to easily develop test cases necessary to sufficiently validate the system.  Unfortunately, even well-documented requirements have unwritten assumptions and implicit requirements that go unnoticed by both the vendor and the client, resulting in missed test cases and potential defects in production.

Incompatible Quality Standards

Offshore vendors like to “hype” their impressive CMM-I level or ISO certification, but their clients don’t often understand that while these certifications may imply strong process definition on the part of the vendor it doesn’t automatically transfer to the client.  In other words, if the client has poor quality processes or undefined communication channels the inputs to the offshore vendor may be sub-par resulting in poor quality deliverables coming back (Garbage In/Garbage Out) 

Cultural and Language Barriers

The value systems and cultural norms can be drastically different in offshore vendor countries than what U.S. companies and resources are accustomed to do. This, along with native language barriers, often result in considerable miscommunication (especially early in the relationship).  Unfortunately, this miscommunication can result in serious problems in deliverable and application quality.

Political Instability

Unfortunately, the US has not been spared from the blight of terrorism, but underdeveloped countries – even ones with fairly stable governments – suffer from higher rates of political unrest and terrorism.  The recent attacks in Mumbai are just one example.  These issues may create difficult challenges when utilizing offshore vendors, because these vendors are more likely to become “high value” targets.

Time Zone Difference

Often touted as a benefit, time zone differences of 10-12 hours do not reap the increased productivity anticipated by most organizations using offshore vendors.  In fact, they often find that the benefit of having testing done “while you sleep” doesn’t outweigh the inability to clearly and directly communicate when defects or other types of issues arise, which can ultimately cause longer delays in application release.

Increased Overhead not Productivity

Because offshore resources are less expensive than onshore resources, many vendors make up for quality gaps by increasing the number of resources utilized.  This can result in significant additional overhead costs (more management costs, more tool license fees, etc.).  Furthermore, the additional resources do not necessarily increase productivity.  Some studies have shown that offshore resources require a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio (depending on skill sets required) to meet the productivity levels of onshore resources.

Security Concerns & Regulatory Risks

It is well known that countries with the most offshore vendors do not provide the same level of protections for privacy or intellectual property – key to the client’s operational success.  In some cases, the lack of protections means that the potentially punitive regulatory risks are outweighed by the labor cost savings in using the offshore resources.

Lack of Independent Validation

When offshoring, many clients tend to use the same vendor for both development and test efforts.  Given the client’s inability to keep close tabs on the project (due to time zone, travel, communications, and other restrictions) it is difficult to be assured that the offshore validation efforts will adhere to the highest quality standards or that issues will be raised in a timely manner.

Statutory Incentives to Onshore

Recent changes in US leadership makes it much more likely that there will be potential tax penalties for companies using offshore resources and tax incentives or benefits for using onshore resources.