Thursday, January 19, 2012

Offshore and Onshore Usefulness When the Inevitable Happens

No matter what you company does, if it grows big enough, at some point a suit will get the bright idea of using a foreign company to offload work on. This will happen, and jobs will be lost. Those who are retained will find themselves facing obstacles they have never faced before on project teams, and will have to accept that their job is now much harder.

The first and most important point is that your company isn't really saving any money. It may look like it on whatever report they are using to blindly look at dollar per hour spends, but the hard reality is that the projects will take longer and have more problems. This will not change a thing though, and you are stuck with your new resources.

The second important point is that you will have to work much harder and longer to pick up the slack. The knowledge transfer will have been terrible, so be prepared to be a professor to your new resources. You will need to go through all deliverables with a fine tooth comb as there will be countless grammar issues, wrong information, and a lot of filler. The language barrier will make every meeting slow an painful, so make sure to set aside enough time for important meetings.

The third point is that no matter how long you work with your new resources, there will always be friction. It could come from the cultural differences in work ethic, it could be a lack of expected initiative, it could be the constant replacement of people that typically happens with large foreign consulting firms. Be prepared and be steady.

The company is really breaking even, and that's only because you are going to have to work much more to pick up the slack. You also know where the blame will go if the project fails, and it won't be the offshore resources.

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