Diving into the Offshore Development Market in China

China has become the biggest software outsourcing market in the world. Through software outsourcing business, more and more global companies are redirecting their software development from India and Russia to China. As one of the biggest software houses in the world and a global famous IT service supplier, the customer has its own process standards for development and testing. However the quality of outsourcing providers varies greatly, therefore one of the most important questions is: How does one make sure that the outsourcing software company is qualified? For this purpose, the customer decided to conduct vendor evaluation by means of trial projects. One of these projects was chosen, to challenge the abilities of outsourcing providers. DGT accepted this challenge to demonstrate it can team up with the global players.

The project system is a module of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and a subset of a Bill of Material system used in one of the customer's product line. In the process of manufacturing the product, third party vendors develop and supply the components that make up the system. The system allows the customer to manage their vendors by organizing them by their characteristics and performance. With the collection of vendor performance data, the customer is able to optimize its operations by selecting the prime vendors and will have the ability to accurately plan based upon the forecasts of the module. DGT's mission was to transform the customer's initiative into reality by implementing a component management system that can be embedded into the ERP system and also meets the customer's strict criteria.

As the first offshore project of the customer in China, the challenge DGT faced was how to provide a high quality product under the customer's development processes. Constant communication to clarify questions concerning workflow and understanding business requirements, periodic conference calls, daily e-mails, and instant messages were used to maintain information flow with the customer, permitting them to stay informed and in control of the project. For example, some major problems that arose during the project could be solved in different ways, so DGT sent its recommendations and preferred solution to the customer for a decision on how they wanted to proceed. In accordance with the customer's software development process, DGT Team also held periodic project reviews and shared development skills. As a result of all of the effective communication methods, the delivered product met the customer's business needs head on upon delivery in April 2005.

In keeping with our commitment to delivering high quality systems with a grand level of service for a reduced cost, DGT has established offshore operations and maintenance along with a help desk to support the applications.

Because of the satisfaction level of phase 1, DGT has been awarded phase 2 to further enhance the system. Furthermore, other related projects had been offered by the customer. Some of the comments DGT received from the client spoke of DGT's excellent communication and quick responses. The quality of software that we delivered was very well received, since the DGT team had reduced the software bug rate from their previous software outsourcing company by a whole order of magnitude.

To see how DGT can deliver for you, contact us.