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Best Practices in Offshore Outsourcing: Strategies for Transition, Attrition, Communication, and Bridging the Cultural Gap

You're Offshoring. Now What?

Best Practices: Integrating a Multishore Strategy into your Global IT Organization

Comparison of Outsourced and Captive Solutions for Capturing Value from Offshoring

Outsourcing for Business Growth

Transformational Offshoring: Why and How?

Guidelines For IT Management: Planning for Offshore Outsourcing

Outsourcing to India: Key Legal and Tax Considerations for U.S. Financial Institutions

When companies decide to send work offshore, cost seems to be the primary focus determining where the work goes. Peter Maquera, President and COO of SPI Servisoft, the software services division of SPI Technologies, believes there's a second element to consider. He says you have to optimize the skills match, too.

For example, many call center companies use the Philippines for their US customer care work because "the Philippines is the most Americanized of the Asian countries." He points out Americans have exerted an influence on Philippine culture since the days of the Spanish-American War in 1898. "Filipinos are more familiar with American culture," which is why they can handle orders or problems well.

On the other hand, Maquera reports the Indians, with their cool British deportment, are much better at collection calls.

He says the best places to send routine data entry work are China and Viet Nam; the goal is to use workers who don't speak English. He says they encode faster because they don't take time reading the English words. "All they have to do is just recognize characters," he explains.

SPI just opened an office in Mexico to do transaction processing. Mexico has two other benefits: it's in the same time zone as many American customers and it's close enough to visit for due diligence work.

SPI specializes in healthcare, legal, and publishing global content outsourcing. Currently the firm digitalizes over 50 million pages of content per year for its buyers.

Publish Date: October 2004

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Copyright © 2004 - Everest Partners, L.P.

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