Have You Accounted for All of the Outsourcing Issues for Your Next Project?

Outsourced teams are no different than the ones you have in-house except that they are located in another country. Just like the issues facing your internal employees can be resolved, the same holds true for offshore personnel as well. Today we would like to share with you some of the biggest problems companies are grappling with as far as outsourcing is concerned and we will provide some practical solutions on how to fix them based on proven industry methods and experience.

Poor Internet Connections

If your offshore team is located on another continent, it is reasonable to expect some challenges in communication. However, these issues are not insurmountable. For example, one of the obstacles standing in the way of efficient communication is an unstable internet connection. This is a fairly common problem with popular outsourcing destinations such as India and the Philippines. In fact, according to a recent report, India’s fixed broadband speed is 35.98 Mbps and the Philippines are even worse in this regard at 23.80 Mbps. As you can imagine, with internet speeds this slow, it will be very difficult to talk via Zoom or Skype without the connection breaking up.

In Ukraine, not only are the internet speeds much faster, coming in at 51.83 Mbps, but Mindy Support is also helping its team members, who are currently working remotely, to get the fastest internet possible. When everybody returns back to the office, the connection will be better since we have a fiber-optic connection.

Clash of Cultures

Every country has its own culture that makes them unique and you will need to keep this in mind when deciding on your outsourcing destination. For example, there are some countries that have a hierarchical society and if you try to introduce more of a flat culture this could cause some attrition problems. People want to progress quickly in terms of money and responsibility and if they do not get this they will start leaving. This is something you will also need to keep in mind when setting metrics because if they are not hitting their numbers and consequently not advancing, this will also prompt them to leave.

Obviously, you will need to study the culture before deciding to outsource your operations to a certain country. As far as Ukraine is concerned, there are almost no cultural differences with clients located in the US or the EU. If some issues exist, everything can be ironed out via regular communication channels since all of the moral norms and values are very similar.

Education and the Willingness to Learn

While a lot of the tasks involving BPO can easily be taught, individual employees still need to have a willingness to learn. Sometimes, even a university degree is needed as is the case with medical data annotation. In Ukraine, it is not difficult to find a qualified team of medical professionals to annotate your data because there are 64 medical schools, 47 medical colleges, and their branches, 2 nursing institutes, 12 medical universities, 2 medical academies, 1 national pharmaceutical university and 3 academies of postgraduate education. In fact, there are 80,470 international students in Ukraine, 18,429 are from India, 8,233 from Morocco, and 5,470 are from Azerbaijan.

Ukrainian workers are very responsible, take ownership of everything they do and go beyond their job description to deliver results. If they see potential business opportunities or ways to improve existing processes, they will bring those up and come to the table ready to discuss their ideas.

Mindy Support is Aware of the Challenges and Works to Overcome Them

Over the course of the many years, we have been in business, we have encountered many different obstacles between us and the client. The most important thing is that we maintained active communication to determine the needs and wants of the client and then applied this in practice. We are agile enough to deal with unexpected issues such as the lockdown stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and we were able to keep up our regular activities remotely. This is one of the reasons that we gained trust of several Fortune 500 and GAFAM companies. We are also the largest BPO company in Eastern Europe.

Posted by Il’ya Dudkin