Convincing clients for outsourcing their business offshore

Author: Biplab Saha

Convince them about your capabilities:

The question that a client asks before choosing an outsourcing vendor is that do they have the expertise & understanding of my nature of business?

You need to spend most of your time listening to the client to understand their business objectives, concerns and priorities. Try to learn as much as possible about their business functions - operations, resource management, areas of work, who their end customers are, etc. Then identify their need to outsource. Understand what are they currently investing on - R&D, technology maintenance, customer support – and their pain points like project over-runs, maintenance, legal issues, HR costs etc. Then come out with a solution that shows how you can address the pain areas, save costs and minimize risks.

Clients aren't interested in saving a little cash if they feel that they are exposing themselves to significant additional risk or hassle. You need to show them that while they will be able to enjoy the advantages, they can also trust you to minimize/eliminate the downside.

Strive to be the partner with whom the client can achieve a long-term partnership and minimize financial risk exposure. Comparing hard cost between ‘outsourcing’ v/s ‘staying in-house’ is inevitable, so build some soft-ROI during the process, including mitigation of risks, business continuity, opportunity cost, and so forth.

Counter their apprehensions (perceived or real) against offshoring:

Anyone who has looked at outsourcing (particularly offshoring) would have had a bad experience of some kind. Most of us have had a frustrating experience at some point dealing with outsourced customer care when calling our bank, telco or utility company.

Usual drawbacks that are associated with offshoring are

• Fear of loss of control over processes and performance
• Language/communication difficulties
• Deadline difficulties
• Productivity issues
• Quality issues
• Customer relationship issues
• Increased risk
• IP issues

There is no point in pretending these perceived drawbacks aren't out there – you have to convince customers that you can overcome these by providing evidence of how your organization handles these issues - use examples from previous engagements, or client testimonials to demonstrate successful transition & execution of offshore work by your company.

Closing the deal:

To clinch an offshoring deal, you will need to break up your proposal to a potential client in three parts:

Value Proposition - Why outsourcing to your company can deliver benefits over in-house alternatives.

Peer & Industry Comparison - What their peers and competitors in the same industry and some famous ones in the other industry are achieving through outsourcing. Explain how outsourcing has practically been increasing over the years - That companies are only too happy with the overall results … with more & more companies signing bigger & bigger contracts now.

Missed Opportunity - What will they miss out on if they do not outsource now. Explain how outsourcing will make their organization re-look at the ways it does business and at a strategic level, will help accelerate the growth of their company regardless of the specific objectives around cost savings and quality improvement.

About the Author:

Biplab Saha is an offshore outsourcing consultant and assists US based companies in the financial services & publishing business to identify, evaluate and sign up with suitable service providers in India. He is also a Partner at Business Atom, a business solutions firm that advises BPO service providers in India on developing marketing strategies and sales plans to tap the growing offshoring market. Biplab led the pioneering efforts in offshoring the US mortgage origination business to India and ran a successful BPO company in that space that serviced some big names in the mortgage refinance business like Wells Fargo and Allied Home Mortgage. He was till recently associated with the offshore publishing services business as the Senior Vice President of CyberMedia’s services division.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Convincing clients for outsourcing their business offshore