Outsourcing, Finance and Sweets in an Interview with Ronald Kok

We had a welcome guest last week – Ronald Kok, our respected and loyal customer from the Netherlands. That was Ronald's third visit to our company and I couldn't help but talk to him about his project and attitude towards the work that we do.

Ronald runs www.analist.nl resource, a financial website with lots of useful data and articles about stock markets. He likes the quality of our cooperation and the results of the provided work. That is why Zfort Group is the company Ronald gives his next projects to. Interesting fact that Mr. Kok preferred our company over other candidates thanks to the speed of providing answers and the level of our proficiency. Don't envy us, dear competitors ;)

Also we talked about advantages and disadvantages of IT outsourcing.

Among advantages Ronald outlined 2 major facts: obtainable price for the provided services and broad technological base. He compared outsourcing to “one big shop” where one can pick a needed technology or a service and make the job done. Everything is possible. Every idea can be put into life.

Among outsourcing challenges Ronald named the risk to cooperate with unreliable company. It is rather difficult to build a trustworthy relationship without any kind of physical contact.

That is why Ronald prefers nearshoring – there are only 1357 miles between his native Amsterdam and Kharkov where our development center is located. There's no problem to meet once in 2 or 3 months. And we are happy with these meetings, as Ronald always brings sweets – cookies and candies from Holland. The next portion of delicious presents is awaited in March together with Ronald, of course :)

For the clients who live far away from the outsourcing destination, Ronald recommends rare meetings on important stages of a project development. Everything depends on the distance between the companies and the project duration. Sometimes a single meeting once a year would be enough to keep the cooperation effective.

I had much pleasure talking to Ronald and many thanks to him one more time for his visit and our warm conversation.

Some more photos from Ronald's visit to Zfort office you may find in a separate Flickr gallery.

In case you have any questions to Zfort Group or Ronald Kok, feel free to ask them in the comments!