Outsourcing – Built on Trust, Understanding and Patience
I was recently asked a question on what i think about outsourcing (to India)? Well i thought would talk about outsourcing in general rather than just to India.
Firstly i think outsourcing is a great idea for certain jobs, not all of them. In particular i think outsourcing in the technology space makes alot of sense. However, what is required to make outsourcing work?
To me outsourcing is like any other relationship – it has to be built on mutual trust, understanding and respect. When selecting an outsourcing partner, no matter where they are in the world, they must have these characteristics, as well as the skills, to complete the task at hand.
At the REA Group, we used the team at EarlySail in India to do a chunk of the IT work. Now this relationship has been built up over a couple of years and was started based on a relationship between my CIO, Chris Vulovic, and a Director of EarlySail – Push Mohta.
We started the relationship by giving them relatively simple work in doing express changes and then slowly ramped it up from there as they became more and more familiar with the REA Group systems and processes. In addition, we had a team at the REA Group head office that did QA on the work from EarlySail.
The relationship has progressed now to the point where the EarlySail guys are helping with QA and are considered as part of the team. They have visited Australia and some of the team in Australia have visited them. Above all, we treat them as any other team member, including inviting them to the annual conferences.
I have so much confidence in the EarlySail team that i am commissioning them to build out the next generation of my latest site www.propertyportalwatch.com.
So any approach to outsourcing takes time and has to be built on trust, understanding and patience.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
we have had two goes at outsourcing offshore and the first experience was a nightmare!! The main reason was that the actual company coding our application was contracted to the company the we outsourced the development to.. bad idea! don’t have anyone between you and your developers that’s not working for you.. we had no transparency, no systems and terrible communication… ahh now that i got that off my chest.. second time around has been a dream.. we have contracted the new company based in India directly and our CTO and product lead liaise with them daily, in fact at the moment it’s many times a day.. the key lessons have been, engage direct, use the right tools ( we use Atlassian products Jira and Confluence) and as Simon suggests treat them like they are part of your team/business.
Cheers
Riges Younan
CEO, 2Vouch
http://www.2vouch.com
India is becoming a favoured destination for most of the companies looking at outsourcing a part of their operations. Choosing the right vendor and building up a long association in terms of mutual understanding, reliability and confidentiality is the essence of successful outsourcing. This article on the Asian connection in outsourcing might be an interesting read in this regard.