Documentation

You are completely free in choice of communication method and frequency. From experience we know that Skype is a preferred tool for daily communication. The ideal frequency depends greatly on the project, the development stage of the project and perhaps most importantly: the level of detail in documentation of the project. If this is handled professionally and thoroughly, there will be less need for communication. We recommend using a proper projectmanagementsystem to help guide this process.

Seniority

The size and seniority of the team also plays a major role. If there are one of more senior professionals in your team, or perhaps even a teamlead, the entire team will be able to operate more indepedently.

Product Owner

If you wish to achieve a high level of independence, we recommend adding a Product Owner to the team.

We like to see both! A good connection with your new colleague(‘s) is crucial for a succesfull project and cooperations. Visiting your country is the perfect way for a professional to learn about your country and it’s culture but also to get to know your organisation, it’s people, the project and your customers.

A visit to Macedonia is just as important. To get a feeling for the country and the working environment, but also to discuss the project in more detail.

From our experience we see our customers visiting Macedonia two to four times a year, and the professionals to visit the customers’ country once a year or once every other year. Ofcourse the best frequency depends on your specific situation.

In short: no. We search for people that are a perfect match for every specific client. That means we only start the search as soon as the client and it’s requirements are known. We do not push forward anyone who we happen to have available at that moment.

That being said we do have a database filled with profiles of people we already spoke to and have met. Who are eager to join our company as soon as a suitable client and project pop up. This enables us to search for new professionals efficiently and fast.

It’s easy to calculate the costs per professional. In Macedonia its common to take net salary as the starting point. This is because te labor cost is fixed at ~50% of the net salary. Then add our fixed outsourcing fee and a yearly vacation bonus (roughly 220 euro) and you will arrive at the total.

This depends of course on what country you are comparing with. Taking Western Europe as the starting point, we can say that the total cost of outsourcing a professional is about 40% of that in Western Europe. The cost structure is simple:

Net salary + labor cost + outsourcing fee = total cost

However, to make this comparison fair, it’s important to look beyond just salary. Take into account that hiring employees locally also comes with additional costs such as:

1. Pension plan
2. Company car or travel allowance
3. Laptop
4. Phone
5. Additional expenses

Then you also need to add the following operational costs:

1. Office space
2. Administration
3. Office costs (electricity, water, coffee, lunch)

Purely looking at costs it’s simple to see that outsourcing is always the more affordable option. Want to know what else to consider? We would love to talk more about that!