What is Outsourcing / Offshoring?
Well, Outsourcing is process of contracting of one or more of a company’s business processes to an outside service provider to help increase shareholder value,
by primarily reducing operating cost and focusing on core competencies
And, Offshoring is Outsourcing to a different country.
What are the typical fears any organization can have when thinking of offshoring their work?
First and foremost fear is of trust. like with whom we need to deal, will they be able to understand us? Would they care about our work content equally?
Its completely unknown and do we need to re think offshoring decision?
The second important aspect is of communication, what language do they speak? can there be any ascent issues? will they be comfortable with video calls?
What about written communication? will they be comfortable using MS Teams? chats etc?
One important core fear is of competency of the team members, will the team members be capable of and professional enough to work in our domain/technology?
Can they quickly adopt to our processes and add value?
For any manager, the main concern is of control of the team and its deliverables, imagine for any important meeting, the basic concern will of availability of all the required team members
and will they be present due to time zone issue? What is the escalation mechanism
In addition to the above fears, one little less severe, but equally important thing is cultural issues.