What are the costs of offshore development?
Depending on the process that requires outsourcing, example costs could range from $5/hour to $30/hour. The point being that an Alden employee performing basic data capture will be significantly less expensive than a business intelligence analyst.

However, there are other costs of outsourcing to an offshore partner that are not financial: managing a remote project team, coping with time differences, ensuring quality, and dealing with issues at your parent site. Alden will help you to minimise these less visible costs through solid project management, quality management procedures, and close partnering with you every step of the way.

Our data is vital to our business. What measures does Alden take to ensure its security and integrity?
Not only is the data on Alden’s network servers in India and the UK secured behind state-of- the-art firewall software, but also only those within the business who need to access specific areas of the servers or process particular data are given the relevant access rights. The team that is dealing with your information, plus essential management and systems staff, are the only people who will know it is there. And of course all our staff are subject to a confidentiality agreement.

Daily back-ups onto high-speed tapes, off-site archival storage, and synchronicity of data between the two geopolitical zones (India and the UK) guarantees that in the unlikely event of system failure, political instability or an act of God your data is safe, retrievable and usable within hours of an actual or perceived problem. Our ISO 9001 accreditation has further enhanced our business continuity and disaster recovery processes.

How does Alden manage projects efficiently on a global scale?
Having owned a production site in India for five years and worked with companies in and beyond Europe for many more, Alden has built procedures and systems that accommodate the global nature of business.

Alden’s Management Information System (MIS) ensures that work is transferable and visible to relevant personnel at all locations via reporting modules. The MIS is at the core of our business practices, enabling automation, reporting and job-tracking across all parts of the business. It is based on a Microsoft SQL Server database which, along with XML data transmission and data mining technologies, provides a highly scaleable, robust, and efficient method of controlling and analysing business processes.

As the MIS is a web-based system with the ability to synchronise data between geographically disparate locations, it creates a seamless cohesion between our sites that allows managers to track jobs anywhere in the business.

In addition to allowing integration across our business and automated links with our accounting system, the MIS benefits customers in a number of ways, including:

• Seamless automation between Alden and the customer through the use of XML in our business-to-business connectivity modules.
• Generation of reports that are tailored to customer requirements, then distributed to the relevant personnel or made available via the extranet to staff in remote locations.

• Select the country first. India is the largest target country for offshoring as it has high capabilities, political stability, a solid infrastructure, excellent government support and an availability of skilled labour with very good English language skills.
• Shortlist potential vendors based on specific screening criteria, for example, experience, domain expertise, cost, quality, and financial stability. Alden is able to offer case studies and transparent metrics to help a client in this decision-making process.
• Determine the best-fit delivery model for your business: pure offshore, onsite/offshore, or onsite/onshore/offshore.
• Narrow down the vendors according to factors such as years in business, the scale of operations, the range of services and delivery models offered. Alden recommends that if possible you visit vendors to assess the criteria – you will be sure to be offered a warm welcome at our production site in Chennai.
• Negotiate and start to build a relationship with the vendor. Alden is in business for the long term. We want to develop with our clients and let our complementary skills and experience create a platform for healthy growth.

Once the initial decision to outsource offshore has been made, Alden will be happy to advise you on any stage of the process or guide you the whole way.

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