Beyond The Net
Outsourcing over Internet offers unique challenges
By Janine Warner
Lots of people are talking about the value of outsourcing these days, meaning hiring an outside company to do projects that you don't have the time or expertise to do within your own company.
With the advent of the Internet, outsourcing has become even easier and has led more companies to look for help overseas, where skilled labor is often cheaper.
But there are many challenges to working with people over the Net, especially if they are in another time zone, so I'm always on the lookout for smart ways to manage these kinds of relationships.
I found a great example recently at Univisión Communications, the largest Spanish TV network in the United States.
Mai Wah Cheung, vice president of Technology for Univisión Online, was faced with a challenging technical project when she was charged with the task of revamping the company's entire online development system. She had six months and a limited budget to accomplish the job, and she knew her internal staff couldn't do it alone.
She put out a call for bids and got responses from all over the world. The best bid came from a company in India, one that she had worked with before and knew did good work. But she was concerned that this mission-critical project would require close supervision. And she wanted to make sure that her own staff could maintain the project once it was finished.
''Offshore projects work best if you can really specify the project and don't expect lots of changes,'' she said. ``Online people change their minds frequently, and I knew we would have many people giving input. I wanted us to manage this project ourselves.''
So Cheung
came up with a compromise -- she accepted the bid from the
Indian company, but she had them send a team from Bangalore,
India, to Miami to do the work on site. They stayed for three
months. Even with the hotel and travel expenses, it was still
cost effective.
''They covered their own costs,'' she said. ``It was included
in their bid.''
Once the team from Bangalore finished its part of the work, Cheung used Intel for the rest of the development because she felt they had better skills in project management.
But it wasn't cost effective to have Intel send its staff to Miami. So, to keep control of that part of the project, she sent some of her staff to Intel's offices in California.
''Intel
had never had outside staff come in and work with them like
that before,'' she said.
Ultimately, the project involved more than 40 people, about
25 percent of them internal staff and 75 percent outsourced
workers. It was Cheung's creative management, the ability
to communicate with staff over the Internet, and physically
moving people around for different parts of the project that
made it a success.
These days, U.S. companies are outsourcing everything from human resources to call centers to technical development. It's a great way to save money and keep your own staff focused on what you do best, but too many people underestimate the management challenges.
If you're developing a project that you can clearly describe and one that won't require maintenance by your own staff, you may be able to simply send your requirements off through e-mail, or hold a few meetings, and be happy with the finished project.
Translation services are a good example. Send a document overseas, get the translation back, and you're done. But even in that case, you may be better served if the translation service has a local contact and someone you know you can find easily if the translation work gets complicated or you have tight deadlines.
If you are working on a project as complex as the one Cheung had to manage for Univisión, consider having outside staff come to work in your office or sending your own staff somewhere else so you have internal expertise when the outsourcing work is finished and you can manage the project more closely.
First publication, The Miami Herald, Mon, Feb. 11, 2002
