Therefore, what exactly is so attractive about outsourcing in Europe? In our previous article about Benefits of outsourcing in Europe we talked about location and discussed why setting a local office in Europe and not far away is the preferred strategy for many companies.

This time we will focus on another positive trait Europe offers and that is the common culture. It is true that in Europe, there is a lot of diversity but still all countries share similar customs, religion and corporate culture.

These similarities are extremely important when conducting a business and crucial for specific industries. The European Union is home to many different countries and historical events but the political atmosphere and open borders make blending into cultures and learning much easier and quick.

Europeans travel a lot and are familiar with the customs in surrounding countries. Moreover, the educational institutions are multinational and students from all over the world exchange experience and learn to live with cultural differences. The young workforce in the Eastern and Central European countries is well educated and knows how to communicate with each other. Studying foreign languages from young age is also extremely common.

While in many Asian countries, English is the primary foreign language, in Europe popular languages are also German, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian. Many young specialists speak more than one foreign language making them very flexible and desired for foreign companies looking to outsource.

In addition, most countries in Europe share the same religion and thus have similar holiday times, making it easier to coordinate and communicate.

The IT field is very well developed and countries like Bulgaria are famous for their traditions in technology and sciences. The long history of achievements in these fields has made Bulgaria one of the most attractive outsourcing destinations for many IT companies.

Law and regulations also play an important role in the decision to outsource in Europe. With the European Union acting as a unifying force, many countries comply with common legal frameworks and thus alleviate business interactions.

If you want to learn more about outsourcing opportunities, you can contact us or leave a comment below.

Flat Rock is yet now ready with another successful e-commerce project!

Richard Elder Floral Design is one of the leading UK providers of floral design for various occasions, events and celebrations.

Flat Rock rebuilt completely and modified the Interspire e-commerce solution that they used and added new features to it, such as two different galleries, custom forms, a custom home page, news system, editable left hand menu to fit the existing design. All the changes are manageable from the Interspire backend.

You can visit the website at http://www.floraldesign.co.uk/

For more information about this and other project you can visit our portfolio page or contact us.

In this issue we will meet you with Anna, one of our very talented web designers. We asked her all about being a digital artist and what’s her favourite pastime.

In addition, we talked to Ran Nir from Conversion Counts to tell us more about his company, outsourcing views and partnership with Flat Rock.

Then, you can read more about Priority Distribution Solution and what can a high quality ERP do for your business.

Download our April issue absolutely free or read it online!

Enjoy!

Flat Rock was represented by one of its senior software engineer Nikolay Raychev. Asst.Prof. Raychev talked about his recent research on “Complex Quantum Queries”. In his report Asst.Prof. Raychev, presented a few of his new quantum algorithms for optimizing of deterministic and random complexity of quantum queries.

For the first time he presented three new theorems as well as a couple of existing model walks in n-dimensional lathe in Hilbert space with the use of conjucted transpose matrices. Asst.Prof. Raychev talked about some of his new quantum functions, which are not present in previous algorithms looking for graph properties. In addition, he also shared his optimization of the walk implementation. According to Asst.Prof. Raychev his results only partially affect the topic of the possible phenomenology and the algorithmic implications of the quantum walk.

He also presented his improved Becel function in which a given initial localized state evolves in a left and right moving wave packet, propagating with speed .

In his report, Asst.Prof. Raychev suggests a new technique for creating coherent super positions and entanglement states based on the properties of the circular matrices, which allows manipulation of collective quantum states in separate potential hole.

The algorithms can be applied to a wide range of problems for identifying a solution as well as for optimizing of quantum algorithms for finding substructures in a graph.

Asst.Prof. Raychev pointed out that his first theorem can be implemented to the induced subgraphs while the improvements described in the second theorem cannot be directly applied as induced. It can be useful for general study of induced subgraphs.

Some of the algorithms presented in the research have found a practical use in one of Flat Rock’s large projects, in which walks of unregular reverse graphs are implemented.

Nikolay Raychev is also an author of the research paper “Publishing of multimedia messages directly from the phone to the website”, which you can download for free.

Flat Rock Technology is always striving to be in line with the newest development and practices in order to offer the best service available for its clients. Our software engineers are highly educated and qualified and our research and development leads to ever-innovative service that we implement in a number of complex projects. They work both independently and in a team.

For more information about Flat Rock developers and the possibility of outsourcing a dedicated team, please feel free to contact us.

Sheldon is a UK building building company responsible for projects such as Grange Garden and Arthaus. It is also a winner at International Property Awards, Whathouse Awards and in two categories of the 2011 UK Property awards.

Sheldon approached Flat Rock for the design and development of their logo and website, whose aim is to present the company and its services. The project was developed on ASP.NET and is supported by Hydrogen CMS.

Currently, Flat Rock is working on a few more projects for Sheldon that are expected to be finished in the upcoming months.

You can visit Sheldon’s new website at http://sheldonconstruction.co.uk or see it in Flat Rock projects portfolio.

For questions or more information about this or any other of our projects do not hesitate to contact us.

IT outsourcing, while until recently mainly spread in India and other Asian countries is now shifting a bit to the west and positioning in Eastern Europe. Some may argue that this step is not very cost efficient but there are other issues to take into account.

Contrary to many beliefs, nearshoring is the new direction in which companies go in terms of diversifying and expanding. We will try to investigate the best places for outsourcing and why Europe is on top of the competition in that area.

First, there are many location advantages. Asian countries may offer cheaper work force but the work hours are completely different due to the time zones differences. The head office and the outsourced office are usually located in such a distance that they cannot work simultaneously. Rarely can they interact during the workday and answer time may be delayed because of that, which may lead to lost opportunities and disgruntled clients.

Being in the same or a close time zone allows the work hours for one company to be virtually doubled for one day, thus utilizing the most of the employee reaction time. This is very important considering the mobile world we live in and the demand for a quick and adequate response to the customer base. It is vital that the customers receive timely updates on the issues they have and corresponding help in real time.

Moreover, the close location of the outsourced office to the main office allows travel, which is low-cost and can happen in a business day. If needed, an employee can be allocated to visit a client office or a client can come to the outsourced office to visit his/her dedicated team members. That is something that cannot be achieved easily, if at all, if the company is located far away. Travel expenses are not to be underestimated, especially if many products the company offers are bespoke. Costs due to the need for travel and frequent visits to clients’ offices certainly lower the profits, and make any project cumbersome.

Share your thoughts about the importance of the location in making a decision where to outsource and give us suggestions for more location benefits. If you are interested in working with a trustworthy outsourcing partner with extensive experience do not hesitate to contact us.

Laying off recently hired employees is demotivational for the rest of the team. Moreover, the amount of sunk costs connected to the quick recruitment process will have to be incurred again when a new project of this type appears. Handling such situations, though, does not have to leave you in a never ending vicious circle. For any business, having additional work can only be accepted as a positive sign and full advantage should be taken. And, there is a cost effective, quick and risk free way to do that.

Outsourcing is a popular and tested way for coping with additional tasks that are not completely covered by your business core competencies or such that demand fast and secure expansion of the team. Many outsourcing companies such as Flat Rock specialise in providing outsourcing solutions for web and software development projects. If you have some available workforce in house you can opt for creating a mixed team and combine your own team with an outsourced dedicated specialist who will join your company or project for a particular period  of time.

Flat Rock Technology offers an array of IT specialists that can be outsourced at very beneficial terms. There is no minimum time or a number of outsourced professionals that you have to meet, as there are also no limitations. You can choose to hire one specialist for 2 months or 5 for a year. You do not have to go into an employment contractual agreement although the outsourced professionals will be answering to you and working only on your projects.

In addition you will be able to have full monitoring of the process and give feedback directly to the IT specialist of your choice.

Size doesn’t matter at all – the results are what counts. Scale up and down your team without additional recruitment costs and lengthy search for the right and qualified professional. Now you can have the team you need for the time you need it quickly and easily and rely on professionalism and high quality service. Flexibility is something we excel in without the common traps of package deals that will make you pay for services you do not need.

Outsourcing with Flat Rock will allow you to:

• hire even only one developer

• choose the professional personally

• work with us on short or long-term projects

Employment time and team member number does not matter to Flat Rock and there is no minimum time or number of outsourced professionals required. Contact us now to boost your company performance with a quality outsourcing in confidence.

Outsourcing a job is a regular policy for those who realise the cost advantages and have reliable outsourcing partners. However, to outsource a whole division or project is not absolutely necessary if you have some resources but not enough. Many companies now use the mixed team approach to undertake larger projects or projects whose requirements go way beyond the capacity or competencies of the supplier.

What is the mixed team approach?

You can create a mixed team with your own internal team and the outsourced team you have hired. Flexibility is key in projects where many different specialists are needed, especially for a short period of time or for more diverse projects. Not having the entire workforce in house does not mean that you have to forego business opportunities. With the mixed team approach you can add one or more people to your team for the time you need them without having to employ them.

Many outsourcing companies, especially IT, SEO and marketing companies, “lend” their specialists exactly for such purposes. They adapt quickly as they are trained and experienced for such kind of jobs. In this way, any company can scale their team up and down on a very flexible basis without incurring risk or hiring additional personnel.

Benefits of mixed teams

Not only your company can benefit from experienced professionals that require little to no additional training but also adding a new team member with specific skills to your own workforce will only diversify your portfolio of offered solutions. Exchange of various skills and approaches and extending the scope of the work that you undertake can only help your team develop and gain new capabilities.

Mixed teams can be long or short-term solutions, they are easy to put together and easy to disassemble as the work conditions and business relations are clearly defined. In addition, working with a company specialized in training and arranging such specific work force, alleviates the process and provides security no freelancer can offer.

Think about the mixed team as an extended and improved version of your own team, with added capacity and skills. You can have full control over it and decide when you want it and for how long you want to use it.

If creating a mixed team seems like the right strategy for you, you can contact Flat Rock for more information. Flat Rock Technology has extensive experience in maintaining specialists for mixed teams and dedicated IT work. You are welcome to enquire.

Outsourcing has been an integral part of business relationships in the last decades. With the facilitation of communication, global availability of resources and advancement of technologies companies can find easily and utilize the skills they need for short or long-term projects.

Some businesses, though, still do not see outsourcing as a valuable asset to their different activities. Strange as it seems for those companies, outsourcing may appear risky and unreliable as they feel they will not be able to control the work process or guarantee its quality. Not considering outsourcing as an option, however, may deprive them of new business opportunities and diversification of their portfolio.

Trust is an important issue in business relations as it defines the way and manner work is done. Now it is easier than ever to find resources around the globe, follow the work process in detail and receive timely and accurate information about its status and development.

Offshoring has stepped down as a strategy and given place to nearshoring – an outsourcing policy especially popular in Europe. Nearshoring allows easy monitoring, common EU legislation, close time zones and lower costs. Flat Rock Technology is one of the companies in Europe that has realized the potential nearshoring has for its IT projects.

A development centre such as the one in Bulgaria provides the company’s clients with cost effective solutions that are flexible in terms of hiring period and size of the team.  This outsourcing strategy uses the main advantages a highly educated and nearby workforce can offer and namely high quality service, communication in real time and benefits of the local market prices.

Enlarging your team for a specific job is quick and secure. Flat Rock clients are free to choose the number of people working on their projects and the specialists they will add to their in-house team personally. The convenience of the UK office provides extra security for those clients who are still not used to work with international suppliers. Meeting and briefing the management team in person and having the opportunity to find out more about previous IT projects enhances the value of the work relationship.

Flat Rock understands the tax or legislative issues that may occur so all contractual agreements are done with Flat Rock Technology UK.

Choosing the right outsourcing partner sometimes is not easy but we guarantee outsourcing in confidence because we can offer you:

• high quality IT solutions from experienced and highly qualified IT professionals

• real time communication

• office in London, UK

• choosing the developers personally

• benefit from Bulgarian prices

• contractual relationship with the UK company

If you want to find out more about Flat Rock outsourcing services, you can contact us or visit our website.