If you run a small to medium enterprise and need someone to take care of your IT, whether it is just for you and your staff or for your customer base as well (for instance if you are a software company), then you have probably considered outsourcing the work to a third party company. This is usually a better idea for smaller firms than having somebody, or a whole team, in house, because it gives you better support and you don’t need to have one or more people on your payroll just to deal with occasional tasks or issues.
Engaging a third party company is one thing, however you have a couple of options when it comes to doing this. Do you go with a company based in the USA, or do you go for an offshore option?
What Does Offshoring Involve?
An offshore model means you will have people in another country taking care of your IT needs. When people talk about offshoring, India is the place that usually springs to mind, however there are many countries with companies that offer offshored IT support, for example countries in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. There is also the option of ‘near shoring’, which is similar to offshoring however you will be dealing with a company in Central America – usually Mexico.
When you work with an offshore or near shore company, they commit to a contract of service with you that will state how quickly they have to respond to issues or when they will carry out routine tasks, and will also lay out the level of response they have to give (for example dealing with IT support issues by phone versus email), and how they will report to you.
Usually these terms and service level agreements will include some provisions for them being in the office during your business hours, so you don’t have to worry about time zone issues.
Should Your Company Offshore or Not?
Most people’s concerns around offshoring or even near shoring are around language difficulties. Certainly, there is geographical distance and the inability to meet face to face to discuss your IT services too, however you’d have that anyway if your business is in Manhattan and your IT support is in Phoenix.
While everybody in a client facing role in an offshore or near shore company has to be able to speak fluent or near perfect English, accents can make communication difficult for some people and this can lead to a sense of mistrust, because people can feel like their problems and questions aren’t being understood. Others don’t like the idea of sending money and jobs that could be part of our economy overseas.
Offshoring is now a very mature model, and has worked very well for a lot of businesses, granting them the service they need at a lower cost than using US resources. However, if you are using the service to represent you to your own customers, it may be more important to you to be represented as a US company than to make these savings, and in this case offshoring may not sit well with your brand.
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Today’s author, Daniel Nector, is an avid reader and part time blogger. He is currently working in the IT sector and he enjoys working with his company.