Tag Archives: offshore outsourcing

Hiring for Remote First Check the New Rules

Building a Remote Team? The Rules Have Changed

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Almost a decade ago, approximately 900,000 jobs from the U.S. were outsourced to Asian countries, with around half of them being IT and computer programming jobs. However, the reason behind this shift was the employers’ belief in offshore teams and how building a remote team could be the perfect solution to their sustainability woes.

Similarly, ten years and many market upheavals later, Uplers has seen and been a part of a paradigm shift in supplying talent to IT companies and digitally-motivated businesses. Moreover, it has driven progressive offshoring experiences and helped over 7000+ companies hire remote workers, ultimately helping them establish it as the de facto standard for their talent acquisition processes. Above all, thanks to the benefits of a wider intellectual capital, extensive scaling opportunities, and lower labor & infrastructure costs, remote hiring has arrived as a divine intervention for organizations, especially in the times of the pandemic, and is helping them combat its brunt with elan.

In addition, the growing popularity of remote teams has also introduced novel changes, affecting the market in an unprecedented manner. Here, we will take a look at four key changes in the remote hiring trend brought about by this shift, which will make hiring your offshore team easier.

Top Concerns of Managers of Remote teams

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Four New Rules to Building a Remote Team

1. Seek Candidates With Remote Working Experience

“While remote-friendly employers will consider an applicant that has never worked remotely before, it’s always a good idea for an applicant that has some remote experience to highlight this in their resume as it may ‘give them a leg up.”

– Betsy Andrews, Career Coach, FlexJobs

Remote work experience does not diminish the value of the candidate’s experience. On the contrary, it enhances their professional aptitude because working remotely needs them to overcome the gaps created by the missing element of human connection. A few of these remote working skills are:

  • Powerful collaboration skills
  • Great communication skills
  • Good time management skills
  • Strong organizational skills
  • Self-discipline
  • Accountability

Seek candidates that have these skills as it is what makes them an invaluable asset because, unlike technical skills, people can’t just upskill or be trained in them readily. In order to find out if your desired pool of candidates possesses these traits, you can conduct pre-employment tests that evaluate their psychometrics to see if they have what it takes to succeed in their remote roles.

2. Customize Recruitment Strategies for the Long Term

Before you begin with any other aspect of the hiring process, it’s very important to understand and standardize your hiring strategies and requirements for the long term. Furthermore, having a standard employee hiring and onboarding strategy not only gives you a crystal clear picture of your roadmap for the future, but it also establishes credibility in the minds of the candidates.

Customize Recruitment Strategies for the Long Term

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In addition, having a standard onboarding process for your remote workers also makes for great employee experience, so much so that organizations that do have it see 50% better new-hire productivity. Therefore, it’s crucial to ask yourself what qualifications do you require from your potential employees, what kind of technical skills they should have, and what sort of mindset they should possess. Seeking the answers to these questions will help you customize your hiring requirements and narrow down on prospective resources.

3. Employ Help From Credible Outsourcing Agencies

Outsourcing agencies are companies that help you with building a remote team for your business. With their vast talent pool, they ease the process of setting up critical infrastructure and sourcing potential candidates for you. Above all, the roles and responsibilities of outsourcing agencies include:

  • Acquiring an office space
  • Setting up infrastructure
  • Conducting recruitment processes and hosting interviews
  • Defining the payroll of the candidates
  • Taking care of the taxation, local registrations, and legalities
  • Onboarding new hires
  • Employing HRs
  • Hiring administrative staff for daily duties

Moreover, these outsourcing agencies work as your offshoring partners and help you build a remote team for you. Ideally, the outsourcing agencies you look for should have superlative expertise and proven track record of providing seamless offshoring experiences. In addition, these partners should be able to source the right professionals for your team. Establish a steady pipeline, ensuring they hire the best candidates.

4. Search for Candidates Who Align With the Company’s Vision

Creating productive and successful relationships require a lot of effort. While you may employ the help of outsourcing agencies to build your remote team for you. It is equally important for you to stay invested throughout the process to ensure that your potential hires align properly.

Search for Candidates Who Align With the Company's Vision

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Moreover, this is especially important for medium-sized and large-sized organizations, with a report by Deloitte showing that 83% of decision-makers think that remote employees who are highly engaged and motivated contribute significantly to the company’s success. Furthermore, 94% of C-suite executives and 88% of employees believe that it helps build a healthy workplace culture that is infinitely crucial to business success.

After that, once you decide your medium for hiring remote workers, set down a recruiting framework that takes care of the following things to promote the right message and make it easier for you and potential hires to find common ground:

  • Define candidate expectations
  • Establish collaboration dynamics
  • Have your team managers assess your candidates
  • Determine a fit for values and culture

Hire Pre-vetted & High Performance Remote Teams
 Digitally Remote Teams are the “New Normal”

The future is remote, and 2020 has given a glimpse into this reality. Businesses are looking for quick and instant end-to-end solutions for a range of functions from web designing to digital marketing.

After that, if you wish to learn and implement the key takeaways from successful growth stories, you would need a digital service and talent provider that  understands your needs. With over 7 years of experience in this field, Uplers has written the success stories for several ventures.

Are you ready to get on this list? Contact the experts at Uplers!

IT Staff Augmentation Versus Offshore Outsourcing - Pros & Cons

IT Staff Augmentation Versus Offshore Outsourcing – Pros & Cons

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The debate over IT outsourcing versus staff augmentation is one that comes up time and again in management meetings. 

Whether you run an IT multinational or a startup with a handful of employees, you’ll find yourself wondering whether to get more hands-on-deck through staff augmentation or outsource complete projects to a specialist firm.

Here’s a telling statistical fact you need to know. 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be 1.4 million more software development jobs than applicants who can fill in the roles. 

Of course, this is just one of the sectors. While the jobs requirement and skilled manpower needs are on the rise, the stiff competition from emerging nations is also making the global markets more volatile. 

The only way to survive? Cut down costs, especially on manpower acquisition.

We’ve got more proof. Check these numbers

In the past few decades, offshoring has been on an upward trend. According to Gartner, more than 80% of logistics leaders plan to increase their offshore outsourcing budget by 5% by 2020. 

Since global talent shortages are projected to reach 82,2 million by 2030, staff augmentation is the most convenient method of closing the productivity deficit.

IT Staff Augmentation VS Freelancing

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Now, the question here is, which way should you go?

Similar to most situations, there is no clear-cut winner when it comes to supremacy. Both have their strengths and drawbacks.

We have resolved to investigate these points and counterpoints in detail.

IT Staff Augmentation: The Best of All Worlds

Staff augmentation entails having supplemental staff work on the project. There is no direct increase in headcount since these employees work for another organization and are delegated to your firm temporarily. You or your HR team has interviewed them, and only those have been selected who have credentials and experience that best suit your needs.

However, in the time of digitization, where the requirements of employers and employees are rapidly changing, it has become quite challenging for HR leaders to source skilled professionals for project-based work. However, leveraging AI based recruitment software that is integrated with various social media and multiple diverse job boards can solve the difficulty of discovering experts that fulfill your requirements.

IT Staff Augmentation The Best of All Worlds

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Staff Augmentation: What’s Good About It?

A lot, really.

  • Better Alignment Between People And Projects 

Since your augmented staff members work onsite or at least directly with your organization (if they are from overseas), they have a solid grasp of your company’s projects, processes, and goals. Though they might be working for a few months, it is easier to work with staff having knowledge of your processes. This lowers the implementation time frame and reduces bottlenecks.

  • Possible To Scale Team-size Up And Down With Ease

Project managers cherish the leverage of easily scaling team sizes. One project might lead to more of the same type from a customer, and in that case, it is easy to hire more through staff augmentation. When the project ends, the augmented staff members return to the parent organization. This innate flexibility is the best aspect of staff augmentation.

  • Tight Quality Control

Outsourcing does not allow the project managers to have the granular level of quality control you could exert over someone integrated into your team. With staff augmentation, however, you can expect your people to align closely with your processes and embrace your quality expectations.  In the long run, this lowers the resources you have to spare later for maintenance of a system.  

  • Transparency, Because Of Direct Oversight

Staff augmentation brings you temporary employees who are prepared to change and mould their work to the methods your company trusts. Managers can ensure that the augmented staff members adhere to company policies and can, at all times, influence the process. This oversight removes corporate cultural barriers indelibly present in offshore outsourcing.

 

Hire Dedicated Digital Resources

IT Staff Augmentation: How To Manage Possible Downsides?

Here are the key aspects you need to know. 

  • New Staff Has To Be Trained To Align With Your Company Practices

new staff has to be trained in how your teams operate. They have to be made familiar with the internal processes, specific to your organization, and resources have to be spent to achieve this objective. The pressure on line managers increases as they have to ensure that new members have the same understanding and capabilities of tenured employees.

  • Increase In Infrastructure, For Onsite Members 

For onsite staff augmentation, you will need to provision more office space. Without a doubt, this is the most substantial drawback of the IT staff augmentation process. Rent, furniture, fixtures, and even new hardware are expensive and add to the outlay of working capital required. If the business is located in a city where office space is costly, it can derail your project budget.

  • Greater management overhead 

Not only physical resources need to increase, but also managerial capabilities are put under strain as more people have to be supervised. To fix the problem, your managers would need to work overtime since there is no possibility of hiring and training new managers in the short run. If the project gets prolonged, you would need to promote current employees to fill the shoes of newly minted project managers.

Offshoring: The Traditional Approach

Several large companies, such as Microsoft and Cisco, have begun outsourcing their work offshore – a practice widely accepted in the business community nowadays. The process of offshoring is completely automated. You ask another company to implement a part of the project. A Deloitte survey has shown that 78% of business owners are satisfied with outsourcing. 

It is not only beneficial for cost-cutting but also allows you to tap into an enormous talent pool. Offloading work to subcontractors is profitable and the outsourcing market is expected to reach $531 billion by 2022.

Also Read: What Offshore Outsourcing Will Look Like Post COVID-19

Offshoring: Why It’s Still Relevant

In its broadest sense, offshoring encompasses all its specialized offshoots, including IT staff augmentation. Let’s look at these benefits. 

  • Does Not Need Recruiting

You no longer have to bear the headache of locating and onboarding talent. This can free up resources for you to devote to research or even refining your products and services and making them more competitive. In essence, you focus on what you do best and allow others to deliver to you what they do best.

  • Reduce Training Cost 

You spend less time training and monitoring your employees’ performance. Therefore, the training is more efficient and allows you to devote resources to more profitable and complex projects. You only need to explain the parameters to the outsourcing company, and they will handle the assignment.

  • Access To More Talent

It might be difficult for HR to locate professional front-end developers who are experts at writing ETL pipelines using Python and willing to work for five months. On the other hand, in another part of the world, there may be a wealth of such coders with expertise shared through the community. This allows offering to be a true division of labor – everyone does what they are best at and maximizes profits. 

  • Can Get Results Quicker, Particularly For One-off Projects

Offshore outsourcing is particularly helpful when you receive a project out of your domain of expertise. It makes little sense to hire staff and train them for a few weeks’ worths of work. Also, your managers may not have the knowledge to oversee the development of the project. Offshoring, especially to a regular contractor, is a cheap and quick solution.

Offshore Outsourcing: Where It Falls Behind IT Staff Augmentation

To overcome these downsides, consider the more specialized staff augmentation approach

  • Lack of control

 

The development process is completely outside of your control. You are exposed to outcomes in stages. The result – almost at every stage of a project, you will need to absorb many deviations from expectations, in the interest of continuity. 

  • Lack of security/fear of espionage

There is no possible way that you could ensure that details of your project are not being studied for reverse engineering by your rivals. Even if you have agreements about not sharing proprietary material, once the project is out of your hands, you have no way of checking whether it is being copied.

  • Cultural Misfitting

For important projects, you need people who bring skill, as well as allegiance to your company’s culture, to the table. The advantages of outsourcing are purely cost-related, and you lose out on the affiliation an in-house employee usually provides. This is among the leading objections many business leaders have to outsource. 

IT Staff Augmentation vs. Offshoring – Which Is Better?

Technology delivery models come with a lot of what-ifs. There are variables in play that range from domain knowledge to excess office space, cost escalation, and myriad other factors.

The natural choice from the point of view of quality control would be staff augmentation, particularly onsite augmentation. If that is not possible and not beneficial in terms of yield, then offshore outsourcing is the next best option.

At the end of the day, you might end up with a hybrid model that allows you to adjust various factors and ultimately end up with the best of both worlds.

What Offshore Outsourcing Will Look Like Post COVID-19

What Offshore Outsourcing Will Look Like Post COVID-19

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At the moment, “COVID-19” is the trending word (unfortunately so) in the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia. The impact of the coronavirus strain has worsened in the private and public sectors across this part of the world, just as they are decreasing in European and Far East nations. Let’s have a look how Offshore Outsourcing Will Look Like Post COVID-19. 

Thus far, the pandemic has been seen to decrease the output of the offshoring and outsourcing industry, since the majority of the industry relies on badly affected nations such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, who are under stringent lockdowns. 

What Offshoring Will Look Like Post COVID-19

While most companies in these nations have moved to work-from-home (WFH) set-ups, daily service deliveries and business continuity have still taken a hit, since not everyone has the facilities and wherewithal to work from home. This has led to a mass blockage in workflows, and unintentional breaches of client contracts. Most industries are on the decline; offshore manufacturing is down, while digital and collaborative tools like Zoom and Skype cannot bridge the divide that face-to-face communication does so effectively within the digital service industry.  

Offshore outsourcing is on the rise 

But despite the breaking down of all types of industry, companies and their business leaders are recognizing the need for a diversified medium of business processes, through the constant pressure in this crisis mode. They can see that the overdependence on in-house workers who are unaccustomed to remote working is detrimental to business continuity; the move to providing software, laptops, and facilities for remote workers will certainly aid companies to think on their feet as we move forward.

How Outsourcing Is Set To Increase

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Some experts suggest the move to full-time WFH set-ups might become a reality, due to productivity-tracking tools, cut-downs on travel costs, and the ubiquity of digital services. A post-COVID-19 economy will be built on business processes that run the gamut—in-house, onshore, nearshore, and offshore.

De-globalizing supply and service chains won’t become a reality because our reliance on a larger pool of talent, specialized third-party vendors, and cheaper labour is not easily resisted. The offshore outsourcing industry is valuable exactly for its flexible and cost-efficient methods. The IT outsourcing subset is accustomed to WFH mode, so the possibilities remain, that other industries could acclimate to it too.

Remote Working Is The Way of the Future

People are relying more on remote working for 3 simple reasons: time-saving, digital services, and travel costs. By minimizing travel time and spending money on travel, business continuity is kept up with the minimum of effort. Also, online collaborative tools and APIs have revolutionized how we work. 

Remote Working Is The Way of the Future

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It is challenging to maintain offshore teams over long distances, but technical, administrative, and accounting services that are provided online still can track productivity and meet deadlines. 

Best Remote Teams

What will be the future requirements for this? Better free source software, Wi-Fi and data pack provisions, and cheaper digital devices. Companies are looking into investing in these aspects for the foreseeable future. Most of the services industry is ripe for remote working applications.

Offshoring & Outsourcing Will Continue to Expand

The industry will continue to expand since the benefits of outsourcing outweigh the cons. Here are the four pillars on which it stands:

1. Access to Greater Range of Talent

The medium of outsourcing and offshoring is popular for opening horizons to a vast, international ocean of talent. Whenever a certain local region is undergoing a shortage of specialized talents, the digital outsourcing environment has solved the problem by creating access to specialists and commissions.

With the recent increase in lay-offs and the shutting down of many small and medium businesses (SMBs), legions of well-qualified, proven specialists, including rare ones (e.g., web developers, SEO specialists, data scientists) are now looking for new job offers. The coronavirus phenomenon has closed many doors, but it will only ensure more doors open for the future. Hiring will pick up.

Access to Greater Range of Talent

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2. Greater Focus On Core Areas & Superior Control Over Workers

Offshoring and outsourcing allow businesses to focus on core areas, instead of splitting resources and time for specialized tasks. Offshoring (instead of outsourcing) frequently involves in-house employees in foreign nations focusing on certain tasks and at a lower price. Consequently, control over business and marketing objectives is not compromised. Administrators can manage offshore operations from their home country.

3. Cost-efficiency & Time-efficiency

In hiring specialized, overseas teams to undertake tasks, businesses don’t need to pay out of their own pocket to train and provide office equipment to the in-house employees. Labour costs are also significantly lower in offshore regions, which aid companies to get more instances of high-quality work. 

Also Read: Is a Dedicated Development Team Worth the Cost?

Underlying all these advantages, businesses will also save time and resources on the hiring and recruitment process. The existing pool of highly trained and experienced specialists means no need to vet and interview hundreds of new candidates. When hiring online, HR resources are not wasted. 

Cost-Efficiency & Time-Efficiency

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4. Increased Scalability

Outsourcing vendors and offshore teams can help businesses scale up infrastructure and undertake greater volumes of deliverables. It also allows business leaders to scale up or scale down their teams depending on abundances and shortages in the economy, respectively.

These pillars of the industry won’t shatter under the weight of the burdened economy. The United States still relies on paying less than the American minimum wage for services from South Asia. Vendor rates will fall for the time being, making offshore outsourcing more attractive; later, they will increase gradually in time.

Increased scalability - offshore outsourcing

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Even though physical products shipping and freight costs are rising, labor costs should decrease. In case the costs are too much, nearshore services are a superior option, such as Mexico for the United States.

Dedicated Teams Enact Stable and Reliable Outsourcing

It will become easier to find the best digital services within a reasonable time frame after the coronavirus outbreak subsides, and governments relax lockdown regulations in the major hubs of the offshoring industry. International transactions of services will burgeon, as the best minds on the globe compete, allowing companies to hire them at useful rates. Nowadays, companies are not limited to local prospects and don’t have to overpay for their services.

Dedicated Teams Enact Stable and Reliable Outsourcing

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The best option is the hiring of dedicated remote teams of specialists. There are numerous examples of these teams, be it for digital marketing, SEO, Google Ads, social media marketing, web development, software development, etc. Teams with these skills are efficient, meet deadlines with ease, and collaborate with clients.

Dedicated Teams in Uplers

We, at Uplers, offer dedicated teams within the realms of web development, SEO, search engine marketing, and market automation. We have provided web solutions for over 500 firms globally, and have optimized engagements, impressions, and lead conversion. For their many digital marketplaces and websites. For affordable prices, our team members are steeped in the best practices that enable the smooth operation of digital frameworks.


. We improvise and implement based on the client’s needs.

Happy hiring! 

Ultimate Guide for Agencies to Draw Maximum Benefits from Outsourcing

How Agencies can Draw Maximum Benefits from Outsourcing Projects

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Outsourcing has emerged as a services industry by itself: Global Business Services (GBS). Its market value in 2019 was US$92.5 billion. Information technology outsourcing (ITO) contributed US$66.5 billion of that, with business process outsourcing (BPO) generating US$26 billion. 

There are factors you need to consider to optimize your outsourcing decision. We’ve researched deep and wide to collate the parameters that matter. Read on to maximize the ROI from your outsourcing projects and draw the utmost benefits of outsourcing.

The contents of this article include:

  1. Why Businesses Outsource
  2. The Importance of Choosing the Right Outsourcing Provider
  3. 6 tips critical to optimize your outsourcing ROI
  4. The Key Takeaways

Why Businesses Outsource

Accessing Global Business Services (GBS) no longer remains confined to big businesses, or even to medium ones. A recent survey reveals that 52% of small businesses intended to outsource specific business tasks in 2019. 

The most commonly outsourced tasks are as follows:

The top two reasons for outsourcing projects include:

  • To increase business efficiency by accessing relevant expertise and talent.
  • To increase competitive advantage by cutting costs.

Other benefits of outsourcing that agencies consider are: 

  • Increase time for core business tasks.
  • More effective use of in-house teams by outsourcing time-consuming and tedious tasks.

Current and Future Outsourcing Levels

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Deloitte’s Global Outsourcing Survey 2016 informs that 59% of the respondents mentioned cost reduction as the principal advantage of outsourcing projects. 

According to 57% of the respondents, more time to focus on core business areas was the chief benefit of outsourcing. 

Solving capacity gaps was the key advantage for 47% of the respondents. 

The Importance Of Choosing The Right Outsourcing Provider: Slack’s Success Story

Slack, the popular project management software that has been growing steadily, offers a remarkable story of outsourcing success. 

Launched in 2013, Slack was making little progress in attracting users. Then they outsourced their design concept and reappeared with a remodelled logo, an overhauled app, and a redesigned commercial website. 

The graph below clearly reflects how Slack has grown since then.

Slacks's Growth Shows No Signs of Slacking

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(Paid users = a minimum of three users on a paid subscription plan)

To replicate the Slack success story of outsourcing, you need to be careful in choosing your outsourcing provider.  

6 Tips Critical to Grow your Outsourcing ROI (Return on Investment) 

Rigorous research on actual outsourcing experiences combined with hardcore numbers informs our suggested indicators.

Tip 1. How To Choose The Right Outsourcing Provider

Invest the same amount of time and energy in selecting your outsourcing partner as when you recruit an in-house team member. Do your research to identify agencies and shortlist them before you begin the interview process. 

Don’t forget to run your background checks. 

Here’s a checklist to facilitate your pre-interview stage work: 

1. Check For Domain Expertise

  • In the world of technology and digitization, there’s no one size fits all. 
  • Look for companies that have worked for clients from your specific sector. 

Or else, look for the versatility of their clientele. A company with the experience of serving diverse sectors clearly has the ability to adapt their strategies to varying industry needs and deliver great benefits of outsourcing.

expertise in outsourcing projects

2. Check Company Stability

Imagine getting stranded midway in a high-revenue project because your outsourced partner goes bankrupt. Definitely not a situation you’d want to encounter. 

  • In Deloitte’s 2018 survey on global outsourcing, the outsourced agency’s resilience and performance emerge as a major area of concern, with 45% of the respondents marking that.
  • It is a good business practice to check a company’s stability when you shortlist it as a potential outsourcing provider. 
  • Check for how many years it has been in business. That’s a marker of stability. 
  • Have they survived through any economic downturns? That’s the best indicator you can ask for. However, the reverse isn’t true. Not facing an industry slowdown does not mean a company lacks financial stability. 
  • Ask for the annual audit reports once you shortlist some companies. Company balance sheets offer evidence for stability and growth. 

 

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3. How Experienced Is The Company?

Outsourcing your projects makes sense when you can access creative and cutting-edge technological solutions to your business problems. 

  • A company that’s been around for some years gains valuable insights. 
  • Insights are as important as technical skills. 
  • Technical skills and experience together give a company a competitive edge. 
  • Check for the right balance between experience and innovation. 

It is never an either/or between experience and the grasp of the latest technology. It has to be a combination of both. 

4. Check Reviews By Past Clients

Do not limit yourself to the client reviews you find on the company website. 

  • Ask your shortlisted agencies for the contact details of their past clients. 
  • Do reference calls to find out the real experience. 
  • The refusal to facilitate reference calls to past clients is a cause for concern. 

5. Quality Control Mechanisms Are Critical

A Harvard Business Review article stresses that internal quality control is particularly crucial for the services sector. That’s because the poor quality of services may affect the clients more than the company itself. 

  • Checking the internal quality control mechanisms of a company.
  • Ask for a demonstration of the company’s internal quality assurance framework. 
  • Have a discussion on how you will collaboratively set up the quality control framework for the tasks/project you outsource. 

6. Check The Security Control Measures

You will have to share vital business data with your outsourcing teams, irrespective of which services you outsource. Processes they have in place to keep your business data protected are vital. 

In Deloitte’s 2018 survey, 68% of the respondents mentioned data security as a core concern area. It makes good business sense to be over-cautious about security measures of your outsourcing provider.

Check The Security Control Measures

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7. Is The Company Transparent Enough?

In the 2018 Deloitte survey, 39% of the respondents mentioned this to be an area of concern with reference to the outsourcing teams’ transparency. 

There are different yardsticks to judge a company’s transparency: 

  • The readiness to show audit reports constitutes one. 
  • The willingness to share contact details of past clients and facilitated reference calls is another. 
  • Their compliance with the relevant international and national laws, regulatory procedures, and statutes is another critical area in this context.

Tip 2. Choose The Right Location For Outsourcing Digital Services

Cost-cutting is evidently one of the key drivers of outsourcing decisions. However, if you make that the only criterion in your selection of your outsourcing agency partner, you may be in trouble later. 

  • The cost of a poorly executed project or the failure to meet the deadline may prove costlier in the end.
  • Balance quality with pricing. The agency offering the lowest bid may also be the least efficient in terms of quality. 

This is where your choice of location can prove important. We present important information on the top 7 countries for outsourcing digital services.

Choose The Right Location For Outsourcing Digital Services

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As this graph clearly demonstrates: 

  • India has the highest overall scores because it presents the best combination of cost, skills, and business environment. 
  • China scores marginally higher in skills and business environment. However, it has substantially lower scores in financial attractiveness. If you choose to outsource to China, you end up paying more. 
  • Countries with substantially lower skills rating than India also do not have higher financial attractiveness scores.
  • The only country scoring higher than India in financial attractiveness if Vietnam. However, the availability of skills is nearly half of India’s. If you choose Vietnam, you may spend less, but the quality will remain a major concern. 

Among all the location-based outsourcing models that exist, offshoring is the show stopper. No other models offer the right balance of costs and skills.

Benefits of Offshoring

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  • There is enough evidence in academic research to indicate that outsourcing projects offshore improves a company’s overall performance. 
  • The benefits of offshoring transcend just cost-cutting and positively impact a company’s access to specialized skills and the ability to concentrate on core business tasks. 
  • Offshoring yields high ROI on both cost and productivity. 
  • Onshoring and nearshoring has negative cost implications, especially for U.S. based companies. 
  • Offshore outsourcing is the only rational means of meeting the skills gap that exists in the U.S. in the sphere of digital capacities.

Also Read: Outsourcing Tips for Digital Agencies: What to Outsource and What Not To

Tip 3. Choose The Right Model of Outsourcing

There are different models of the client-vendor relationship in outsourcing. It is important to choose the model that best suits your purpose.

Michael-Dell alternatives of freelancing dedicated team model

1. Project-based Model

If you have a short-term need for just one simple, fixed-time project, this model may suit your needs best. In this model of outsourcing, your outsourcing provider handles most of the responsibilities. The contract is on the basis of fixed deliverables for a fixed price within a fixed timeline. 

Pros

  • You get rid of most of the responsibilities
  • You can access expert services for your needs 
  • Cost-effective

Cons

  • You have no control on the team deployed for your project
  • You can’t supervise day-to-day progress
  • Scaling may prove difficult in case of sudden changes in project needs. 
  • The loss can be significant if the outsourced agency misses the deadline or delivers something not up to the mark.

2. Shared Team Model

When you outsource following this approach, the project tasks are divided between your outsourced partner and members of your in-house team.  

Pros

  • Optimized utilization of both in-house and outsourced expertise
  • Cost-saving

Cons

  • Coordination may become a nightmare
  • Scaling the outsourced partner’s team for sudden needs may prove difficult.
  • Your in-house team standards and the outsourced partner’s standards may not match
  • Last moment discovery of any delay or failure of the outsourced tasks can jeopardize your entire project

3. The Dedicated Team Model

Also known as staff augmentation, this model is the best option for long-term ongoing support needs. You hire a team of your choice from your outsourced partner to provide the services that you require. You retain full control over the team structure and its functioning. 

Also, you do not need to spend on any overheads as the team will continue to work in your outsourced partner’s office. 

Pros

  • Access to the required expertise without investing in the entire process of recruitment and hiring.
  • Your outsourcing agency partner cannot change the team of your choice without your prior permission. 
  • You know exactly how the project progresses as you monitor the team on a regular basis. 
  • Easy scalability as per need.
  • You save costs on salaries and overheads. 

Cons

  • May be more expensive than the project-based model

table for project-based vs dedicated team model outsourcing

Tip 4. Pay Attention To the Contract Document of your Outsourcing Project

Whichever model of outsourcing you choose, you need to make the contract document as detailed as possible. Listing out terms and conditions in as much depth and detail as in the case of hiring an in-house team member is necessary to avoid any sudden shocks. 

Ensure including the following in your contract document: 

  • The scope of the project in details
  • Duration and timeline
  • Costs and payments structures and schedules
  • Product warranty
  • Agreements at the service level: especially when the project involves ongoing service needs
  • Ownership transfer agreement
  • Intellectual property protection agreement
  • Non-disclosure agreement
  • Subcontracting clause: either complete prevention or setting limits to subcontracting
  • Indemnity clause
  • Dispute resolution mechanism 

benefits of outsourcing projects contract

This is especially critical in the case of project-based and managed team approaches. In the case of the dedicated remote team approach, a long-term relationship with your outsourced team builds a degree of trust and dependability. The contract document does not remain the only binding factor when you desire to gain the maximum benefits of outsourcing. 

Tip 5. Structured Communication is the Key to Maximum Benefits of Outsourcing

Regular and structured communication is an essential part of effective management. The need is the same when you outsource some of your business needs to a third party. 

  • Do not ignore this need in case of the short-term project-based model of outsourcing. That will be your only way of gaining some knowledge of how your project is progressing since you have no control over the daily activities of your outsourced team. 
  • A structured communication schedule is also crucial in the managed team approach. Coordinating the two teams and keeping their standards and progress in sync would be impossible without such a schedule. 
  • Work out the mode and schedule of communication carefully when outsourcing projects offshore, taking into account the time difference. 
  • When using the dedicated team model, the approach should be the same as in the case of one central office managing teams in different locations. 

Below is a list of preferred remote communication tools you can use, in addition to communication options built into project management tools.  

Adopt A Project Management Tool

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Tip 6. How To Ensure Effective Management When Outsourcing Projects Offshore

The most important task for the effective management of an offshore remote team is the adoption of an online project management tool. Each digital project management tool has its pros and cons. However, the most popular tools are as follows:

Remember that the adoption of an online project management tool is effective only when you ensure that all project-related information sharing happens on that platform.  

Add-on Factors to Consider When Working with an Offshore Partner:

  • Get beyond the client-vendor relationship – treat your offshore outsourcing company as a strategic business partner.
  • Respect diversity – be careful of cultural differences. It is critical to remember that your offshore remote team members are human beings, not robots.
  • Remember that your offshore remote team brings in skills and talent in a cost-effective manner. Treat them as equals.
  • Set up a structured communication plan, accommodating the timezone difference. Use any of the popular tools we have mentioned.
  • Develop and apply your monitoring framework. You can develop your monitoring parameters collaboratively with your offshore partners. That works best.

Avoid These Common Mistakes When you Decide to Offshore: 

  • Do your homework to decide the best destination and the model that suits your needs best. Utilize the cues we have shared. 
  • Do not compromise quality for cost-cutting. The cheapest is not necessarily the best. Rather, it may prove considerably costlier in the long run, if the product or service does not meet the required quality standards. 
  • Do not ignore the need for due diligence when hiring. Use the pointers shared here. 
  • Do not ignore the importance of the contract document. It is critical to integrate all the aspects we have spoken about.  
  • Do not offload all your responsibilities. Retain overall monitoring and supervision. It often seems tempting for overworked and multitasking CXXs. But there are dangers involved. 

You may discover too late that the project is progressing slower than planned. Or that there are quality lapses. 

When you retain the overall monitoring and supervision authority, you protect yourself from such rude shocks at the last moment.

  • Do not micromanage. Firstly, it will be counterproductive since it will take too much of your time. Also, it may typically lead to other complications as in any case of micromanagement. 

Your offshore partners may lose their own drive and initiative, thinking that they are obligated to work only under orders from you. That is never the way to get the most from a team. 

That may actually lead to missing out on the range of skills and expertise your offshore remote team can bring in your project. 

Also, the timeline could go haywire when you do not have time to micromanage and your offshore remote team suspends work because you are unavailable.

The Key Takeaways

The 2016 Deloitte global survey on outsourcing mentions that 78% of the respondents are happy with their outsourcing experience. We believe that the remaining 22% encountered some problem or the other because they slipped somewhere in following the tips we have shared with you. 

To ensure you witness the maximum benefits of outsourcing, follow the tips we have shared here. 

We also want to emphasize that the global experience with outsourcing clearly demonstrates that offshoring to a country like India works best from all the parameters. It extends your access to the required skill-sets in a cost-effective manner. 

Finally, for all your long-term and ongoing support needs, the dedicated team approach works best. It allows you to enjoy the benefits of accessing an extended talent pool without incurring the costs of overheads and monthly paychecks even when there is no work. 

How To Set Up Teams Offshore to Outsource Digital Marketing

How To Set Up Offshore Teams to Outsource Digital Marketing

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With the creation of the World Wide Web, the history of communication, as we know it, has changed forever. There are at present 4.333 billion active internet users across the globe. Let’s learn how to set up offshore teams to outsource digital marketing.

Marketers have been quick to seize this opportunity. Most have migrated online to deliver engaging and innovative messages and content to consumers. So, before we see how we can set up our offshore teams to outsource digital marketing, let’s see how marketing has evolved in the past decade:

Digital Marketers Most Prioritized Future Initiatives

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According to a survey of marketers:

  • 51% of the respondents say that they are prioritizing the use of more data to create customized content that serves the customer journey.
  • More than one-third (37%) of digital marketing executives say that increasing brand awareness and brand health is their top goal for their digital marketing strategy.

Further reports say:

In value terms, about 84.2% of outsourcing deals originated from the United States; followed by the United Kingdom at 5.2%. Also, Spain and Australia are two other key outsourcing markets. 

The various segments of this article are as follows:

a) Present Trends in Marketing

b) Guide to Set-up an Offshore Marketing Team

c) How to Play the Uplers Trump Card

Present Trends in Marketing

This year, some trends you need to know before you set your offshore digital marketing team are:

  • Analytics to predict the likelihood of a new lead making a purchase decision.
  • Smart, automated Ad bidding.
  • A more interactive e-mail experience.
  • Multi-channel social messaging.
  • Integrating voice search capabilities.

Most of the above combine smart new ways of using data with automation and structured interactions.

To take full advantage of these and more emerging opportunities, a professional and experienced digital marketing team is essential. 

The Rise in Offshore Outsourcing Digital Marketing

The Rise in Offshoring Digital Marketing

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There are many companies that prefer to outsource digital marketing. After all, if you are restricted by expertise, software, and the number of hours you can leverage, digital marketing efforts become sub-optimal.

Moreover:

  • The right digital professionals are always in demand, and they are not easy to find.
  • There is also the issue of resources, both when it comes to regular salaries as well as office space and the latest technology.

Among the advantages of outsourcing are:

  • Access to a specialized team that can often produce deliverables faster than an in-house team.
  • Constructive marketing strategies combined with effective implementation and execution.
  • The benefits of the latest technology and software to promote your marketing message in the most up-to-date manner.

The decision to go in for offshore outsourcing can lead to:

  • Lower overheads with cost-efficiency
  • Increased growth and time to focus on overall company goals.
  • Greater attention to service quality for high-quality and effective work.

A Guide to Understanding and Setting Up A Digital Marketing Team

It’s essential to understand how to organize and manage your outsourced marketing team for the best results. Here, we’ll break down the key elements of doing this.

In essence, the main factors to keep in mind are:

  1. The roles played by the members of a digital marketing team.
  2. The different ways that organizations structure their digital marketing departments.
  3. Some best practices to follow when you plan to outsource digital marketing to an offshore team.

1. Digital Marketing Team Personnel

Consumers interact in different ways with search engines, social media, e-mail, and websites. Thus, the online channels used by digital marketers to reach out to consumers have varying characteristics. 

The ways in which consumers browse the net have also changed. There are a variety of smartphones, TVs, laptops, desktops, and tablets.

digital marketing outsourcing tasks main

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This means that there are many specialized roles needed for an effective outsourced marketing team to operate. 

Data analysis, creating and designing messages, placing and tracking them, and examining new ways to reach out, are simply a few of them.

Here are some of the essential roles to keep in mind when outsourcing digital marketing:

Project Manager

  • A project manager is a link between the outsourced marketing team and the organization.
  • He has to understand the requirements from the campaign brief and ensure that the digital team delivers.
  • In most cases, the project manager is a generalist who has the ability to weave together the work of specialists.

Strategist

  • The strategist’s role is to understand consumer behavior.
  • The job includes using data and research to map the buying process, explore new opportunities, and come up with relevant insights.
  • The strategist also checks whether the final campaign has the required relevance in the marketplace for optimum PPC management.

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Content Writer
  • There could be one or multiple content writers in a team based on need.
  • The writer should understand the copy requirements of blogs, websites, e-mails, and social media.
  • They should ideally have some SEO knowledge and be experienced in writing for multiple outlets.
Graphic Designer
  • Graphic designers use typefaces, patterns, photographs, and colours to make your message distinctive.
  • Other visual elements and infographics are also used to condense information and make it easily comprehensible.
SEO Specialist
  • SEO specialists use analytic tools and techniques to figure out what your consumer is searching for online.
  • After this, content can be tailored to show up in search results. They also conduct SEO and keyword audits to optimize results.

Pay-per-click Manager

  • Sometimes, advertisers pay web publishers only when links are clicked upon. That’s where pay-per-click managers come in.
  • Such managers will use tools to monitor, test, and update content and results from SEM services.

Front-end Developer

  • Front-end developers are responsible for transforming data and content into what the consumers actually see on the interface.
  • They build landing pages and design other elements such as pop-ups.
  • The best developers will use the latest software to create immersive and flexible user experiences.

ux ui outsourcing stats for outsourcing tips

Social Media and E-mail Specialists

  • These specialists have a high degree of consumer-centric thinking and experience with automated tools
  • They combine consumer insights with analytics and online technology to reach out to consumers in effective ways.

2. Types of Digital Marketing Team Models

There are various ways of working with an outsourced marketing team. A lot depends on the specific marketing needs, as well as the resources available. The size of the company also plays a role. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. 

Here are three common types to explore.

  • The Freelancer Model – Freelancing is one of the most popular business models for a major chunk of outsourced requirements. The costs are lower, and there is a wide pool of talent to choose from. But one of the biggest drawbacks of freelancing for businesses is the lack of reliability. Security concerns are also an issue.
  •  The Project-based Model – This is also referred to as the Shared Team Model. There are cost and scalability advantages to this approach. However, a lack of dedicated resources can mean a lack of commitment and less control over the project.
  • The Dedicated Team Model – This is seen as the most advantageous model of offshore outsourcing, with a high degree of control. With a project manager who is committed to your needs, it is virtually like having an in-house team. The level of control is high, thereby leading to a long-term understanding and relationship.

table for project-based vs dedicated team model outsourcing

Which model to go for depends entirely on your needs at this point in time. Some points to check are:

  • Is it a one-off project, such as a new website? Or is it a continuing series of tasks?
  • Should your outsourced marketing team be confined to a few streams, or should it have as wide a reach as possible?
  • Are you planning to grow your digital marketing efforts over the years?

The answers to the above questions will help you decide which model is best for you.

3. Best Practices for Working with an Offshore Digital Marketing Agency

When you outsource digital marketing, you could well be working with a team that is not in the same location. What, then, is the best way to set up an offshore outsourcing team? 

In a nutshell, these are the six aspects you ought to keep in mind:

  • Overcome time zone concerns
  • Check expertise and experience
  • Be clear about requirements
  • Use the right communication tools
  • Establish proper feedback systems
  • Lay down progress parameters

Let’s break them down, one by one.

Overcome Time Zone Barriers

Many companies have apprehensions about dealing with people who are in another time zone. However, no matter what the difference in hours, there are ways for you to not only overcome it and also gain from it. 

  • You can set up a system that makes use of overlapping hours. This time can be spent in face-to-face video contacts, phone calls, and other direct communication.
  • Shared calendars, prioritized requirements, and specific tasks can be allocated, which can be worked on without your direct involvement.

7 Proven Ways to Manage Team Performance to manage team performance offshore teams

A good way to look at it is: you can actually take advantage of all the 24 hours in a day, as there will always be an expert working on your marketing task.

Check Expertise and Experience

There are several types of offshore marketing agencies in several countries. Before you sign a contract with one of them, you should make sure that they are capable of delivering the goods. 

Here are some starting points:

  • Ask questions about what software and specialists the agency has access to.
  • What automated tools do they use to manage social media, SEO, online ad auctions, consumer feedback, and more? How do they generate cutting-edge insights?
  • Check their portfolio to see the kind of work they have done in the past. Does this sync with your needs and requirements?
  • If yours is a specialized business, does the agency have experience in handling work in this domain?

The above should give you an excellent idea about whether the agency is right for your needs. 

Be Clear About Requirements

The best offshore digital marketing agencies can work like extensions of your own company. They can be valuable partners in growing your business.

For this to happen, however, there should be clarity at the outset about their roles and responsibilities. 

outsourcing tips for what to outsource and what not to outsource

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Depending on your needs, the agency can bring together the right combination of skills, after understanding your necessities. 

Given the many specialists that are needed for properly outsourcing digital marketing, the clearer you are about requirements, the more the agency will be able to provide the right skills to create a team that’s right for you.

Use the Right Communication Tools

As we’ve seen, seamless marketing communication is a key element in working with an outsourced marketing team. Fortunately, there are several tools for this.

  • E-mail is best suited for summing up discussions, minutes, action points, and forthcoming schedules. It keeps communication costs low and allows teams the flexibility to access messages from anywhere in the world.
  • Live chat can often provide instant clarifications. Pain points can be quickly taken care of, with fast problem resolution.
  • Videoconferencing is perfect for group meetings and discussions involving all members. Many videoconferencing applications nowadays have advanced collaboration features that even allow for file-sharing, across multiple platforms.
  • There are also other tools such as Slack, which is an integrated messaging app that connects conversations with tools to streamline and increase productivity.

Many times, the digital marketing agency can itself suggest the best communication processes, based on earlier experience.

Establish Proper Feedback Systems

In order to check progress and carry out course-corrections for a project, if any, a proper feedback system needs to be in place. 

The feedback can be targeted at certain actionable issues. It should be specific, and on time for the team to act on it.

With good feedback, you can:

  • Clarify goals, criteria, and standards.
  • Encourage motivation and self-esteem.
  • Provide relevant information for the way ahead.
Lay Down Progress Parameters

An effective way of managing and staying in control of a large task is to break it down into a series of smaller projects. This, along with periodical reviews, will ensure that it is on track and is successful.

In this way, you can create project milestones as a series of small achievements. The milestones should represent a sequence of events that build up until the current project is complete.

This will help to manage expectations as well as provide enough time for course corrections if any.

4. Digital Marketing Tasks that Need Regular Attention

With the above, you’ll be well on your way to getting the best results from an offshore digital marketing team. Over and above this, there are other functional areas to which you can pay regular attention. 

Some of these are:

  • Cost management, to ensure that the scope of the project is within the parameters that have been initially laid down.
  • Risk management, so that you are able to identify and evaluate any potential risks that may come up. With this, you can minimize as well as monitor and control their impact.
  • Knowledge transfer management, in order to codify and distribute information for future use within the organization.
  • Relationship management, for the collaboration to be continually fruitful and lead to a win-win situation across the board.

By following the above practices, you can get the best from your offshore outsourcing team. After all, the pace of innovation and change is growing daily, and your company should not be the one to be left behind.

With offshore outsourcing, you gain the strategic advantage of having a prepared and specialized team available. New approaches can be profitably explored, and new strategies and technology exploited to successfully reach out to consumers.

How to Play the Uplers Trump Card

At Uplers, we have rich experience in white label digital marketing services. We’ve worked with a variety of companies across domains, with skills across the spectrum.

Such cross-functional and cross-industry experience allows us to create comprehensive strategies based on a variety of businesses and industries.

Some of our specializations include web development, digital marketing, and marketing automation. From front-end development to e-mail marketing to programmatic advertising and much more, we create winning end-to-end campaigns.

If you’d like to know more about how you can use our expertise to your advantage, do get in touch today. We’ll be only too happy to help.

5 Best Practices for Managing Your Offshore Team Efficiently

5 Best Practices for Managing Offshore Teams Effectively

The proliferation of the digital outsourcing industry in the last ten years itself intensifies the urge to use the outsourcing model as a business development strategy. On average, 300,000 jobs are outsourced by U.S. businesses each year and the global outsourcing industry amounted to $86.6 billion in 2018. Making a headway, businesses, and agencies, today, establish their offshore teams in preferred outsourcing locations like India, Philippines, and China.

In fact, 43% of US IT businesses, today outsource through offshore teams. But, managing offshore teams isn’t an easy sail. Instead, it requires experience and profound project management skills. Furthermore, unorganized management is most likely to result in reduced work productivity and project failure.

The Challenges in Managing Offshore Teams

  • Scattered Communication Strings
  • Distributed Business Culture
  • Lower Project Control
  • Lack of Well Grounded Trust
  • Possible Breach in Security
Download: Guide to Bridge Cultural Gaps For Indian Employees

Though offshore outsourcing offers capacious benefits, you need to have the right expertise to tap into this world of opportunities. Here is how to manage teams when outsourcing offshore –

5 Best Practices for Managing Your Offshore Team

1. Know Your Team & Their Capabilities

Lack of face-to-face communication in teams remains a colossal challenge when working with offshore teams. That is where research comes into the picture.

  • Practice due diligence: Stop being reluctant and do your due diligence. You need to find the best offshore outsourcing location for your business and drill-down to the pros and cons of each location. Drill-down to devise a coherent project scope and screen through quotes to establish a realistic project budget.
  • Research the right vendor: Connect strings with your preferred target location to scrutinize through recommendations and possible offshore team providers. Assess the technical competency through previous client feedbacks, portfolios and case studies.
  • Know the staff assigned for your project: Akin to hiring resources in-house you can look at the profiles of the offshore resources assigned for your project. The dedicated team model can be a good idea to establish a better look at your team structure.
  • Use outsourcing capabilities smartly: Develop a better skill understanding of the individual members when working with offshore teams and utilize it judiciously to gain in work productivity. Defined project scope can further help you plan the availability of your team prudently.

2. Build Partnership and Make it Two-way

Comparable to any partnership, the efforts in the outsourcing world can only be multiplied when they are made from both ends. And to make efforts reciprocate, bonds need to be made two-way.

  • Focus on communication in teams: Communication is the key when it comes to making bonds two-way. Frequent communications in teams build understanding among your inhouse and offshore resources and help align everyone’s efforts. Don’t limit communications to chats or email channels, instead use voice calls and video calls to bring better clarity over tasks and share ideas.
  • Share your vision and goals effectively: Share goals, challenges, and vision with your offshore team. Develop trust and brainstorm together to bring your remote team on the same page with your in-house team. Building a sense of ownership among your offshore team will motivate them to work hard for you.
  • Drop the idea of a one-time deal, instead build partnerships: Unlike the project-based outsourcing, a dedicated offshore team acts as an extension of your in-house team. As you utilize the offshore team for your tasks, you pass over your processes and culture to them and this builds partnership. Working with a team over long-term projects helps build a trust value and understanding which can be utilized to bring recurring projects to success.

 

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3. Sprint Approvals on Your Side

When you outsource a project to your offshore team you are still liable to manage the project and that involves a sense of commitment to the project. The project needs inputs from stakeholders in the form of feedbacks, paths, and approvals.

  • Faster client-side approvals: A fact seldom spoken is that delays on the client-side are one of the major reasons for poor progress in the project cycle. You can assign dedicated project managers for managing offshore teams, so as to make the project cycle more efficient.
  • Align stakeholders with project scope: The project scope needs to be comprehensive and detailed. Every query or misunderstanding related to the project scope should be resolved in advance to align all the stakeholders. Moreover, clients need to streamline the decision-making so to eliminate any possible delays on the client-side.
  • Bring realistic timelines in the picture: On account of drawing a larger margin between project deadlines, businesses push unrealistic timelines for their offshore teams. This hampers the structured project cycle and the quality of solutions. Clients need to do their due diligence to create realistic timelines for managing teams effectively.

4. Make the Right Choice of Engagement Model

The outsourcing model works on three types of engagement models – Fixed Price, Time & Material and the Dedicated Team model. Each model has its own perks and limitations, which suit different businesses differently.

  • Fixed Price Model: This model suits the best for short-term projects. The service provider quotes a fixed price for the project and the client gets the project delivered according to the clearly defined project scope. This engagement model is less flexible and no major changes in the project scope are entertained. In the case of any additions in the project scope, the extra cost is added and the overall project budget is likely to exceed.
  • Time & Material Model: The fixed time & material model involves hiring a shared or part-time resource team from an outsourcing provider on cost per hour basis. The client can add new features to the project scope and pay for added hours on an hourly basis. This model is more flexible but has partial control over resource availability.
  • Dedicated Team Model: For long-term projects requiring the utmost level of commitment and reliability, the dedicated team model is the right choice. The client can build his dedicated offshore team of developers or marketers through the outsourcing partner. Resources are bound by a contract and are liable to serve the client dedicatedly. Be it changing project scope or anytime resource availability this model fits the best.

Engagement Models Comparison

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5. Make Security A Priority

One of the crucial aspects of managing offshore teams is protecting the IP and the project against any security breach. A PWC survey reported that 31% of the total businesses surveyed witnessed some kind of breach attempt while they utilized offshore teams.

Some important security precautions while working with remote teams include:

  • Sign a strict NDA that is notified by an attorney
  • Check the networking monitoring settings
  • Authorized access to systems and project data
  • No off-site access to critical client data
  • Sign and seal standard data protection policies

Conclusion

The perks offshore development offers in terms of cost, scalability, global talent, and reliability are without peer, but only if a business pays efforts in managing teams effectively.

The top ways for managing offshore teams include:

  • Define the detailed project scope and prepare realistic timelines
  • Research the right outsourcing partner and build a capable offshore team
  • Know your offshore team and their capabilities
  • Share your vision and motivate your offshore team to fight for you
  • Streamline decision-making and sprint approvals on your side
  • Choose the right engagement model from fixed price, time & material model, and dedicated model
  • Protect your IP, sign NDAs and establish proper data protection policies