Sustaining growth with a flexible approach

Three years ago, IT consultancy SFW Ltd took advantage of global efficiencies and established a development facility in India using Quickstart Global’s In-House Anywhere™ service to access a highly skilled and talented workforce. This has become increasingly important to SFW’s overall success and continued growth: it has helped it broaden its appeal to new clients and defy the downturn, increasing its total number of full time employees by over 20% in 2010.

In the last year alone SFW, an independently owned IT consultancy that delivers business-led solutions for the long term benefit of its public and private sector clients,  saw growth in its Indian operation of over 45%, with continued growth of at least 25% projected for 2011.  This has been driven by the increasing and pivotal involvement of SFW India in a number of key projects for core SFW clients including ACAS, The Car phone Warehouse, Environment Agency, Greta, PepsiCo and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency. The growth has also been accompanied by a large increase in skills with each member of the SFW India team gaining, on average, at least one new technical qualification last year.

SFW Director, Steve Elliott, said "Undoubtedly, SFW India has become increasingly important to the company's on-going success as it means that SFW can offer an improved cost model, increased value for money, resource flexibility and, crucially, the ability to scale up and out quickly to meet client challenges and needs. This supple approach is essential in the current global economic situation and is what will enable SFW to sustain its current growth."

Talking about the successes of the last year, SFW India Team Leader, Alpa Shukul said "The success and growth of SFW's offshore operation demonstrates how the national commitment to growth in the technology sector in India can successfully combine with a strong corporate culture and ethos to deliver premium results for clients. Continued growth in both continents makes working at SFW very exciting, with plenty of new challenges. I think the whole team is looking forward to seeing what 2011 will bring."

How it began

SFW India was established to ensure SFW remained competitive with other players that were already realising the benefits of accessing talent pools abroad. Before partnering with Quickstart Global, SFW ran various pilot projects with outsourcing partners in India but found there were issues with staff continuity and with fitting the SFW Agile Development approach into a very process-driven model. Whilst the rates were cheap, everything took twice as long to do, therefore there were nominal cost savings and considerable resources had to be deployed to ensure project success.

When encountering the Quickstart Global model, SFW immediately saw it as a viable option. Steve Elliott, Director said “The offering  was half way between outsourcing and going it alone which was an attractive proposition that addressed the staff issues we’d had previously as well as reducing complexity of setting up an overseas operation.”

“Quickstart Global shared their costing model and there were no hidden complexities. It was easy to see how the costs were calculated, which helped with business planning,” he continued.  “Quickstart Global is very easy to engage with at every level  - they make it simple.”

Since the Vadodara office was opened in India, the team has quadrupled in size. Project teams are totally integrated and work in close collaboration whether they are based in the UK or in India. “SFW occupies two floors of its offices in Woking and it’s as if the team in Vadodara are on additional floor” Steve added. “Collaboration with offshore operations requires excellent communication links. This has been made significantly easier with the introduction of project tools such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio ALM, and Office Communications Server (OCS). Staff from India visit the Woking offices regularly to collaborate on projects.”

SFW realised the benefits of having an offshore team very quickly. “Being able to deliver the work at a considerably reduced cost, compared to using only UK-based resources was the deciding factor in SFW winning a particular contract. When bidding for a large public sector contract we took the prospective client out to India to meet the team and understand how the operation worked. Despite being in competition with large outsourcers, SFW secured the contract.” Steve explained.

To date the cost advantages delivered by opening an office in India, combined with the collaborative working practices with high quality staff, set SFW on a sure path for growth and expansion which it has been able to realise, even in a fragile global economy.