It is widely known, the Swiss Economy, mainly the IT sector, banking and insurance as well as industrial sector urgently need specialists in the fields of engineering and IT. Not only larger enterprises feel the shortage of skilled workers; small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular are exposed to this latent shortage of skilled workers due to various factors and, unlike large companies, cannot pay any price for an applicant. Furthermore, it therefore makes sense to outsource company areas to where specialists are available. In the case of banks and insurance companies, downstream corporate areas that do not come into direct customer contact, such as compliance, invoicing, etc., or the development of all kinds of software products in the IT industry are conceivable. In order to maintain competitiveness, companies must build on the following approaches:

(1) conventional recruitment – not promising in an applicant market with few offers and the resulting high entry-level salaries;
(2) internal training and further education of employees – sometimes a lengthy undertaking, dependent on the motivation of the employees and not directly available;
(3) Outsourcing to freelancers – here a freelancer can virtually choose the job and enforce any price. Availability not guaranteed;
(4) Outsourcing to third parties domestically – a possible scenario, no differences in mentality and time differences; but no cost savings and possibly long waiting times;
(5) Outsourcing abroad, whereby a distinction is made between the near abroad (nearshoring – travel time up to about 4 hours) and non-EU-CH countries (offshoring).

swissminds AG supports its customers in a first step, the evaluation, and in particular in the determination of needs and possible location. We currently offer solutions at five locations within our IT group, but we are flexible and can respond to customer requests. This is also possible with smaller teams. We basically offer three different contract variations to meet the needs of our customers. Pure on-site employee management is just as conceivable as agile project management in cooperation with the customer or the creation of customer-specific software.

Normally, solutions within the EU member states offer legal security, but then, despite a lower wage level in Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria or Poland, certainly require higher wage and general costs than a solution approach e.g. in Ukraine or Serbia. All the locations mentioned, however, offer the advantage of short distances and travel times and thus low time differences. After almost 30 years abroad, the author may doubt whether the mentality that is often mentioned is similar. It is precisely for this reason that many “offshore projects” fail – and not because developers in India, Pakistan or Vietnam are poorly trained. In any case, our customers benefit from the fact that we, as a Swiss company, are your local contact. In addition to the national language, English is always standard, and we also have German-speaking employees on site. This gives our customers project and planning security.

According to a 2020 survey by Whitelane Research, a clear majority of Swiss companies are satisfied with IT outsourcing and nearshoring; it offers significant advantages in terms of a) know-how / quality, b) control, c) compliance, d) scalability and, above all, d) costs. Given this, nearshoring with partners like swissminds AG, and due to correct planning and implementation with our help, offers a solid basis for the indirect expansion of your own staff and maintaining competitiveness at fixed, calculable costs.

We can therefore only encourage companies to contact us in order to discuss suitable solutions without obligation and, if necessary, implement them together.

swissminds Group, 11.2021