We conducted a survey among firms who are successful in outsourcing to find out what factors they associate with their positive offshore outsourcing experiences. These companies identified the following ten critical success factors that you should keep in mind when considering outsourcing as a solution for your business.
1. Selecting the right offshore outsourcing provider
The right offshore provider will ensure that you follow industry best practices. Talk to multiple providers so you can establish benchmarks for judging which provider is right for your business. You should also consider visiting the offshore office to get comfortable with the site and the provider process, meet the staff, and start building your relationship. Look for excellent communication, customer testimonials, ability to contact existing customers, and transparency of offshore staff working conditions. Remember to go for value instead of simply choosing the cheapest offshore staffing provider.
2. Hiring the outsource staff
Offshore providers work under a range of different models that include taking your work and putting it through their team and system, to managing the back office for your handpicked team. As your company grows—and with it, the volume of work—you will end up hiring dedicated staff in the offshore location. Get involved in the recruitment process. Be involved in the interview process to ensure that the staff hired is a good fit with your onshore team.
3. Start by hiring senior staff
One successful hiring strategy is to hire senior staff initially. This allows you to focus on training and developing a small leadership group, building your working relationship with the one or two initial senior staff. The senior staff can then hire and train junior staff on the firm’s expectations, processes and culture. Hire at least two senior staff initially. Hiring two insures you against the situation where either one leaves.
4. Handover, training and open communication
Outsourcing your business processes gives you access to a selection of solutions and offshore outsourcing models depending on your needs. You can choose to set up your own offshore operations and work with an offshore outsourcing provider to source talent, or you can have your firm set up the facilities and the tech, and source the talent afterwards. And you can choose to offshore one function or multiple functions—in our case, we offer accounting, eCommerce, technical support and digital marketing solutions.
5. Integrating offshore staff
We found that those firms who are the most successful are the ones that integrate their offshore staff with their onshore operations. This includes traditional work-related processes such as inviting the offshore team to meetings and including them in company-wide e-mails and other communication platforms. It’s equally important to establish familiarity and trust by getting to know each staff member and their families.
6. Manager to manage teams
Just as you would assign someone the role in the onshore team to manage the workflows and the staff, the offshore team also needs to be managed. Successful firms have a manager who manages both onshore and offshore workflows, training and development, and all the processes that make the practice efficient. The manager needs to have a god working relationship with onshore and offshore parties and run regular meetings to discuss issues and communicate with the staff. Successful firms stressed the importance of managers traveling to the offshore location to meet the team face-to-face to establish and build a stronger bond between the two.
7. Getting the onshore team comfortable with offshoring
Offshoring is a change management exercise with respect to the onshore team. The fear for onshore staff will be ‘what about my job?’ Partners and senior staff will have to communicate with onshore staff that they are valuable. Let them know that this is about freeing them up for more time working with clients rather than handling mundane data entry and compliance work. Regular contact between onshore and offshore teams will help build rapport, reduce barriers, and reduce the potential for cross-cultural issues.
8. Having the right technology setup and skills
Majority of firms that participated in the survey let their offshore provider guide them through the technological requirements for their offshore operations. This helps ensure that the technological setup is secure, keeping your client data protected even as you exchange information across borders. Your offshore provider will identify if any of your technological infrastructure needs to be updated or set up before offshoring.
9. Formalizing business processes
Firms that have successfully offshored emphasize the importance of formalizing business processes before attempting to offshore them. Small firms have traditionally relied on tacit knowledge and often make decisions on an ad-hoc basis; however this approach is a recipe for disaster when attempting to offshore tasks. While formalizing business processes initially takes time, it improves efficiency in the long run by giving offshore staff a clear understanding of your expectations for tasks and how they should be done. This will save time, improve quality and consistency, and increase your returns.
10. Using a staged approach
Firms with offshoring experience recommend using a staged approach to offshoring. This means starting with a small offshore team and learning from the experience, adjusting your processes and behavior before increasing your offshoring investment. A more staged approach also plays into the other key success factors, especially ones involving people. It takes time to hire and train the right staff, and to build relationships between the onshore and offshore teams.
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About Bond University
Bond University is Bond University is Australia’s first private non-profit university, Bond University seeks to be recognized internationally as a leading independent university, imbued with a spirit to innovate, a commitment to influence and a dedication to inspire tomorrow’s professionals who share a personalized and transformational student experience.
www.bond.edu.au
About Staff Domain
Staff Domain is an Australian Business Process Offshoring (BPO) organization laser focused on supporting small to medium businesses. Primarily servicing the United States, Australia, and New Zealand markets, they help businesses achieve cost savings and rapid growth through end-to-end offshore recruitment and operational management.
www.staffdomain.com
