First Time Offshoring Services
From tactical sub-contracting to strategic offshoring – how a global giant set new standards
The client is a giant in the networking and communications industry and in many ways, considered the bellwether of the technology world. They were experienced in sub-contracting and relied on a global partnership and channels network for sales. They had also established their own captive Engineering R&D center but were struggling to attract talent. The IT organization was keen to explore offshore both as a source of talent as well as cost arbitrage but hesitant to take the plunge.
We were one of the key suppliers at onsite in their Commerce group and the CIO picked this group to take the lead with a pilot offshoring engagement. A project manager with global experience in Commerce engagements was selected to work with the client leaders to define the offshore framework and the initial suite of applications to offshore. The consultant spent 3 months at the customer’s US premises to design from scratch the entire offshoring process beginning with a thorough portfolio analysis, knowledge management audit and business criticality mapping. The entire application portfolio was segmented on the criticality and ease of transition and 2 medium critical but visible applications were chosen to be offshored. In parallel, the governance structure with identified SLAs, reporting and review schedule was agreed upon. In the background the Master Service Agreement and individual SOWs were also re-defined to align with offshore dynamics.
This small pilot was a resounding success and within a year, support and maintenance of the complete portfolio of applications was offshored. This engagement was highlighted at the highest level within the client executive leadership and became the de facto template for other groups to leverage offshoring as a core strategy.
Process optimization and offshoring for a Retail leader
This project was done for a reputed UK-based retailer with international operations specializing in garments. Due to the inherent nature of global procurement, ordering and shipping, the entire governance and management of the processes was extremely complex and cumbersome. The returns and issue reporting system was also poorly designed leading to further dissatisfaction with their customers and partners. Their own resources were stretched out having to cover both core as well as ancillary processes.
A 3-phased approach was adopted with the consulting team first documenting the entire buying and allocation processes and objectively identifying the breaks and gaps in the flow. The entire process was then re-designed with a clear demarcation of core vs context and the concept of offshoring was introduced to the leadership. In the second phase, the support of the identified processes as well as the supporting IT applications were outsourced to offshore through a rigorous transition exercise. Once steady-state was achieved, the group of consultants focused on continuous process improvement and optimization with a strong flavor of automation.
Within 6 months, the entire ordering and merchandise allocation system was running independently from India delivering not just improved operating margins but also higher customer and channels satisfaction. This was the first even offshore engagement in the history of the organization and was a milestone in further offshoring of their IT and Business operations