CAD Outsourcing Doesn’t Have to Be Done In India

Do a Google search for “CAD Outsourcing” and what you’ll find is lots of firms located in India, which is fine if you’re prepared to go off-shore for CAD services.  But what if your U.S. based company prefers to stay a little closer to home? Does outsourcing to a U.S. based CAD service means that your costs are going to be higher than a competitor who outsources to India?

Surprisingly, not necessarily!

And there’s something to be said for being able to say that a product was “designed and made in the U.S.A.”

Why Outsourcing Offshore May Not Be the Best Choice

According to an article by Rebekah Cambell in the New York Times “You’re the Boss”, “Many businesses outsource work to other countries. But outsourcing can be scary.  How do you know you’re not going to be ripped off, with a job that will return half-baked or not at all?”

She goes on to say that she outsourced to a local company who sent their work to India, reasoning that the local company would give her more control, but that the outsourcing to India would give her access to the engineering talent she needed at a price she could afford.

Her problem was, “no one working for the local company was focused on my (project).  These employees all ran hundreds of projects at once. And I never spoke to the Indian team, which had no clue about the business problem (my project) was intended to solve; they simply received instructions from guys who didn’t really care about my project. The result was a … the disaster we had to scrap.”

Offshore companies in India and other countries are often focused on making money, not on providing good service or products.  The shops can be impersonal, with rotating employees who not only come and go from one project to another but who move from one outsourcing company to another on a regular basis.  This lack of consistency can result in inconsistent project results…good sometimes, not so good other times and down-right shoddy on many occasions.

How to Find a CAD Outsource Service that You Can Trust

Staying closer to home for outsourcing may offer better results, especially if you make sure that the work is not being farmed out to a high-output, low-cost offshore company like those described above.  This is a common practice.   In fact, often CAD companies who show up in Google searches out the fact that their shops are in India because the perception is that their costs will be lower.

Truth be told, what often happens is that the hourly rate is, indeed lower, but the work takes longer due to inconsistencies with employees and workflow within the Indian shop.  Remember that $10.00/hour for something that takes 10 hours to do poorly costs the same as something that costs $50.00/hour and takes 2 hours to do well.  All things being equal, I’d take the service that charged $50.00/hour and gave me an end result that I could use, rather than the bargain rate that has to be done over again in order to be usable.

See our article “How to Choose a CAD Conversion Service” for specific guidelines to help you find a CAD outsource service that you can trust. And download the white paper below to learn how important Quality Control is when you outsource.