Many business owners see offshoring as a simple way to deliver swift cost-savings, but there are more benefits to it than saving money alone.
Employing a highly accomplished and economical offshore workforce can free up more time for you to concentrate on looking after clients and growing your business. Analysing the tasks your staff are performing and how they are utilising their time is also a bonus of the process.
Here are the top five tips which will help you turn offshoring into a growth engine.
Change the way you think about the talents which are available offshore
Offshoring allows you to tap into a highly qualified and hardworking talent pool that boasts years of relevant experience, and will also save you money. But don’t fall into the trap of regarding offshoring as being restricted to customer service roles. Try to think more strategically and less about cost reduction. Consider roles which are more about improving your business and driving it forward like accountants, IT staff and web developers.
Focus on your customer interactions
Offshoring experts will help you to unleash the potential of your core Australian staff by directing their attention to customer interactions and transferring tasks to experts in the offshore team where the process will happen more swiftly and efficiently. Directing the focus of your Australian staff towards raising the bar on client interactions will help them find systematic solutions and deliver well-structured, high-quality measures to cater to more clients, thus raising value for all parties.
Re-engineer your processes and procedures
Offshoring specialists will focus on how you can make things better for you, your staff, and clients by designing a streamlined process and seamless workflow. Their time spent in identifying any unnecessary process steps which complicate your entire operation will enable process re-engineering and the removal of these flaws from your processes and procedures. The result? The way things are done will be accelerated and quality will be improved, resulting in a comprehensively better experience for your customers.
Choose the right partner
Choose an offshoring partner with a proven track record of growing their clients’ business who has a dedicated team of experts in business transformation, process optimisation, and knowledge management. They should understand your KPI’s and success metrics, such as Net Promoter Score or Staff Engagement, and how they are achieving against them. Offshoring should be a true collaboration, with your offshoring partner not just providing offshore recruitment services and offices but helping to grow your business and make it successful.
Undertake a deep dive review of your business with an expert
Take the time to work with an external professional partner so they can assist you to undertake a detailed review of your operations. This will help you to identify the opportunities for improving your company in multiple perspectives, including systems, productivity, processes, tools, workflow, revenue, cost savings, and customer experience. They should develop a detailed plan that will improve your business end-to-end in a way that will minimise business impacts and manage risks.
Concerns are often raised about the effect of offshoring on existing staff, but there are ways to deal with this. Look to refocus roles of affected staff, so they are involved in customer interactions. It’s also possible to close skill gaps and teach new skills by buddying staff up with an experienced employee. Their jobs typically do not disappear; elements of the role will be transitioned to a specialist offshore team allowing the onshore team to focus on the customer.
If you choose the right offshoring partner and the right roles within your business to offshore, then you’re on the right track to financial and business growth benefits.
Adam Conrad, Managing Director, Intogreat
