It is a scary thought for many, but another year has passed, for better or worse. The will, of course, be a mix of organisations who took great strides over the past twelve months, and those who were stable or slid, depending on their strategies and the execution of those strategies.

Offshoring is often a project that gets pushed aside, partly because organisations may be sceptical or just do not believe they have the time to make it work, so these small steps, some would say baby steps, will help you get realistic about the potential offshoring has to change your organisation and drive exceptional results.

Take some time to reflect

Take some time to reflect on the past year with a particular focus on the activities and functions that distracted you and your top team members from doing the work that adds the most value to your organisation.

Some examples of this would be;

• Your top strategic planners working in the business too often and not on the business
• Your top sales team members spending significant time building a funnel rather than closing deals
• Your top customer service representatives answering simple requests or even just the phone
• Your top developers answering support tickets and resolving minor bugs or enhancements

This list, of course, is general, you would (or should) understand what is relevant to your business and your team members.

Once you and your team have completed your reflection you should have a list of low-value tasks being executed by your high-value resources, these will be your "low hanging fruit".

Test the idea by tackling the low hanging fruit

We also encourage our customers to start with simpler, low hanging fruit. This is to test that your organisation are able to successfully hand over and manage the workload of an offshored team. By testing this first, you will build team confidence in offshoring while being able to implement the changes required to offshore effectively.

These changes may include;

• Updated processes to ensure effective task management
• Updated HR procedures to integrate offshored team members and encourage more frequent feedback
• Updated local roles to encourage the leadership of the offshored team where required

Common roles that are offshored initially include;

• Administrative support through personal assistants, bookkeepers & clerks
• Telemarketing and telesales resources that are responsible for the development of sales funnels
• Social media management
• Customer services representatives
• First level software or technical support to support better support coverage for your customers

Plan for future high-value functions

Take this opportunity to also plan the types of roles that could be offshored in the future, this should include higher-value roles like;

• Second level support
• Software Developers
• Finance & Accounting functions

Really the potential is unlimited if you put the time and energy into developing your teams both locally and offshore.

Engage with us

We are, of course, strong advocates of the services we provide. We can help you and your organisation with all of the above, from;

• facilitating a strategic planning session with a focus on offshoring
• process design and change management
• team building
• retention planning and strategies

Contact us today to schedule a call to see how offshoring can help your business and how we can help you with your 2019 offshoring strategy!