CEO of Tiempo Development Talks Expansion of Nearshore Centers

Software development company Tiempo Development has been included on Inc. 500 magazine’s  Fastest Growing Private Companies in America list for 2011 and 2012. Using their personalized, integrated platform, Tiempo Quality System (TQS), Tiempo Development’s goal is to speed up the software development process and time-to-market for its clients. Tiempo’s use of nearshore development centers a key factor in their philosophy. I spoke with CEO and Founder, Cliff Schertz, about Tiempo’s success, their process to ensure quality and impact on the Arizona economy.
Tell me about your nearshore development centers.
Tiempo Development operates a development center in Hermosillo in Northern Mexico, an area where technology companies have invested deeply in university training and platform expertise. Tiempo Development also has centers in Monterrey, Saltillo, and Guadalajara. According to the New York Times, Mexico graduates some 115,000 engineering students per year — roughly three times as many as the U.S. on a per-capita basis. This deep expertise in the area is a huge advantage, especially given the fact that Mexico is in the same time zone as many headquarters of US-based companies. Instead of being 12 or 15 hours ahead as with an outsourced team, our nearshoring centers are at most a few hours ahead. They’re always available to work on a problem, or within easy travel to meet with the in-house team.
We started using Mexican resources after running into issues with offshoring to the Far East. Once we discovered the reach resource there we saw the opportunity to help other companies access it. With information technology there are clear standards of quality that translate easily across borders, so the qualification processes are similar to here in the US.
Are you planning to expand offshore at any point?
We believe that our nearshoring model is one of the major differentiators we offer our clients. In addition to the geographical convenience, nearshoring eliminates some of the struggles offshoring presents, including language and culture barriers. These advantages are too great for offshoring to be a viable step for our company anytime in the near future.
How does your business help the Arizona economy?
On a professional level, we’re glad to be part of the Arizona technology community. Having high-level tech executives in our state means we can share ideas with other companies in the same space, and we can recruit future professionals from Arizona universities. We are also glad to be near our engineering offices in Mexico, both to support the community there and to improve the business relationships between the two countries. By tapping into the benefits of nearshoring, we are able to maximize the advantages of having an Arizona-based business, and encouraging more jobs to be brought back to our region. On the local community side things, we have a personal commitment to supporting and sponsoring Arizona youth sports as well.
What does the Tiempo Quality System entail?
The Tiempo Quality System model represents a productization of our service offering. This new integrated platform of services utilizes highly defined agile methods and nearshore development centers to exponentially accelerate how software companies develop, deploy and support products. With TQS, a customer can purchase the entire product timeline with out-of-the-box ready specifications. We’ve simplified the entire development process from concept to deployment to continuing maintenance.
Tell me about Tiempo’s “time-to-market” philosophy.
For our customers, it’s critical to place a product in the market as soon as possible. Every month the product spends in planning and development, the market will erode more. [Meaning,] the problem that product addresses might be met with other solutions, other products might evolve to make the problem irrelevant, or other factors may erode the addressable market companies have into which to sell their products. By combining agile methodology with our nearshoring model, the TQS system allows companies to greatly reduce the time it takes to move a product from concept to sale while keeping costs low.
What’s in the future for Tiempo Development?
We anticipate continuing [to grow]. More importantly, we plan to refine our software development services to become well-known and respected for their quality and effectiveness.
For more information on Tiempo Development, click here.