The 4 key principles to succeed an offshoring project

After 2 years of experience on Offshoring projects, there are 4 key principles that I can share with you. These principles should be applied in addressing the Change Management approach:

1. The Roles and Responsibilities regarding offshored team set up activities (trainings, ramp up, etc.) should be clearly defined as soon as the beginning of the project.

2. Since Change Management is a transversal stream, the Change Management approach and all Change Documents should include the whole business scope including Offshored business scope (even if a transition team is responsible for the offshored team set up and activities). For instance, the process presentation or Training documentation should cover the whole business process End to Ends (onshore & offshore).

3. To ensure the fluidity and efficiency of the new organization, it is essential that Change Management plan early as a key activity teambuilding between Onshore & Offshore.

4. When possible, planning a Pilot prior to actual Offshoring consists in offshoring a part of a process in the old system / old process and enables to reassure teams and empower them while creating collaboration between teams.

Image Flickr, Kaan Sezer
Thanks to Anne and Anna for their contribution to this post

Why do we need Change ? Have a look at this...

Offshoring gives multinational companies opportunities to create more values at lower costs; but what about Change Management ?

Offshoring gives multinational companies opportunities to create more values at lower costs. That means boost in productivity for the global economy – a bigger pie for everyone to share. But gains don’t flow automatically to the people it affects… Offshoring accelerate the pace of change in every society it affects.*

I am currently working on that kind of project. With the help of a strong team (Anne, Anna, Big thank you if you read this post), we have developed a methodology to mitigate the hardships of those who are impacted and ‘build bridges’ between teams and continents.

This the first post of a serie of 10 that will cover this topic. Let’s start by the beginning :

 Offshoring projects are projects aiming at offshoring a part or a whole business activity in another country . These projects have major impacts since they generally lead to :

• Change of business processes with new actors and business rules
• New organizations (to be aligned with processes),
• Change of skills of impacted populations,
• New resources offshored.

For Offshoring projects, the impacts on organizations, people and business are huge. Thus Change management is a key activity and a key enabler to ensure a smooth transition.

From a Human Resources perspective:
• Redeployment of resources,
• New offshore Teams Recruitment & Ramp up on business activities,
• Onshore teams transition to new skills/organization,
• Extended team management with possibly remote management,
• Multicultural differences.

From a Business Perspective:

• Continuity of Business activity,
• Fluidity and efficiency of processes,
• Support the development of analysis skills for onshore teams (usually identified as a key benefit in offshoring activities),
• Follow up KPIs and reach ROI.

The next post will cover the 4 Key principle for Change Management within offshoring projects.

* Offshoring, Understand the emerging Global Labor market- McKinsey Global Institute – Edited by Diana Farrell – Harvard Business school Press.
**Picture : Flickr, Andy Kaye, Ganesha
*** Thanks to Anne & Anna for their great contribution to this post.