Outsourcing of IT specialists is one of the models in which we mostly cooperate with our clients. In one of our previous articles, we have described how does this form of cooperation look like from the formal and business side.
Today we have decided to focus on the skills that individual IT experts who make up our team have. At the outset, it should be noted that the demand for outsourcing IT specialists is constantly growing, including CRM programmers, SharePoint experts, technical consultants, and system architects.
Problems with covering recruiting needs is a phenomenon that has a very high growth of dynamics among the IT sector. According to data published by Eurostat, currently, 46% of Polish companies had problems finding employees for a position in the IT industry.
It is also worth noting that body leasing of IT specialists is a solution that allows convenient cooperation. For example – the client receives a programmer who is an expert in Dynamics 365 and has all the skills necessary to perform the tasks set by our business partner. He or she can be available full-time or part-time, the level of commitment can be adjusted on an ongoing basis depending on current needs.
What specialists will you find in our team?
Technical consultant
This is the person responsible for contact with the client. His or her task is to establish a relationship with the client, identify the needs, and then explain them to developers responsible for adapting Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft SharePoint or other Microsoft solutions depending on the client’s needs.
Additionally, technical consultants are also responsible for developing simpler solutions that do not require advanced programming skills.
Analyst
After the initial understanding of the customer’s needs by the technical consultant, the analyst’s task is to analyze them thoroughly, collect the exact demand, create business descriptions, analyze the processes in the client’s company and bring them to a document that is understandable for both business and programmers and will constitute the basis for planning work schedule.
Programmer
Our developers are responsible for adapting solutions to the needs of clients in the field that requires programming skills.
They create and modify solutions in the field of CRM Dynamics 365, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Azure which is a computing cloud, or a module supporting customer service in companies, i.e. Microsoft Customer Service (formerly known as Customer Engagement).
It is possible to hire one programmer or the entire team – at an averaged rate. As ARP Ideas, we will select people with appropriate knowledge of technology and according to the expectations of a specific customer.
Software architect
The architect’s task is to combine the skills of an analyst, consultant, and programmer and to thoroughly analyze and understand the client’s needs and problems, plan and create a solution structure, prepare a work schedule, as well as ongoing team management. In addition, the software architect is also programming by him or herself.
What exactly can our programmers and architects do?
Programming: .NET Framework, .NET Core, C ++, Pascal (Delphi), C #, Silverlight / WPF / UWA, ASP.NET, ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, Angular, React, KnockoutJS, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, LINQ
Libraries: CQRS, FluentValidatoin, FluentAssertion, Swagger, Serilog, Elasticsearch
Platforms: Microsoft Azure (e.g. Storage, SQL, Cloud Services, Service Bus), Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft SharePoint, Dynamics CRM
Testing: Unit Testing, automated functional testing of SharePoint, Dynamics 365 and Dynamics CRM
Databases: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Entity Framework, Entity Framework Core, WCF, T-SQL
Others: TFS (DevOps), Visual Studio, JIRA, GIT, SVN, SCRUM, SVN
Watch the video below to learn more about how team leasing works
Find out more about the most important technologies and solutions that our specialists work with
CRM – customer relationship management, is a tool that allows you to maintain and care for customer relationships. It collects information from all communication channels with the client, such as e-mail, telephone, website, live chat, advertising campaign, and social media. Thanks to this, the marketing and sales department gain the full context, allowing for the planning and implementation of an effective communication strategy with the client.
The EDI system – Electronic Data Interchange, or electronic data interchange, is a technology that is becoming a common business standard in an increasing number of sectors of the economy. Its purpose is to improve data exchange and document circulation or data flow in the company. Electronic document flow enables, among others, a significant reduction in the use of paper documents, which significantly improves communication and reduces costs.
Intranet – a non-public telecommunications network that resembles the Internet, but access to it is limited only to members of the organization or other authorized people.
Originally, the intranet operated only in closed internal networks of companies, scientific or public institutions. Currently, it is possible to use the Intranet also from the outside using a login, password and advanced security measures.
Its main goal is communication within the organization, exchange of data and documents, and improvement of cooperation between teams and individuals.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 – a solution, or actually a whole set of solutions intended for business, operating on the basis of computing cloud. It was introduced to the market in November 2016. It is a combination of the CRM system – Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the ERP system – Microsoft Dynamics AX / NAV.
It is distinguished by its versatility, flexible licensing model and a very wide range of integration with other solutions from and outside the Microsoft product family. A very wide pool of possibilities is available when it comes to adapting and customizing Dynamics 365 to the individual needs of a given company.
Additionally, Dynamics is integrated with the Microsoft 365 platform, the Office 365 environment and the LinkedIn portal. This translates into more effective team collaboration and speeds up data manipulation.
Microsoft SharePoint – SharePoint is one of the most important Microsoft products. It is a flexible, responsive and fully configurable platform that enables data storage and circulation. It works as an intranet – enables the creation of internal channels of information circulation, sharing, versioning and joint and convenient work on files.
The most common version of this solution is currently SharePoint Online. Access to it can be obtained by purchasing i.e. a Microsoft 365 license. As part of this choice, it is possible to store and operate on SharePoint 1 TB of data in the cloud.
Microsoft Power Platform – Power Platform is a set of tools based on cloud computing, which includes:
– Power BI is used to analyze data using graphic and interactive dashboards.
– PowerApps allows to create custom applications without the need or with a very limited need to involve developers.
– Power Automate – allows to create the workflows aimed at process automation.
The service is based on the Microsoft Azure computing cloud, which translates into very high data security standards and easy management.
Microsoft Visual Studio – Microsoft’s integrated development environment. It allows i.a. to edit, debug, compile, and publish the application. It is a program used at many stages of software development. Used on platforms such as: Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, Windows CE, .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight, Linux, MacOS and Xbox consoles.
Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL) – a relational database management system developed and popularized by Microsoft. The most important database product of this company.
As a database server, it is software which primary function is to store and retrieve data at the request of other applications that may run on the same or another computer on the network.
Microsoft sells over a dozen different versions of Microsoft SQL Server that cater to different audiences and workload levels – ranging from small applications destined for a single machine to large web applications that serve multiple users simultaneously.
MySQL – open source relational database management system. Its name is a combination of the name of the daughter of one of the founders of Michael Widenius and the abbreviation “Structured Query Language”. Currently, MySQL is developed by Oracle, after the Swedish MySQL AB was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, and then in 2010 by Oracle.
SQL is the language that developers use to create, modify, and extract data from a relational database, as well as to control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, RDBMS such as MySQL works with the operating system to implement the relational database in the computer’s storage system, manages users, enables network access, and facilitates database integrity testing and backup.
MySQL is free and open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, also available under other proprietary licenses. It is a solution used by many popular database-based applications and websites, such as Facebook, MediaWiki, Twitter and YouTube.
Transact SQL (T-SQL) – is a proprietary solution created by Microsoft and Sybase, which extends the SQL standard with the possibility of procedural programming, local variables, auxiliary functions facilitating the processing of strings and data.
Transact-SQL is critical to using Microsoft SQL Server. All applications that communicate with an instance of SQL Server do so by sending Transact-SQL statements to the server, independent of the application’s user interface.
Entity Framework – is an open-source object-relational mapping platform. Entity Framework helps architects and developers achieve two different goals. Model logic of solutions, in cooperation with the data engines used for data storage and data transfering.
In 2016, Entity Framework Core 1.0 was released, along with ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0. It was originally called Entity Framework 7, but was renamed to emphasize that it was a complete rewrite of the Entity Framework, not a gradual upgrade to it.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) – free open-source runtime and API set for the .NET Framework, formerly known as Indigo. WCF integrates all existing Microsoft technologies for communication: .NET Remoting, COM +, MSMQ, Windows System Messaging, basic profile webservices and transactional webservices.
WCF is a tool that is often used to implement and deploy a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). It is designed with a service-oriented architecture to support distributed computing where services have remote consumers.
In addition, it is a solution that implements many advanced Web Services (WS) standards such as WS-Addressing, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-Security. With the release of the .NET Framework 4.0, WCF also provides RSS syndication services, WS-Discovery, routing, and better support for REST services.
.NET Framework – a development platform that was designed and created by Microsoft. Includes runtime and class libraries. It is a technology that is not related to one programming language, various languages can be used for programming within it: C ++, C #, F #, J #, Visual Basic, Delphi 8. The main task of the .NET Framework is to support such elements as application code, memory or security.
.NET Core – the successor to the .NET Framework, a free open-source framework designed for Windows, Linux and macOS. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft employees through the .NET Foundation and made available under the MIT license.
.NET Core 1.0 was released in 2016 with Update 3 to Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and allows to create and develop software based on .NET Core. The next editions – 1.0.04 and .NET Core 1.1.1. were released with .NET Core 1.0 and Visual Studio 2017 in 2017.
.NET Core was announced by Microsoft in 2014. The goal was to create a framework that supports many platforms, including the above-mentioned. Linux and macOS. .NET Core is a redesigned version of .NET based on simplified versions of the class libraries.
ASP.NET – is a set of framework-based technologies designed by Microsoft to create dynamic pages and a variety of web services and applications.
ASP .NET was first released in 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework and is the successor to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages technology. The ASP.NET platform is based on the Common Language Runtime (CLR) technology, thanks to which the logic of ASP.NET and XML Web Services pages can be created in Visual Basic, .NET, C # or any other language supporting the Microsoft .NET Framework technology.
ASP.NET Web Forms – web application framework and one of the several programming models supported by Microsoft ASP.NET technology. As with ASP.NET itself, Web Forms applications can be developed in any programming language that is supported by Common Language Runtime, such as C # or Visual Basic.
Web Forms was released with the original .NET Framework 1.0 release in 2002 as the first programming model available in ASP.NET.
C # – a modern programming language, designed in 1998-2001 for Microsoft. It allows developers to create safe applications that run in i.a. within the .NET platform.
Angular – an open-source framework that allows creating web applications using HTML and TypeScript. Run and developed by the Angular team at Google, a community of individuals, companies and corporations. Created by the same team that created AngularJS and is written in TypeScript. Implements basic and optional functionality as a set of TypeScript libraries that can then be imported into the applications.
React – an open-source JavaScript library that allows creating user interfaces and UI components. Developed by Facebook and the community of individuals, as well as companies and coprorations. React can be used as the basis for creating single-page and mobile applications. Note, however, that developing a React application typically requires the use of additional routing and form libraries. Examples of such libraries are e.g. React Router and Formik.
JavaScript (JS) – is a high-level programming language that is used to create dynamic content on web pages. Next to HTML and CSS – JavaScript is one of the basic technologies used to create web pages. It was created by Brendan Eich, known more widely as a co-founder of the Mozilla, Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.
The advantage of JavaScript is its versatility – with its help you can create image galleries, carousels with pictures, but also games, animated 2D and 3D graphics, and even entire applications.
Initially, JavaScripy engines were used only in web browsers, but now they are important elements of other execution systems, such as Node.js or Deno.
Despite the similarities between JavaScript and Java – in terms of name, syntax, and standard libraries, they are two separate languages that differ significantly from each other.
TypeScript – an open-source programming language that relies on JavaScript, one of the most often used tools in the world and is a superset of it i.a. by adding static typing or new interfaces.
The main advantage of TypeScript is the ability to better describe the object, providing better documentation and the ability to validate the code.
Importantly, any code written correctly in JavaScript is also TypeScript code. Even if while checking the code, any errors occur, they will not make it impossible to run code created with JavaScript.
Code written in TypeScripy can also be converted to JavaScript code using the TypeScript or Babel compiler.
Bootstrap – free open-source CSS framework. Designed for responsive, front-end website development for mobile devices. Includes CSS and JavaScript based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other interface elements.
Bootstrap was originally developed as Twitter Blueprint by Mark Otto and Jacob Thorton from Twitter to allow better consistency between different tools. In 2011, it was renamed to Bootstrap and published as an open-source project.
Team Foundation Server (TFS) – a Microsoft product that enables source code management, reporting, requirements management, project management, automatic compilations, testing and version management. Covers the entire application lifecycle. TFS can be used as a back-end for many integrated development environments to i.a. Microsoft Visual Studio.
JIRA – is a proprietary product developed by Atlassian, which enables error tracking and efficient project management. Interestingly – the name is an abbreviated form of the Japanese word “Gojira”, meaning “Godzilla”.
Scrum – an iterative and incremental framework that allows effective developing, delivering and maintaining complex products in line with the Scrum Guide. It is an approach used in the implementation of projects based on agile methodologies and in line with the Agile Manifesto. It should be noted, however, that despite the fact that Scrum is mainly associated with programming, it is an approach also used in research, sales and marketing.
It is intended for teams of ten or fewer members who divide their work into goals that are achievable in time-limited iterations, called sprints, that last no more than one month, and most often two weeks.
The Scrum Team tracks and summarizes its progress in daily 15-minute meetings. At the end of the sprint, the team demonstrates the work done and conducts a sprint retrospective in order to improve the overall process in the future.
What are the differences between outsourcing, body leasing, offshoring, and nearshoring?
IT outsourcing
IT outsourcing consists in transferring IT-related activities outside a given enterprise and transferring them to an external company.
Usually, it is an activity calculated to reduce the costs associated with maintaining a company’s department, which, for example, is not crucial for its day-to-day operation.
This allows the organization to focus on the most important priorities, while carrying out activities that have so far been implemented internally. It is a method used not only in IT, but in the entire service and production sectors.
Body leasing
Most people who have not been recently following the IT market or have not tried to learn more about it, might have problems distinguishing IT outsourcing from body leasing. Therefore, we decided to explain the differences between them.
The main difference is their goals. Body leasing is the temporary rent from an IT company of IT specialist or IT specialists with competences in various fields of software development and development, whose goal is to implement, for example, one project instead of not partially or completely replacing the IT department in the client’s company.
Thus, body leasing services are also used by companies that not need an IT department at daily basis. However they need it for a moment in order to for example implement a CRM system, electronic data and document flow, or other software that will help improving business operations.
Offshoring
Offshoring is an outsourcing model in which a given type of operational activity is transferred to another country.
In general, the goal of offshoring, and potentially the main benefit of this type of outsourcing, is to reduce the company’s costs. However, it should be noted that it is potentially associated with the risk of a language barrier, a different work culture, a different time zone, or the quality of the Internet connection.
Nearshoring
An alternative model to offshoring is nearshoring. It is a model similar to offshoring, but with the difference that it consists in establishing cooperation with a company from a nearby country, often bordering with the client’s country.
Nearshoring is a solution primarily for companies that plan to outsource some of their processes, but at the same time are afraid of the above-mentioned risks, in particular differences regarding work culture, time zone, or Internet quality.
Do you need a developer or a team of IT specialists who will streamline the business processes in your company?
We are eager to listen about your exact needs and suggest the optimal solutions. Contact us using the form HERE, call us at +48 61 624 86 40, or e-mail
