Across the industry, we’re seeing the same pattern repeat itself: Organisations opting for low-cost offshore resource in an effort to reduce spend… only to end up with poor quality, missed deadlines, rework and ultimately failed deliveries.
What initially looks cheaper on paper often becomes the most expensive route imaginable.
Why?
Because when delivery stalls, quality drops, or entire programmes need rescuing the true cost emerges:
🔹 wasted internal effort
🔹 layers of rework and remediation
🔹 extended transformation timelines
🔹 additional governance, security and architectural fixes
🔹 and the opportunity cost of not delivering value when it mattered
In reality, skilled professionals, the people who can solve problems properly the first time, may appear to cost more upfront, but:
✔️ they deliver faster
✔️ produce higher-quality outcomes
✔️ challenge and improve your strategy
✔️ reduce friction and rework
✔️ avoid overruns
✔️ and de-risk delivery
This isn’t theoretical. At Emphasys IT, we’re increasingly being brought in to fix or finish work that should never have gone wrong in the first place. When organisations add up the lost time, productivity and remediation, the “cheap” option often ends up being the most expensive decision they made.
So the real question is:
👉 How do we change the perception that cost-per-day equals cost-of-delivery?
👉 How do we help organisations understand that expertise is an investment, not an overhead?
👉 And how do we shift the conversation from day rates to outcomes, speed and total cost of ownership?
Whilst were working hard to find the balance we would love to hear others perspectives on this. Will we keep seeing the same avoidable failures play out? Is there a way to change the mindset? Or maybe there’s a happy medium waiting to be discovered and adopted at scale?
