Achieving High Performance Offshoring

Cost of skilled offshore talent has risen dramatically in recent years, and many companies are now looking for greater efficiency and productivity in their outsourcing relationships. Scheduling, training, metrics, customer satisfaction, turnover, contract terms, reporting—there’s a long list of areas where it’s important to manage outsourcing processes more effectively. To understand what smart companies are doing to sustain the cost advantages of offshoring.

Outcome-based Offshore Outsourcing

The concept of an “outcome-based” business model has attracted a lot of attention recently, and it’s certainly a healthy trend. But it’s often remarkably challenging to implement. If you’re curious about outcome-based offshore relationships, we invite you to download this complimentary white paper. We’re also available to answer your specific questions and to develop a customized roadmap for moving your company to this new model.

6 Key strategies for success in Global Outsourcing

What are the key ingredients of a successful global outsourcing experience? To answer this question, we approached senior executives of multinational companies engaged in this activity to find out what is important, what works, and what doesn’t. We conducted competency interviews in which participants were asked to describe both the nature and effectiveness of their programs. In addition to this research, we drew heavily on our own management experiences in global outsourcing — both with a large computer company and with our own clients. From these experiences, we identified the major factors that appear to distinguish effective from ineffective global outsourcing.

Managing Offshore Operations: So, you have been offshoring for a while

So, you have been offshoring for a while. If your experience is similar to many companies, even if you have been successful in the beginning, over time, issues begin to creep into your offshore operation; expectations do not continue to be met consistently.  Why does this happen? How do you assure continued success?

What Business value are you receiving from Offshoring ?

Let’s reduce costs by going offshore with some development or service functions! The board and management agree to set up offshore activities in a place like India, China, Russia, Slovenia, or Bulgaria. Time passes. Everyone is happy. Right?

Offshoring Technical Support Centers : Challenges and Best practices

Many North American companies are saving millions of dollars each year through overseas outsourcing, or “offshoring,” increasing amounts of their technical support center operations. Others have been less successful, sinking unexpected resources and funds into initiatives that don’t generate the expected return.

Offshoring Challenges: Attracting and Retaining Staff

Many companies are finding that high turnover in their offshore support team is creating disappointing results. You’ve invested valuable U.S. staff time to train your offshore team and put in a lot of hard work to do trial runs. When several months have passed, you conclude that your offshore team understands your issues, so you reassign and/or remove staff at your U.S. location.

Critical issues in selecting offshore projects

As companies face economic pressure internally and from customers, they’re forced to re-evaluate strategic and operating models; in some cases, this includes evaluating outsourcing support offshore. In working with clients, deciding which projects should be sent offshore comes up often – sometimes before the decision is made to go offshore (which is the best time) but often the discussion is initiated only after projects have been sent offshore and problems have developed.

Offshore Software Development - How to Select Projects That Will Succeed

One of the key decisions a company needs to make in off-shoring software development is which projects to offshore. You cannot simply offshore "maintenance" projects, because your staff in the U.S. wants to work on new product development. This issue must be carefully thought through and here are time tested and proven guidelines.

Global Outsourcing Strategy - Does India Still Make Sense as the Outsourcing Destination?

Current Indian salaries for developers are in the range of US$15K to $20K. Silicon Valley salaries for similar skills are in the range of $60K to $90K. When you add other costs - additional management, travel, productivity difference, communication, duplication of equipment and so on, cost in India is still a fraction of the U.S. cost.

Offshoring Challenges - How Culture Impacts Attracting Staff Offshore

Often many organizations from the U.S. find it difficult to attract the right talent at the offshore location. Competition for competent staff in countries like India is intense. The environment is similar to what U.S. experienced during the Internet boom, when it was difficult to attract and retain good talent.

Offshoring Management: Why should you care about culture?

Here is an example of what I hear frequently from managers in the U.S. responsible for offshoring. "We had a telecon with the entire team working for me offshore and I allocated the tasks and set deadlines for each member of the team; at the end of the meeting, I asked "Are there any questions? Did everyone understand what each of you are supposed to do?"

Outcome Based Offshore Outsourcing - What is it, Why the Interest
and What Are the Challenges?

What is outcome-based offshore outsourcing?

Traditional outsourcing models focus on input; for example man hours, person months, emails answered or number of calls processed. On the other hand outcome-based focuses on output i.e. reaching a business goal such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, support cost as a percentage of revenues etc.

Managing Offshore Projects - How Do You Align Goals and Values?

Let's look at a scenario I have observed many times. You have been just promoted to the position of project manager of a very important product development effort. You are given a tight deadline and a tight budget. Your senior VP of engineering, who is 3 levels above you in the organization personally met with you and informed you that the company needs to make this deliverable happen within the time frame allotted if not sooner.

Managing Offshore Projects - What is Unique About Planning an Offshore Project?

Most people in the industry recognize that there are challenges in managing offshore projects and it needs to be managed differently than a local project. One of the first steps in any project is to develop a project plan. So, what is different about developing an offshore project plan?

Offshore Project Management - What is Offshore Supplementary Project Management

When you offshore projects, one of the key people you will interface with are your first level leaders of the team offshore; this person may be called by various titles - tech lead, module lead or project manager; some times the module and tech leads report into a project manager.

Offshoring Challenges - Myth Vs Reality of Offshoring Benefits

There has been so much hype about the benefits of offshoring, especially how you can reduce costs by offshoring to a place like India, China or one of the eastern block countries. While you pay offshore vendors much less than what you would be paying a U.S. Vendor, some members of your staff complain that offshore productivity is really low, that 2 or 3 offshore people are doing the same work that used to be done by one experienced person in the United States.

Offshoring Management - Avoid Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind Syndrome

Management has plenty to focus on these days. Nothing goes smoothly all the time. When the problem du jour consumes a U.S. management team, offshore activities can too often be left to operate in a vacuum. This situation is particularly true when the U.S. management and technical personnel have "other" responsibilities in addition to overseeing or helping the offshore organization.

Offshoring Management - Avoid Costly Process Deterioration When Managing Offshore Projects

If you are responsible for managing offshore projects, you should be aware that even when your initial offshore projects work well, problems can enter the picture over time. When your domestic team has a problem, someone from one cubicle can walk a few steps to discuss it with someone in a nearby cubicle.

Global Outsourcing Strategy - Why You Need To Regularly Reassess Your Global Outsourcing Strategy

You did a thorough job of putting together your global outsourcing strategy. It has served you well and met your business objectives. Time passes and now it is a few years later. Are you sure that the same strategy will continue to serve you well in the future?

Global Outsourcing Strategy - Why Does Strategy Matter in Global Outsourcing?

Often I am requested by my client companies to help improve their offshore operations - they are experiencing various symptoms which are becoming all too common in offshoring - high turnover of offshore staff, costs beginning to escalate and senior management is not sure if offshoring makes sense.

Offshoring Management - Why is Project Selection so Important?

Often this is routine maintenance work that no-one on the staff wants to do if your are offshoring development tasks; or it can be first level support that can be handled through reading a script to respond to customer issues; it is routine and mundane.

Offshore Vendor Selection - Do Prior Relationships Help or Hurt?

Finding the right vendor for your offshoring operation, can be time consuming. You first need to find potential offshore vendors, qualify them, visit their facilities and negotiate with them to come up with a contract. If you are getting started in offshoring which is when this issue needs addressing, you may not have identified a dedicated staff member to oversee offshoring, simply because you do not yet know how much effort it is and whether you need to devote a full time person.

Offshoring Management - Increasing Head Count Offshore Can be a Bad Idea!

When offshore productivity is low and attrition rate is high, some offshore entities attempt to persuade you to allow them to hire more people. Their argument is: "After all, offshore labor is so much cheaper that throwing more bodies at your projects is a no-brainer."

How To Determine True Business Value Of Offshore Outsourcing

A question many executives are asking is "how can we tell whether our offshoring efforts are delivering value to our company?"

Managing Offshore Outsourcing - Does Your Offshore Operation Need a
Health Check?

Let's reduce costs by going offshore with some development or service functions! The board and management agree to set up offshore activities in a place like India, China, Russia, Slovenia, or Bulgaria. Time passes. Everyone is happy. Right?

Managing Offshore Projects - Staff Retention - Part 1 - Understanding the Whole Truth

Competition for competent staff in countries like India is intense. The environment is similar to what U.S. experienced during the Internet boom, when it was very difficult to attract and retain good talent.

Managing Offshore Projects - Staff Retention - Part 2 - How to Address the Issue

Competition for competent staff in countries like India is intense. The environment is similar to what U.S. experienced during the Internet boom, when it was very difficult to attract and retain good talent.

Managing Offshore Projects - Beyond The Honeymoon Period

Many companies are finding that once the "honeymoon period" in offshoring is over, issues tend to crop up with the offshore vendor. When you started working with your vendor to set up the initial project(s) for offshore work, they were attentive. You felt they considered you to be the most important client in the world.

Managing Offshore Projects - Key Challenges You Need To Address To
Assure Success

Offshore outsourcing is no longer a novel idea. It is an accepted business practice and for many the offshore operation has become a significant part of their overall operations. So it is essential they succeed in this endeavor.