The Dao of Outsourcing

As the global economy slows, many business software companies are seeing fewer sales opportunities as businesses cut software budgets and delay purchases.  Despite the current economic climate, there is still a large and growing market for business software in China.  An increasing number of US software companies are focusing on China market entry strategies and leveraging the knowledge of Chinese software outsourcing companies to aid with China market entry.

A recent study sponsored by Dextrys titled Marketing Business Software in China discusses the Chinese market for US business software.  The key findings from the study are: Read the rest of this entry »

Traditionally outsourcing vendors place coordinators on the customer site to facilitate communication with the offshore team.   This article discusses a different approach to coordinating offshore outsourcing projects where the client places a coordinator on the outsourcing vendor site to manage the offshore project.

I recently read a good blog post on Pragmatic Outsourcing titled The Myth of the Onsite Coordinator. Often offshore software outsourcing vendors place employees on the client site as part of the offshore engagement.  As Nick Krym mentions in his blog post, there are disadvantages to having an onsite offshore coordinator, the main being cost to the client.  An alternative approach that can be more effective is for the client to place an employee on the outsourcing supplier site.

Although an offshore coordinator could be employed by the outsourcing vendor or client, for the purpose of this post when I refer to “offshore onsite coordinator”, I mean a client employee or contractor managing the outsourcing initiative offshore.  This offshore onsite coordinator is responsible for managing the communication and coordination between the client and the vendor and may also be responsible for managing the vendor.

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