02 Feb It’s not magic, but it IS transforming business
Did you know that parts of several Philippines business districts have turned into “mini-Australia” because there are such a large number of Australian businesses setting up their offshore teams there? In parts of Manila, Clark, and to a lesser extent Cebu, it is now very common to see Australian brands, Australian flags inside offices, and Australian managers delivering training to their staff.
Everywhere you turn is another Australian brand you recognise. Some are large corporates – banks, airlines, telcos and other big businesses which you would not be surprised to see offshore. But the new majority are actually small and medium enterprises. This reflects the offshore boom occurring in the SME sector due to how easy it has become to set up a team offshore. Some Australian businesses have had a team there for a decade or more, but for most it’s only happened in the last few years.
These many global-resourcing businesses have a few other things in common other than their Australian head offices. They all created an offshore team after seeing opportunities to improve their businesses and gain an edge over their competition. Although utilising lower cost labour is a key part of their strategies, I have never seen an Australian business which exploits workers in the Philippines. To the contrary, they pay proper “middle class” wages to skilled staff, and the strong Industrial Relations laws, means that there is no ethical compromise with offshoring here.
Similarly, there is no acceptance or attitude of reduced quality with shifting some business tasks offshore – quite the opposite in fact.
There are many innovative things you can do with your business when you have an offshore team to support your Australian team; going the extra mile in ways that you simply cannot afford to do in Australia. You can also afford to have additional roles which are dedicated to quality checking, or dedicated to post-sales customer support.
One of the things we demonstrate in our Strategy Tours is how many global-resourcing SME’s work at beating their competitors through improved quality – delighting their customers, and becoming industry leaders in their respective industries.
Meanwhile back in Australia, a large percentage of business owners are still stuck in the mindset that offshore equals lower quality. One of the most common comments I hear is “I’m not doing stuff offshore, my customers would hate that”.
The irony of course is that I could name ten of their competitors who are already running offshore teams, and who are growing their market-share in Australia because their customers love them, and their prices are better.
Your customers do not hate offshore staff; what they hate is bad service and poor communication. If your assumption is that global resourcing must result in bad service, then this blind spot will be the reason you soon start to lose customers to your competition who are finding innovative ways to wow their customers, whilst simultaneously undercutting you on price.
It should be said that many businesses still do a poor job with offshoring. Perhaps they listen to some generic advice which doesn’t suit their situation – what works for a 20 million dollar business probably wont work for a 1 million dollar business.
Or perhaps they just do not manage their offshore team properly. Some people seem to think Manila is covered in a layer of magic where staff can read minds and manage themselves to a high level of productivity.
It’s important to be realistic about offshoring and to use proven strategies. Those who follow all of Easy Offshore’s recommendations have a 100% success rate. EVERYTHING in our condensed content is there for a reason – usually because it was a source of frustration in my own businesses until I figured out the answers, or was significant to another business that I researched when compiling the material.
Global resourcing has changed the business world forever. Now is a great time to start to steer your business to take advantage of it; before you are forced to do it under pressure of reduced profits.
You can either be like me, and spend half a decade learning everything through trial and error and a LOT of research, or you can learn from those who have done it before, and implement our easy to follow blueprint. No other consultancy gives you structured implementation, as much consulting as required, and vital insights into how your industry is implementing global-resourcing.
Do offshoring the hard way, or do it the Easy Offshore way.