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Day rate is the least useful number in this decision
Most teams start this comparison on day rate alone, and most regret it. Day rate is the easiest number to compare and the least predictive of what the work ends up costing.
What actually decides the bill is how many hours of overlap you get with the team, how senior the people are, and how much of your own team's time disappears into supervision and rework. Here is how the three models differ on those, from running delivery ourselves in Amsterdam and Skopje.
Three models,
Strengths, costs and the situation each one suits.
Hire and keep
Your own Salesforce team
Complete control and product knowledge that compounds year on year. The cost is hiring time, salary at market rate, and the risk of one person holding everything.
- 01Full timezone overlap
- 02Knowledge stays in the business
- 03Hiring takes months in a tight market
- 04Hard to flex up or down
- 05Single points of failure
Same working day
A team in a nearby timezone
Senior people who join your stand-up, in a timezone that overlaps your whole working day. Lower cost than local hiring without the coordination tax of a distant timezone.
- 01Full working-day overlap with Western Europe
- 02Senior profiles available quickly
- 03Scale up and down by project
- 04Travel is a short flight, not a long haul
- 05Shared working practices and culture
Lowest day rate
A team many timezones away
The lowest headline rate and the most management overhead. Works well for self-contained, well-specified work; struggles when requirements move during the sprint.
- 01Lowest day rate
- 02Very large talent pools
- 03A few hours of overlap at best
- 04Handover cost lands on your team
- 05Slower feedback when requirements change
The honest part
When we are not the right answer
When offshore is the better choice. If the work is genuinely specified up front, does not change mid-flight, and someone internally owns that specification, offshore will be cheaper and the overlap gap will not hurt you.
When in-house is the better choice. If Salesforce is how your business runs day to day, and you can attract and keep the people, hire. Nobody will know your processes like a permanent team.
When nearshore is the better choice. When requirements evolve as you learn, when you need senior people this quarter rather than next year, and when you would rather be in the same meeting than wait a day for an answer.
Not sure which model fits?
Tell us about the work and we will say plainly which of the three we would use — including when that is not us.