Friday, August 22, 2008

Lessons from managing an offshore team

Offshoring has continued to be one of the most important ways through which companies reduce their costs. As per a report by Plunkett Research, outsourcing will become a $500 billion industry in 2008 (See the report on outsourcing trends here )

Establishing offshore operations is just one part of the equation. Successfully managing offshore operations becomes crucial after the inital setup is complete. Managing an offshore team presents its unique challenges. Below are some lessons I have learned from my experience:

Communicate effectively and excessively: When it comes to working in an onsite/offshore model, communication between onsite team and offshore team becomes more challenging and more important at the same time. The absence of face time makes it harder to build relationships and constantly be on the same page. Therefore, communicating using all channels such as conference calls, web based tools, emails, etc., reinforcing the important details, and communicating frequently works much better than just sending a customary email update.

Establish processes early on: The larger the offshore team grows, the more important it becomes to have procedures in place. Good coordination between the onsite and offshore teams is critical for smooth operations. Lack of processes can cause a lot confusion and wasted effort. Therefore, it is important to clearly establish the way things will work, who will own what and what to do in case a process breaks.

Keep the team motivated: Calls at odd hours, long working hours, and cultural differences are some of the challenges that offshore teams constantly face. If not managed carefully, they can lead to low morale, reduced productivity and even attrition. Recognizing the team and individual members, celebrating achievements, actively working to resolve issues, and communicating openly are some of the ways that are effective in keeping the team motivated.

Train the team well: While many teams are advocates of on-the-job training and learning by doing, in an offshore team, there is no substitute for training people upfront. An untrained team may make mistakes that get amplified because of being on the other side of the world, and prove to be very expensive. Pacifying an angry customer and doing all the damage control later may just not be worth the time, effort and costs. Mistakes will happen but sound training can definitely help eliminate some of them.

Always have a contingency plan: No matter how well planned things are, something will go wrong at some point. System outages, server crashes, data issues and other unforeseen events can cause disruption to work. Therefore, it is important to have a contingency plan in place to manage such events and minimize the damage. This is particularly important for an offshore team because when things go wrong during regular business hours, there is no way to warn the onsite counterparts because of the time difference.

In conclusion, managing an offshore team well can make all the difference between a successful and a failed offshore engagement.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

As someone who has managed offshore teams as well, I concur with the tips on managing offshore teams. I would also add a tip that it is important to set expectations on working hours prior to on-boarding. US managers can't assume that their offshore team members will be able to work US hours.