How Important Is Transparency When Outsourcing?

By Fern Carlos

Transparency is crucial when outsourcing. Some of the main concerns about offshoring are distance, adequate control and management, and lack of face to face communication. Would there be adequate control and management of the remote staff? Are there ways to overcome the geographical distance and establish effective communication between client and outsourced employees? How would you know if anything is getting done at the quality you expect? How would you know for sure if you are getting a good deal with your outsourcing service package?

Value for your money
The only way to make sure that you are getting value for money is if the outsourcing firm provides 100 % transparency.

The service provider should offer several good options to monitor your outsourced staff such as VOIP, biometrics, webcams and IP cameras, and IM. Choose the option that suits your company best. Do you think that webcams can better monitor and guide your outsourced employees? Do you have the technology onshore to manage your staff using webcams? Or would other options be more viable?

There should be operational transparency if you want to make sure that employees are working toward producing your expected outputs. Is there a way for you to have a look inside the service provider's operations? Whether through webcams or through a site visit, you should have a chance to have a better idea of how your tasks will be handled by your offshore team. Of course, it's always better to have the option of working with your team on site from time to time and you should explore this option with your service provider. But the right technology, monitoring system, and scheduling should be enough to help you effectively manage your offshore employees.

Keeping you updated and informed
Aside from operational transparency, there should be management transparency. There should be easy and direct communication with the manager or team supervisor and the various team leaders of the support departments involved in your outsourced task as well as the outsourced firm's top executives.

Do you feel that a weekly status update is a good way to keep you in the loop? Or would a daily status report suit your task monitoring requirements better? The manager or management team of your outsourced staff should also be able to send you the reports you require. That can also include attendance logs for your outsourced employees and other HR related issues.

Is there a specific attendance monitoring system that you have in mind? Some companies are fine with start and end of shift emails from their employees. But others, because of the nature of the tasks that they are outsourcing, prefer a fingerprint-scanning time clock to make sure that employees are showing up for work and putting in the time needed to get the job done. Stricter attendance monitoring or not, it's better to go for a service provider that has a fingerprint scanning time clock, in case there are tasks along the way that you later realize you can better monitor using a stricter attendance system.

Pricing is another aspect where transparency is crucial. There should be clear and fixed mark-ups for overhead costs. Overhead costs should be specified. There should also be options for salary negotiation and there should be a pricing structure that allows you to fully manage costs and manage expenses more effectively.

To learn more about offshoring and outsourcing services in the Philippines, visit us at http://www.sourcefit.com.

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