Challenge
The competitive London tech market had become increasingly challenging for Basis Technologies, especially for finding developers skilled in SAP ABAP, a programming language essential for interfacing with SAP. The majority of candidates available in the UK market were more senior, demanding higher salaries and managerial positions.
We were struggling with recruitment in London for these types of roles, especially four years ago, given the very competitive market. Our CTO was trying to think creatively about how to achieve our delivery goals and came across The Scalers. With the large experience in India and specifically in Bangalore in SAP, it seemed like a great opportunity.
By 2022, this talent challenge had reached its climax and risked slowing down development. The CTO, David Lees, decided to explore offshoring to India as a long-term solution due to its large talent pool, including less senior positions skilled in ABAP.
Solution
Within 6 months, The Scalers had helped set up a team of 5 ABAP experts, also skilled in the frontend (SAP UI5), middleware (Node.js) and cloud technologies (Gateway) that Basis Technologies needed. Although hired by The Scalers’ Indian entity, these developers joined Basis Technologies as full members of the company, not as an outsourced team. They worked alongside UK and US teammates as equals and were onboarded into the same tools, processes, and culture.
The Scalers found top candidates and integrated them into both our work and our culture. They are truly part of the team, not outsiders looking in, engaging with UK employees and have added value beyond completing their tasks.
Working so closely for over three years has allowed the Bangalore team to develop a deep knowledge of the codebase and earn the trust of their fellow employees. Plus, the culture and regular engagement activities The Scalers provided meant that there was zero attrition in the first three years, and four of the five initial hires are still with Basis Technologies.
Results
The team in Bangalore has been critical in helping to connect the legacy backend of ActiveConnect, Basis Technologies’ flagship product, with its new web platform frontend. This was essential to ensure ActiveConnect remained competitive with a modernised user interface.
One of the Bangalore developers has also been heavily involved in the development of Klario, a new SaaS offering. This has been an important strategic move and is likely to require the skills of the rest of the Bangalore employees in the future.
Our UK teams never feel like they’re working with contractors – they’re collaborating with long-term teammates embedded in our scrum squads. By building dedicated, cross-regional teams that stay and grow with us, we’ve built trust and momentum that handoff-driven outsourcing can’t match.
These developments were only possible due to the deep integration of the Bangalore employees within the broader company. A sign of this was when one of the Bangalore engineers, who is active in the DEI committee, took part in a mental health awareness session for the whole company.
Thanks to partnering with The Scalers, Basis Technologies has been able to modernise its product and has the capacity to continue doing so into the future.
