Outsourcing Top 5 Risks| Offshore Outsourcing Services

Posted on Sep 15, 2010 09:56:48 AM

Offshore Outsourcing Services

The offshore outsourcing market is growing at an annual rate of 20%-25%, without showing any signs of slowing down in the near future. At this juncture offshore outsourcing services may face initial difficulties, however most issues can be readily resolved and the various geopolitical shortcomings are deemed insignificant in the face of the economic benefits. Despite this, there are still risks that can hamper your services.

Listed below are some of them:

1.      Cost Reduction Expectation: The biggest risk faced by offshore call centers has nothing to do with outsourcing at all. The problem stems from the belief that the savings made per year would be comparable to the person-to-person savings. They tend to forget that there are several hidden parameters, which affect the pricing standard. In reality, any savings worth 20%-25% are good for the first year of offshore outsourcing.

2.      Data Security: While some businesses find the security measures put in place at call centers to be more robust than their own, the risk of data theft cannot be ruled out. This is why the security standards need to be properly checked before hiring a vendor.

3.      Loss of Business Knowledge: There are certain practices or technologies that are proprietary to the outsourcing company. This is why such companies should assess their business knowledge before deciding to outsource such services.

4.      Failure to Deliver: This is the most general of all the risks, as it comes with any service. Such failures in the offshore outsourcing market are an exception but the risk still exists.

5.      Culture: This is an inherent risk associated with offshore call center. However, the leading call centers have found a way to work around this by means of accent correction training that aims to improve the standard of spoken English of the call center employees.