Don’t want to outsource? Why not?

Ever been burnt by outsourcing? Take comfort in the fact you’re not alone!

We’ve all heard the horror stories – does low-cost service mean poor quality output? Is the service provider a crook or going to steal my ideas? Too much red tape swallowing up investment… the list goes on.

Even the big boys get burnt. In 2022, Qantas lost its appeal against a Federal Court decision that found the outsourcing of 1683 ground crew workers jobs during the pandemic was illegal.

While that may explain their extortionate airfares at the moment, tens of thousands of businesses outsource, and as of 2023, there are 34,785 Business Process Outsourcing businesses in Australia –that’s an increase of 2.9% from 2022.

Many of these include telcos, customer service centres, data companies and banks. The AFR reports Westpac maintains a long-term partnership with American IT giant Genpact to use 3000 Indian workers for transaction processing, and Telstra is believed to have 1500 Indian developers working on backend systems.

While India started as the traditional region to outsource, Staff in Vietnam are currently hot property, with architecture, engineering and homebuilders getting in on the act, outsourcing work including information management for BIM, construction documentation, delivery and digital renders, with great results.

So really, what have you got to lose?

Slowly slowly catch a monkey

While NASA might have won the gong for the ultimate in outsourcing when it sent a chimpanzee into space in 1961, you might not want to be as extreme.

If you’re not ready to dive straight in, start slowly and test the service on a smaller scale before fully committing. Begin with the chores you loathe or never quite get around to, and/or instead of outsourcing an entire department, maybe start with a pilot project that requires less upfront investment. Or outsource one or two full-time roles, or build a role, to test that model before committing to a team of people.

Communication is a two-way street

Experts say communication is key, especially when working with non-native English speakers. Frequent and consistent communication rules, and it’s a two-way process.

If in doubt, ask for an acknowledgement, and follow up verbal communication with a written record. If the answers come back sounding like Kendall Roy from Succession, chances are it’s been through Google Translate.

Poor business and customer experiences inevitably plant seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the effectiveness of outsourcing, quality control, skills and abilities of workers in other countries – but there ARE safer and less risky ways of dipping your toes in the outsourcing water.

Invest in them. Train them. Visit them. Inspire them

Mario Sumic, Drafting Manager at Marque, says working with Away Digital and its training has helped shape the business.

“The quality of draftspeople that we’re getting in the Vietnam team is astounding,” he explains.

“We have been mutually handling the necessary changes to our format, to our drawings and everything else, and evolving the system to the point where we get nothing but praise for all our suppliers, all our trades, all our engineers, and who to this day say the best set of drawings they’ve ever received.”

Anthony Hasam, Associate at i2C Architects, agrees. While the business was initially apprehensive about utilising an external team, they went for it, explaining, “once we went over there and visited, met the team, figured out they were real people, not just people at the end of the screen, everything just fell into place and it made us feel like that they were more part of the team, and I think they felt more part of our team as well.”

Read more testimonials here.

So what are you waiting for? If you’d like to learn more about outsourcing businesses in Australia, contact our experts today.