Frequently Asked Questions

Improving is comprised of more than 300 professionals.

At Improving, we help companies with Software Development, Digital product design - UI/UX, back end, microsoft technologies, Java, JavaScript, Quality Assurance and testing services as well as Artificial Intelligence through nearshore development teams customized to your growth imperatives.

Our headquarters are in Austin, TX, and our sale offices in SoCAL and Silicon Valley. We conduct business as corp. to corp. in the USA.

Our delivery centers are located in Guadalajara and Aguascalientes; we are expanding into Cancún, México.

We are a Digital Services company with teams in the US and Nearshore Mexico. Our revenue comes from services.

We work in Central time zone and often align our teams to the client’s time zone (EST or PST, etc.)

We are flexible and always cater to the preferences of our clients. We like to use Slack or Teams for communication between companies because we believe it is superior for real-time daily communication versus email. Voice and video conferencing is highly recommended vs chat only communication. A majority of our clients also spend frequent face to face time with their team, both in Mexico and the US.

We provide dedicated resources to your team and project. You will have 100% dedicated resources unless you need a “fractional” resource. For example, your team might look like: 0.5 Product Managers, 1.5 Designers, 3 Developers and 2 QA. And there are technical constraints, as well. For web development, you’ll usually have a frontend developer and a backend developer. For mobile development, you will likely need different developers for iOS and Android platforms, since they are so different.

We encourage a call or visit to your site so that we can walk through how your team is to be structured and expected to collaborate. Because we are flexible and we work with many clients -- each with their own version of agile -- very few of our teams work in an identical way. However, we do follow standard best practices as it relates to product development, scrum, and code management.

Absolutely.

Many of our clients engage with us after they have already written the product specifications. As an alternative to this classic approach, we are happy to collaborate on this process. Our design and engineering teams can work together with your business to identify not only which features to build, but also in what order. We recommend engaging with us in a Design Sprint to help promote stakeholder alignment.

We will discuss the right approach based on your needs. Many of our engagements begin with a short Discovery engagement to bring clarity on next steps. Depending on the maturity of your product vision, you may need assistance with ideation, design, or engineering (or a combination of these) in order to solidify your plan and gain clarity on next steps. Our team can “meet you where you are.”

After the SOW is signed, we are typically able to get started within a week’s time.

Please do! We love welcoming our clients into our offices and allowing you to work side-by-side with your team. Meeting your developers face-to-face is a good way to build trust and form a united front that will ultimately result in a great product and a delightful business experience.

Sure thing. Our experts have valid visas and permits. We will be glad to help with travel arrangements and accommodation.

Rapidly within 2 to 5 days, although the exact time frame depends on the specific requirements of your project and the number and type of developers needed.

There has been an average of 130,000 engineers and technicians graduates in Mexico over the last five years. As a result, the state of Jalisco, home to one of our delivery centers, holds 40% of the IT industry in Mexico, with 12 universities creating an IT funnel of 85,000 graduates per year. Gartner Inc. recently ranked Mexico as a Top 3 worldwide destination for offshoring. Mexican talent is expanding at 3x the global average and continues to position itself as a global competitor.

Yes. In case we don't have enough talent on bench with the required skills for your project during the discovery, staffing or development process, our Talent Acquisition department will find candidates that fit the necessary criteria to have your team up and running as soon as possible.

No. Our mission at iTexico is to attract the best talent with the right skills and technologies to meet the market needs, and we are also deeply committed to developing the local talent through many programs and initiatives such as iTexico University.

Sure! Going Nearshore gives you access to a large talent pool of the best developers from around the world. Nonetheless, your ultimate team members must have the correct mindset and attitude for your specific needs and be an excellent fit for your company's culture. That's why we understand the importance of involving you in the staffing process to find your perfect match.

iTexicans have a wide array of educational backgrounds. For example, iTexico has a Ph.D., 20+ with Masters, all others with Bachelor degrees and technical degrees. Most educational accomplishments were earned in Mexico, but we also have engineers and architects with degrees from outside of Mexico, including England, India, Argentina, Cuba and Costa Rica.

Our Talent Acquisition team has strategic relationships with just about every major university in Mexico. However, we don’t tend to hire directly from college in order to staff a client opportunity. Instead, we put our new hire college grads through a 3-month training program. At the end of that training program, these new employees are available to be placed (as a Level 1 resource) on a client engagement. Most of our new hires are discovered through means other than colleges, including job fairs, social media, boot camps, referrals, etc. Regardless, our mission at iTexico is to attract the best talent with the right skills and technologies to meet the market needs, and we are also deeply committed to developing local talent through our many talent acquisition programs and initiatives, such as iTexico University. Top 10 colleges from which we most frequently source new talent: Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG) Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes (UAA) Universidad de Colima Universidad del Valle de México (UVM) Universidad La Salle Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes Universidad Panamericana Aguascalientes Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (UNIVA).

We have a very strong culture at iTexico and an above average attrition rate. We instituted the ENPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) in Q1 2019 with the goal of improving our retention even further. At our innovation centers, our Talent Management team coordinates many team-building activities and special events. We offer incentives to our team to keep the culture as strong as possible and provide our employees a flexible work environment to promote a healthy work/life balance. We do proactive salary adjustments and conduct regular internal evaluations with our iTexicans to see what adjustments need to be made, if any.

As opposed to an onshore or offshore approach, by teaming up with professionals across the border, you get substantial service benefits while gaining access to talent capacity, code quality, team collaboration, improved communication, cultural similarity, same time zone and, of course, proximity and accessibility. Our delivery centers are just a few hours flight away from most U.S. cities, giving you the opportunity to work with your extended team face-to-face and be back home the next day without grave inconveniences of long trips and time costs. At the same time, many of our customers enjoy having their team come to their local office in the US, the cost and convenience again is a big savings vs. farshore.

Nearshore refers to outsourcing in countries located near you, meaning IT companies in Central and South America are also considered options in this category for the US and Canada. Mexico's Nearshore+ model gives you greater advantages than other Nearshore alternatives by allowing you to team up with skilled and capable talent just across the border, close enough to visit and return home even the same day, with similar culture and time zones, and at lower costs than other outsourcing providers and global options.

We have experience with many industries, including energy, technology, healthcare, infrastructure, professional and financial services.

We use scorecards to measure performance and quality. A key way that we partner and measure success with our clients is by using Net Promotor Score or NPS, which is a metric that determines the loyalty of customers to a company with a score from 0 to 60, where a higher one is desirable. NPS scores are measured with a single question survey.

Mexico is a unique country thriving with colorful culture and history, and it is the country in Latin America with the highest amount of tourism. We suggest that you exercise the usual degree of caution that while traveling anywhere.