Offshoring unfiltered: Insights from our live session

Before you set up an offshore team, you’re going to have a few questions you need answered. Of course, your specifics will probably be a little different, but the general issues will be the same. That’s why we got our COO and Co-founder, Deepak Arunachalam, to sit down with OJ Budak, our Senior Advisor, to answer some of the questions we hear every week and share their insights on what actually makes offshoring successful based on their experience setting up 130+ teams in the last 12 years. 

Here is a replay of their conversation, along with some written highlights from the meeting, so you can get the same insights. 

Topics discussed

Across 40 minutes, the following topics were all discussed:

If you don’t see a question you currently have, check our frequently asked questions page. 

Now, here are some of the top insights.

The real savings in offshoring aren’t lower salaries

Yes, lower salaries and overheads do bring cost savings, but in Deepak’s experience, there is a far greater cost saving: efficiency. 

A properly set up offshore team includes highly skilled employees who enjoy working for your company, and that setup results in the employees taking ownership of their work, and putting their energy and passion into their work. Plus, by sticking around, they know the company and product intimately and are able to work more efficiently. 

This results in substantial savings over frequent turnover and lower-performing teams, which are common in Western countries and outsourcing projects. 

If you’d like to see some examples of savings achieved through our model, check out this article. It provides 3 real examples of cost savings achieved by moving offshore to India. 

AI isn’t killing offshoring, it’s making it more efficient 

AI is the biggest disruption in software development. So it’s no surprise that people are reassessing offshoring in light of these new innovations. However, Deepak isn’t intimidated by these shifts. 

“At a high level, AI enables decision-makers to do more with less, to go further, and to augment what they can get from five engineers rather than fifty. In a world where the tools are more available, the value and demand for experienced, quality people, engineers who can rightfully and legitimately augment their output using AI, is only going to increase. 

For the last eleven years, all we have been doing is setting up small, strong teams of architects, leaders, and senior people with an average experience of around eight, nine, or ten years, which has given us a super strong network.”

Deepak also pointed to the widespread promotion and presence of these AI tools in India and our own internal application of AI for how these tools are commonplace and helping drive further efficiencies in Bangalore. Of course, this requires offshore companies to properly vet for the type of profiles who can leverage these tools effectively and responsibly.  

The clear signal that it’s time to go offshore

There are a whole host of indicators that it might be a good time to set up an offshore team, but Deepak pointed to one key indicator. 

“I always tell people, it’s time to offshore if everyone, including the decision-makers, has no bandwidth, is fully staffed, and cannot hire fast enough to move forward. If you or your senior team struggles to take time off due to increased pressure and there’s an overarching sense of being overworked, it’s likely a great time to consider going offshore.”

While this is the clearest sign, there may be other indicators that offshoring might help you achieve your strategic goals. 

Setting up an offshore team usually takes 40-50 days if…

Different companies will quote you different timelines for how quickly they can set up an offshore team. That’s because they follow different approaches to building offshore teams, and those approaches will affect the quality, integration and retention of the team. But there’s one other factor that has a huge effect on your timelines.

“It’s all about context. You could hire someone very quickly, but if you’re looking for very specific skills and want someone who’s going to truly integrate into your company, it will take longer. Then there are notice periods. We have ways of working around them, but it’s not uncommon for companies to wait two to three months before someone joins. 

So for us, on a greenfield project, we could probably start onboarding someone after forty,  forty-five days. But for super senior or niche skills, it’s more likely to be sixty to ninety.

So, if another company promises to get you set up in a few days or even hours, then you know it will be a temporary employee assigned from their bench and isn’t likely to stay long.  

Don’t make this common job description mistake 

One of the questions that OJ faces a lot relates to job descriptions. For a bit of context, at The Scalers, we use our knowledge of the local talent market to provide advice on what is possible in the market. This can lead to a bit of back and forth when preparing the make-up of the offshore team to ensure it best meets the goals and outcomes of the partner.

But there’s one issue that comes up the most often when Deepak looks at the job descriptions he’s presented with.

“The biggest and most repeated mistake I see is people creating a wish list instead of clearly defining the expected outcomes and explaining where the role fits into the organisation. Defining a core outcome for a role, rather than a non-interconnected wish list of ten things, is probably a great approach.”

If you follow this approach, then we can help guide you to a lean team that will help you deliver the outcomes you are after.  

Managing an offshore team is just like managing a remote one

It’s understandable to wonder what it’s actually like to manage an offshore team, especially if you’ve never run one before. Even worse, you might have worked with a badly run or an external outsourcing provider who gave you the wrong impression. 

But with a good offshoring provider, managing a remote team is very simple. 

“Let me ask you a question. How do you manage a remote team member? Do you interact with them as if they’re in Manchester, or do you approach the call differently because they’re in Bangalore? The answer is: treat your remote team as an extension of yourself. As long as they have the right tools to deliver on time, their location shouldn’t matter.”

Yes, there are a few changes that companies have to make, like moving standups or arranging calls around overlapping hours. For companies in the UK, Europe, and Australia, however, this isn’t a big deal as they usually have half a day of overlapping hours. 

So while many tech leaders might feel uncertain about how it will actually look working with an offshore team, the reality is very simple. 

Don’t miss out on our next live session

We have more live sessions coming very soon, so make sure you follow us on LinkedIn to hear when our next ones are coming. 

But if you have other questions about offshoring, check out our free guide on offshoring that actually works, or get in touch with our advisory team directly. They’ll be happy to answer any and all questions you have.