The worst situation which can potentially arise when outsourcing any type of business process is when the communication link between the onshore client and the offshore outsourcing provider gets broken.
I always like to say before the business relationship went sour the communication went dead.
The simple truth of the matter is that not every onshore employee is excited to work with a company based in India, Philippines or Eastern Europe (or some other country which is hardly known to onshore staff),
That hesitation sometimes can lead to a lack of communication which then can create a viscous cycle. Because of the lack of feedback from the client the quality of the work product starts to slip. The degradation in quality leads to even further resentment by onshore staff.
Needless to say, problems like the above combined with time and cultural differences as well as a language problem have crushed more than a few outsourcing deals.
At the end Senior Management looks at the entire outsourcing relationship and wonders why it does not seem to be working as well as they think it should.
In order to avoid a scenario where the entire outsourcing relationship falls apart it makes sense to implement the 7 rules and guidelines shown below:
- Early in the process designate at least one person, better a team of people who will be in charge of managing the day to day operation of your outsourcing relationship. Include them in the meetings as early in the process as possible. The goal is to familiarize them with the inner workings of the deal as well as giving your outsourcing provider early and easy access to the Relationship Managers.
- Senior Management has to clearly define Key Performance Indicators (KPI'S) which it wants to meet. The KPIs have to be clearly laid out in such a way that both, onshore local relationship management and offshore provider are made jointly responsible for reaching them. They have to be joint at the hip....one parties failure will be deemed the other parties failure as well.
- Insist on daily meetings between key personnel..ideally twice a day. Use a video conferencing tool (skype is fine too). It might seem trivial but the use of video will greatly enhance familiarity between key personnel and thus will increase productivity.
- Insist on reports. Develop a report structure which is being fed to Senior Management at predetermined intervals. (daily, weekly). The reports you receive should be based upon the prior discussed KPI's. Also...make clear that both teams, onshore and offshore will be jointly held responsible for failure.
- Have regular meetings with both teams (joint meetings). Once again, video conferencing is preferred. Address any issues you might have in reaching KPIs. Solicit suggestions to improve performance.
- Have individual meetings with each team (the onshore and the offshore team, video once again). Get them to spill the beans if there is any sand in the relationship. Use the information to fine tune instructions during the next joint meeting.
- Set realistic expectations. For the teams as well as for the company. It is well established that outsourcing has an initial productivity gap versus the comparable onshore solution. That productivity gap will close over time. Your KPIs will be your measuring stick.
The over reaching goal is to foster a culture of accountability. Making the onshore staff responsible at an early stage and creating a joint responsibility for the KPI's will produce better results.
If the above is properly implemented the onshore staff will not be able to just point fingers to the offshore provider and issue blame.
By instituting this level of accountability your new outsourcing relationship should be off to a good start.
