What is AROBS' preferred operational model?

AROBS has been involved only in software development as an offshore development center. The company has supplied outsourcing services to other companies either on a project basis or using the time and material pricing model.

AROBS is committed to providing its customers with reliable and repeatable operational services. SLA are carefully established with the customer to create a common understanding about services, priorities and responsibilities. Based on the SLA, service adequacy is periodically assessed and adjustments negotiated.

The process flow in the offshore development center is often established by the customer, as we work mostly with software houses that prefer to manage the work themselves.

Please explain the process flow followed in a typical IT outsourcing project

As previously stated, this process is usually defined by our customers. Even so, the following general steps are almost always parts of the process.  

A) Time and Materials Arrangements

• The two parties sign the Non Disclosure Agreement.
• Preliminary discussions are scheduled with the prospect, that touch the following aspects: type of help the prospect needs (services, technologies, level of expertise), types of projects they have in the pipe line (industries, solutions, sizes), the prospect's prior experiences with outsourcing, our rates (per project, per person, per team member - blended), scaling up / down (the prospect's typical needs & approach; notice time they would commit to, etc), language for communication / documentation - English is the only prerequisite for our specialists, work procedures (communication, NDA, contracts, specifications, team coordination, travel). The prospect is invited to ask any questions (s)he might have.
  These discussions are mostly business oriented and attended by our company executives (Key Account Manager, Business Development Manager, CEO).
• Some prospects send us comprehensive Requests for Information, which tend to take a lot of time to fill out. As we have invested a significant amount of time putting together the FAQ section on this site and the site itself, we kindly invite our prospects to examine this information first and then tell us if there is anything else they wish to know.
• The prospect visits the AROBS office. This step is taken by most companies interested in establishing a long term partnership with us, as it is well known that a small business run from an apartment block can easily pose as a large company and in fact rely only on freelancers to handle projects. Making sure you get what you are promised can never hurt.
• The two parties negotiate and sign the contract, which covers all the areas of the collaboration that are considered important. Some customers prefer to use their own contract templates while others opt for ours.
• AROBS sends CVs to the customer for validation.
• The prospect schedules interviews with the selected specialists.
• Collaboration starts.

B) Project Based Work

• The two parties sign the Non Disclosure Agreement.
• The prospect sends us the project specifications.
• If necessary, we schedule phone/Skype conferences to discuss technical aspects of the project.
• The AROBS specialists prepare the time estimation and price quote.
• The prospect accepts or rejects the offer.
• If the offer is accepted, a framework agreement is prepared, which includes the general terms of the collaboration. All project specific details are laid out in additional acts to the agreement. The project based payment terms are also specified in additional acts. The framework agreement is meant to simplify the procedures and save some trees. 
• The parties negotiate and sign the framework agreement and the additional acts.
• Project kick-of.

Can the AROBS staff travel to the customer’s offices?

Yes, this is something we are normally doing and charging separately from development. The extra costs include travel and lodging expenses, as well as a daily allowance.

Is it possible to subcontract AROBS specialists to work at our premises for several consecutive months?

Regarding the place where development takes place, we are often restricted by our employees' reluctance to live abroad or in other Romanian cities than Cluj for long periods of time. Most of them have strong ties to Cluj (family, life partner), who cannot accompany them at the customer site.

Up to four weeks at a time at the customer's office over a period of 6 months usually works, but anything above a month tends to cause troubles with middle and senior developers. Juniors are sometimes less reluctant to work abroad, especially if they are single. 

We normally suggest our partners a hybrid model, in which AROBS' developers spend as much time as necessary at the customer site (usually no more than a month) at the beginning of the project and then do the bulk of the work at the AROBS development center in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Does AROBS have experience in multi-site software projects?

AROBS works both with software houses and final clients.

When software houses are involved, they usually interact with the final client and gather the rough project specification. We then refine these specifications into detailed specifications and implement the code accordingly. We also do the application design based on the rough specifications. In these arrangements one team is on the software house’s side and one team on our side. The same can be true when we work with end customers.

Can AROBS temporarily increase the size of the assigned team in case of emergency?

Yes, this is usually possible with internal resources. Our policy is to have some of our developers work on internal projects so that they can step in when emergencies occur. When your staffing requirements exceed our possibilities we can rely on subcontractors. Overtime from AROBS developers is also an option, as our specialists sometimes agree to do extra hours on a temporary basis.

Most of the times there are ways to meet your most critical and unexpected needs with a notice of approximately one month.

How do you handle technical support for software outsourcing?

Our support team is made of people with excellent linguistic skills. They have either spent a long time in countries where English, German or French is the native language or studied and practised these languages thoroughly in Romania. General communication for support purposes is done via e-mail. Each message gets sent to the following persons:

• the developer assigned to the task;
• the expert in the field (i.e. database expert, GUI expert, business module  expert, etc);
• the project supervisor.

Each type of mail has a specific response time interval (i.e. production bug: 1 hour, design analysis: 2 days). If unusual situations occur in which the person contacted to handle the issue cannot reply in the time agreed upon, the project supervisor intervenes to check the reasons for the delay in response and takes immediate action to ensure that the customer receives the answer in the shortest time possible.