Why we should build our offshore development center in Vietnam

Are you struggling to hire software developers in Australia? You are not alone.

Let’s have a quick look into the Australia’s ICT market

According to Business Insider Australia , the major investments recently in infrastructure and labor market from big companies like Cisco, Blacklane, Equinix, Zoho, IBM, have made Australia a global destination for ICT. The rocket-speed growth of this industry creates great opportunities for local labor market, yet at the same time challenging it, especially for local human resources in software development.

With this incredible growth, it is very difficult to compete for the best local talents, where Australia is not able to introduce sufficient new workers to meet the growing needs of the national ICT industry.

One of the solutions for this problem is to look for international technology partners. For a highly skilled and cost effective software development workforce, Vietnam is among the most popular choices of Australian tech companies.

Why Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the most considered destination for software outsourcing as well as regional production house for many tech giants in recent decades. One famous example is Lazada, which is the Amazon of Southeast Asia countries, created by a German startup incubator Rocket Internet. This ecommerce platform has over US $2.5billion of investment and their development center is based in Ho Chi Minh City. During the past 5 years, the value of High Technology Exports of Vietnam remains as ranking as number 3 in the same region. The country aims to hit US$33 billion in value in digital economy by 2025. The government also implements various programs to nourish the start-up culture and innovation ecosystem.

Many Australian IT companies like Cisco, Avaya, have been partnering with Vietnamese providers for an efficient and cost-effective software development projects. Jira is the biggest software export of Vietnam that is a fruitful result of the partnership with a large Australian tech company, Atlassian. Jira is the market leader in software project management tools, which is most loved and used by every software developers and people in the tech industry.

In Southeast Asia region, Vietnam has one of the fastest growing economies. And according to techinasia.com , one out of the four factors that contribute to Vietnam’s growth is its tech talents. Vietnam has over 80,000 IT graduates per year, 1 million active IT professionals working in more than 30,000 ICT businesses. The government aims to make this country the Silicon Valley in Southeast Asia.

These resources offer a huge labor force for IT related industries in the country, as well as making Vietnam a popular destination for software outsourcing service in the region in the recent years. By 2015, Vietnam was already in top 10 global producers of IT and engineer graduates – Forbes’s survey. By 2016, Vietnam was listed in top 5 locations for outsourcing – Gartner’s Leading Global Locations for Offshore services. By 2017, Vietnam was at number 6^th in Global Services Location Index – A.T. Kearney, and number 1^st in cost environment – Cushman & Wakefield BPO.

In terms of geography, Vietnam also has some advantages over some of the competitors in outsourcing industries. The timing differences between Vietnam and Australia is 2 – 4 hours so we can extend our service and support to the international clients for more working hours when our office in Melbourne closes. There are frequent flights between Sydney, Melbourne and Perth to Ho Chi Minh City (our Vietnam office) that makes it very convenient when face-to-face meetings are required. With the Covid-19 situation, we have been fully adapted to teleconference ways of communication with no difficulties, thanks to the much improved digital infrastructure of Vietnam in terms of data and transmission speeds.

Comparing with 20 years ago, Vietnam is much more healthier and well educated. The country has been instantly building positive image in the relationship with other countries regionally and globally. With Australia, the governments of both countries have developed plenty cooperation projects in both private and public sectors. This ensures an exceptional environment for a sustainable relationship between Australia and Vietnam. Human capital index of Vietnam ranks the 2^nd highest in ASEAN countries, just behind Singapore.

It’s not only about the numbers and qualifications. When we decided to build our offshore development center in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, we value the work ethic and culture here.

Vietnam’s culture and work ethic

Vietnamese employees are very loyal and have strong work ethic. The turn-over rate amongst software engineers and developers is even lower than the average rate of 5%.

Work-life balance is greatly rated in IT companies in Vietnam. We believe that it is one main factor that contributes to the high productivity and effectiveness of our developers here. It’s a norm in Vietnam that software developers have recreation time in about 15-30 minutes in the middle of the day, for the staffs to recharge their energy and sharpen their concentration. At the same time, their sense of urgency is noticeable. Our software developers in Vietnam do not mind putting extra efforts, sometimes in odd working hours, to fix the issues for our clients without any commands.

Things to watch out

English proficiency in Vietnam is often a topic to discuss about when venturing out for software outsourcing partners. Spoken English in Vietnam is not at the same level as in Philippines or India. It’s at a premium cost to find fluently English speaking developers in Vietnam. Our solution for this is to have at least one person in any team being fluent in speaking English. This approach somehow reinforces our technical capability as we are able to include talented developers in our teams, whose English are not their strength.

On a broaden view, English level in Vietnam is increasingly picking up over the past decades. EF EPI 2021 report ranks Vietnam number 65^th in global ranking in English proficiency, which is equivalent to intermediate level. In IT sector, most of the senior management levels can deliver excellent English communications. There are also numerous IT students who study overseas and come back to Vietnam for employment, or spending several years working abroad to earn international exposure. One of their favorite countries for abroad study is Australia, which further expedites the collaboration between companies of the two countries. This goes beyond the English-speaking competency.

Offshoring is basically about the cost. And surprisingly, even though Vietnamese software engineers do not offer the cheapest price in the outsourcing market, many companies, from big enterprises to startups all over the the world, have chosen Vietnam as their base for software development. What really matters here is in the project management process, delivery dates, and engineering competence. In fact, Vietnam has surpassed China to become number 2^nd largest software outsourcing partner of Japan.

Dicom Interactive has intensive times working with Australia clients on both local and global projects, with some of them become our long-term partners. Contact us for a free consultation on your tech product development or just simply hear about our stories in delivering amazing tech products for our clients.

Dicom Interactive is one of the top boutique software development with offices located in Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam and Melbourne – Australia, with over 15 years experience in the business.

We have been working on a variety of projects across the continents, with focus on education, transportation, entertainment, game, healthcare, insurance, food & beverage, automobile, and travel industry. With the experience of team members ranging from 4 to 15 years, we successfully deliver our services to our clients by the best implementation of the latest technologies in the industry for their businesses. We offer high standard in software solutions, which suit your utmost demands whether they are your business plan of growth, or product budget, or project deadlines.

Get in touch with Dicom Interactive today to share the requirements of your products. We fully grasp the importance of listening and understanding your business, your missions, and visions. Whether your need is a Low-level Outsourcing, or a High-level Outsourcing, or a Complete Technical Outsourcing, we constantly offer world-class software development services. Our team members are well trained and have high working ethic, not only to fulfill the international standard but also to promote the global rating for software outsourcing business in Vietnam in the coming decades.

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