Are you ready for offshoring?

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Offshoring can become challenging, daunting and blow budgets if not planned, implemented, and managed well through professionalism and expertise. The journey shouldn’t be that risky or complicated as many businesses have offshored, but I regularly hear horror stories of difficult or failed offshoring initiatives.

In 2012 I was tasked by my employer with offshoring several operational roles. I studied popular business process outsourcing (BPO) locations including Malaysia, India, and the Philippines to select the ideal location to best service our customers effectively.

To my surprise, most of the information came from BPO providers themselves, all eager to seal the deal with another prospect, and rarely upfront about the time and effort required to make the initiative a success.

The process of supplier selection and staff recruitment and management established a genuine passion for the industry and the positive impacts that offshoring can have on organisations and the team members I was fortunate to work with. This was a perfect launching pad for me to start Change Fox, an offshoring consulting firm with the vision of improving the success rates of offshoring initiatives via clever and reproducible processes.

From readiness checks to management support

For starters, Change Fox seeks an answer from entrepreneurs to the question, “Is your business ready for offshoring?”

A lot of people I’ve talked to have never gone through the process. When you talk to BPO providers they have all the right answers, but the reality can be a real shock for organisations. Our expertise at Change Fox is what differentiates us and adds value, offering our customers the results of our own learnings – involving shuttling frequently between Adelaide and Manila to engage with our team – to help them build successful offshore teams and challenge them to provide the time, effort and resources to make it fruitful.

Change Fox advocates a five-step process that will set up their customers and their teams for success that includes a readiness check, recommendations and implementation of process changes, supplier set-up, staff recruitment and ultimately an ongoing engagement with the organisation and their team members. Our focus is on delivering progressive and consistent outcomes for our clients by acting as an ongoing intermediary in the management of their offshore teams and developing a positive and productive work culture.

Is your offshore team built to last?

Offshoring is not simply a handball of responsibilities to “cheap resources” and Change Fox encourages a collaborative approach to onboarding, integration, and retention of staff, all of which we facilitate through regular engagements with customers and teams. The goal is to create tangible feedback loops to encourage continuous improvement throughout the organisation.

The success of an offshoring initiative is equally the responsibility of all parties within the Change Fox environment, including the customer and their local staff. To that end we won’t shy away from communicating any risks related to the way that our customers are operating and working with their offshored staff. This candid feedback, when required, is a key benefit to engaging with Change Fox.

Recently completing my MBA while helping set up, grow and manage offshore teams, I had a lot of trial-and-error during my initial forays into offshoring. I want to spare my customers from such a burden. We’ve “been there and done that”, now we hope to eliminate the guesswork and help Australian firms make their best decision ever.

If you would like to discuss how offshoring may work for your organisation or have an offshored team that you feel is underperforming visit and read our content at https://www.changefox.com and schedule a free strategic discussion.

Brought to you by Chris Winfield-Blum, Founder & CEO, Change Fox