How to Manage Outsourced Projects
As company develops, it’s quite possible…
You’ll find yourself in a position where the fastest way to continue growing is by hiring an outsourcing partner. Finding and training employees can be very time consuming, and takes energy away from your core business. Also, you may not want to have all necessary services and skills in-house. In that case, working with an outsourcing provider is an attractive option. Once you’ve made the decision to work with a remote team, you then need to figure out the best way to go about managing your outsourced project.
Good communication is essential.
It’s highly likely that you and your outsourcing partner have very different ideas about management, communication, company culture, and pretty much everything else. So, in order to work together successfully, first, you need to figure out how to get on the same page. That requires over-communicating in the beginning. Talk about everything and discuss every little detail.
When you ask your outsourcing partner to do something, it might mean a very different thing to them. So you have to follow up and ask what exactly they are intending to do, and how they are going to go about it. That way you’ll know if your message got across accurately, or if it was lost in translation. Once you’ve worked together for a while, it’s possible to relax this attitude of hyper-communication and let your outsourcing partner handle the details without continually checking on them. At that point you’ll know what to expect from each other, and how to communicate effectively.
Build fundamental areas of alignment
Before you start, you have to make sure you and your outsourcing partner are in alignment on the 4 fundamental areas of the project. These areas are:
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Objectives
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Team organization
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Management relationships
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Communication channels
The goals of the project can be used as a cornerstone to get everyone on the same page before discussing anything else. Make sure your partner understands why you are hiring them, and what you want to achieve with this project. Once everyone understands and agrees with the key objectives, this will make everything else easier to discuss, because you are already in fundamental alignment on the most important area.
It’s important to get a clear picture of the structure of the remote team(s) that you will be working with. How many people will work on particular aspects of the project, and what are their specific roles? Are they all located together in the same place, and do they work at the same time? You’ll also want to give your outsourcing partner a clear idea of your local team structure, and how you expect them to connect with the remote team. That way each partner knows what the corresponding team looks like, and how the two are intended to integrate with each other.
You need to understand who is responsible for managing the remote team(s), and how they will go about it. These remote managers play a key role in the whole project, and you should make sure you can work with them effectively. Ideally, you don’t have to get involved in the micro-management of the remote team, since that’s taken care of by the outsourcing partner. But that means you need to cultivate a strong connection with the remote managers, since the whole communication will run through them.
Once you have identified the key people you need to work with, give them a clear idea of your local management structure. That way they will know how your communication and decision-making process works, and can adjust their work to that. In case you decide to go with a different model, in which your local managers directly run the remote team, make sure everyone understands this, and knows who they will be reporting to.
As mentioned above, good communication is essential if your outsourcing project is going to succeed, so this is an area you absolutely have to get right. When choosing the right communication channels and best practices for keeping in touch, it pays to go into great detail with your outsourcing partner.
After you have worked out the management relationships mentioned in point 3 above, you can draw out a schematic representation of key relationships, and then determine the best practices for effective communication within that structure. This point is so critical, that you should set up hold training sessions devoted just to effective communication. Teach both your local and remote teams how you want them to connect with each other within the agreed management structure.
Conclusion
While the integration of remote teams is challenging for any business leadership, following the guidelines in this article will help you to get it right, and achieve great success with outsourcing. But remember that this is just the beginning. You’ll have to revisit and adjust all of these areas as the project unfolds, to make sure that all key management and communication practices are up-to-date with the changing dynamics of the project.
Get in touch today to book a confidential call with our co-founders Kim Lombardi and John Rodgers.
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If you are considering outsourcing and find talent, start your outsourcing journey today with this e-book.
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Advantages Of Outsourcing To The Philippines
While India and China have traditionally been leaders in the outsourcing industry…
The Philippines has rapidly developed recently and made major advances in this sector over the last decade. The 2016 Tholons report of the top 100 outsourcing destinations places two Philippine cities among the top 10 outsourcing destinations: Manila at 2nd place, and Cebu at 7th place. This is a strong indicator of how successful the outsourcing industry has become in the Philippines. This industry has grown at a rate of 30% over the last ten years, and appears set to continue this strong development.
The business consulting giant Deloitte even predicts that the Philippines will become the world’s outsourcing capital for IT services by 2020, growing to take over 20% of the global market share in this Industry, with $48 billion in revenue. Here we list the top advantages of outsourcing to the Philippines – advantages that explain why many companies are choosing the Philippines as their preferred outsourcing location:
Excellent English skills
Due to historical ties with Spain (which ruled the Philippines for over 300 years), and the USA (which governed the Philippines for about 50 years), the Philippines have developed a strong compatibility with Western culture.
Probably the strongest influence is from the USA. As a result, English is used as an official language in the country and is the main language used in schools and business. Wikipedia lists 78% of the Philippine population as being English speakers, whereas India only has 10% English speakers among its population.
Since outsourcers in the Philippines speak excellent English, this makes them a great choice for customer support services to Western clients. The accent of Filipinos speaking English is widely considered to be easier to understand than that of other Asian countries.
Affinity to Western Culture
The Philippines is one of the largest Roman Catholic countries in the world, and thus has a similar religious background to Western countries. In addition, pop culture coming from the USA is very popular in the Philippines, making especially the younger generation highly aligned with Western culture.
Together with their proficiency in English, this makes it easier to integrate Filipino outsources into Western companies compared to outsourcers from other Asian countries.
Cost Savings
The Philippines is a low-cost country, due to the fact that the minimum daily wage in the Philippines is between $6 and $10, depending on the city. Because of this, it’s possible to hire Filipino outsourcers at a fraction of the cost compared to workers in Western countries.
Fresh graduates from high-quality universities can be employed for as little as $300 per month, and while more experienced workers (especially in sectors such as Software Development) tend to cost more than this, they are still much cheaper than equivalent workers in high-income countries.
Government Support for the Outsourcing Industry
Recent governments of the Philippines have been very supportive of the outsourcing industry, and have sought to attract foreign investors in this area. A government agency, called PEZA, was specially created to promote projects by foreign investors. It offers tax benefits and favorable economic zones for foreign companies. Due to the strong historical ties with the USA, the structure of the Philippine government closely resembles that of the US, which makes it easier to work with for foreign investors.
The government of the Philippines has recognized the outsourcing industry as one of the strongest areas of economic growth in the country and aims to further support this trend.
High-Quality Workforce
The rate of literacy in the Philippines is above 95%, and more than 450,000 students graduate from universities every year. There are several top universities in the country, which produce high-quality graduates every year.
Traditionally, many of the best Filipino graduates used to move overseas, to find work in high-income countries. However, the rise of the local outsourcing industry has now provided them with another option. Instead of moving far away, top university graduates can now find good jobs at home, which many of them prefer, as it enables them to stay close to their families.
Many university graduates turn to the BPO/outsourcing sector as one of the best career opportunities in the country. In fact, several Filipino universities offer training specifically aimed to prepare students for this kind of career. Due to this, outsourcing companies in the Philippines can easily find, and hire, top-quality workers that are highly motivated, and who stay with their company for many years.
Conclusion
Taken together, the Philippines offers many benefits for outsourcing projects. The high-quality English skills and the cultural compatibility with the West, together with the availability of highly educated and motivated workers, makes the Philippines one of the best outsourcing destinations in the world. If you add the cost savings on top of these advantages, it becomes clear why so many companies are choosing the Philippines to cover their outsourcing needs.
Get in touch today to book a confidential call with our co-founders Kim Lombardi and John Rodgers.
If you are considering outsourcing and find talent, start your outsourcing journey today with this e-book.
Ready to Transform Your Business?
Discover how Cybalink Solutions can help you achieve up to a 70% overhead reduction through our Philippine outsourcing solutions. Let's explore how to optimize your operations, lower costs, and increase margins.
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Five Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Fear Outsourcing
Many companies dislike the idea of outsourcing.
The main reason for this is that most Founders and CEOs prefer to have total control over their workforce, and the quality of work they deliver, by having daily access to them at the office. In addition, many businesses don’t want to give remote workers or Freelancers access to sensitive information, such as the source code of a brand new app, as they don’t trust outsourcers to keep this information secret, and thus see outsourcing as a security risk.
To add to these concerns, most outsourcers work in countries that are in located in very different time zones compared to their clients. Also, the top outsourcing destinations are in Asia (such as India and the Philippines), which means remote workers hired in those locations have a very different cultural background to western clients.
Due to these differences in time zone and culture, many companies believe it’s not possible to integrate outsourcers closely into the daily operations of their business. However, outsourcing also offers a long list of advantages, such as rapid scalability, instant access to specialists, and the possibility to launch an exploratory project without having to hire permanent staff.
Because of this, companies that completely avoid outsourcing risk slowing down their growth, and lose the flexibility and the added options provided to their competitors who embrace outsourcing. High-quality outsourcing providers are aware of the concerns of their clients and have developed processes and tools to make sure these concerns are taken care of, making it completely safe and straightforward to integrate outsourcers into their client’s projects.
Here we describe five ways that an outsourcing provider can successfully deal with the biggest outsourcing concerns:
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Outsourcers can work during the same hours as their client.
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Outsourcers can work during the same hours as their client.
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Put communication tools in place to enable instant communication with outsourcers during agreed hours.
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Put high-quality managers in place to run remote teams.
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Sign an Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to safeguard sensitive client information.
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Put western managers in place to bridge cultural differences.
The best outsourcing providers offer their clients the option of having their remote workforce work during exactly the same hours as the staff of the client company. This removes the concern about the time zone difference since communication can now take place in real time.
Many outsourcing centers focus on specific geographic locations, such as the USA and Canada, and shift all of their staff onto a work schedule that fits those countries. Thus the outsourcing teams start work at the same time as the staff of their client, go to lunch at the same hour, and finish work at the same time.
Thus the outsourcing teams start work at the same time as the staff of their client, go to lunch at the same hour, and finish work at the same time.
Upon hiring an outsourcer or a team of outsourcers, the client can communicate with the remote worker(s) instantly not only via email, but also any preferred chat app (such as Skype, Viber, WeChat, etc.). This allows instant communication in real time, either via computer or phone. In addition to this, there are a number of project management tools, such as Trello and Slack, which enable real-time communication concerning the progress of specific tasks in a project. The client’s managers can check progress at any time, and add feedback or set up new tasks. Together with point one above, this essentially enables any company to set up a remote team that’s in tight integration and communication with their local business, and gives them total control over the remote team.
The best outsourcing providers provide high-quality managers that can run outsourcing teams for their clients. Thus, while the client has the option of taking total control of their remote team, they can also choose to let a manager run the team for them, and to communicate mainly with that manager, instead of talking directly to individual outsourcers.
This option helps to reduce the amount of time and effort needed to run a remote team, as the daily supervision and guidance is taken care of for the client. Outsourcing the management of a remote team provides another great advantage, as it enables rapid scaling of a remote workforce without having to hire local managers to run the remote teams.
A professional outsourcing provider will be happy to sign an NDA to safeguard all sensitive information pertaining to a client’s project. The best providers will also have a proven track record of working with other clients. This enables any prospective client to research how the outsourcing provider handled sensitive information with other clients in the past. Based on this insight, plus signing an NDA, the security concern that is often associated with outsourcing can be successfully dealt with.
While it’s undoubtedly true that cultural differences can stand in the way of clear communication, the best outsourcing providers put managers in place to deal with this issue. These can be westerners, or staff that have lived in western countries for a long time. These managers are thus on the same wavelength as their western clients and can communicate with them effortlessly and with 100% accountability. Essentially these managers translate the wishes and concerns of the client to the outsourcing team and make sure that they are addressed and taken care of.
Conclusion
Taken together, these five practices effectively remove the biggest concerns against outsourcing. So instead of fearing the idea of outsourcing, it’s better to find an outsourcing partner who is able to deal effectively with these issues.
Get in touch today to book a confidential call with our co-founders Kim Lombardi and John Rodgers.
If you are considering outsourcing, start your outsourcing journey today with this e-book.
Ready to Transform Your Business?
Discover how Cybalink Solutions can help you achieve up to a 70% overhead reduction through our Philippine outsourcing solutions. Let's explore how to optimize your operations, lower costs, and increase margins.
Book a free consultation!