5 Steps to Assess Offshore Support Risk

Companies across the globe have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in one way or another and outsourcing companies are no exception. In addition to protecting the health of their employees, they have to continue fulfilling the commitments they made to their clients. The crisis we are living through today is a lot more challenging than what we lived through in 2008 with the burst of the housing bubble and the financial crisis that followed since COVID-19 is affecting the lives of service providers, employees, and contractors. 

As the current crisis continues impacting everybody’s lives, outsourcing still remains a viable option for companies to lower their costs while increasing efficiency. As you start screening potential service providers, be sure to assess the following five risks before making your decision. 

1. Assess the State of their Human Resources

Even though a lot of countries have started relaxing lockdown restrictions, companies are still not able to bring everybody back to the office and work at full capacity. That’s why it is important to reach out to the service provider and ask them if they have the necessary amount of people available who can handle the needed volume of work. Since the current crisis has caught a lot of companies off guard, they did not have a plan on shifting everybody to remote work, which could cause potential service disruption. Be sure to ask the service provider how they have handled the current situation and are they able to guarantee that all of the data annotation and BPO services will be completed on time and at a high level. 

2. Assess the Telecommunication Infrastructure and Connectivity 

Since a large percentage of a company’s employees are working remotely, there needs to be a telecommunication infrastructure and high-speed internet connectivity that brings people together via technologies like Zoom and Slack. This is where you need to assess the internet speed of the country where the service provider is based in. For example, popular outsourcing destinations like India and the Philippines have internet speeds of 35.98 Mbps and 23.80 Mbps respectively. Ukraine on the other hand has much faster internet speeds at 51.83 Mbps. In fact, this is even faster than countries like Australia who only have 43.40. This means that Ukrainian employees will be able to download and upload documents faster and it will be easier to speak with them via Zoom without the connection freezing up. 

3. Assess the Data Privacy and Security Concerns 

One of the main concerns companies have about outsourcing, in general, is the security and privacy of their information. Even though service providers will be willing to sign NDA agreements, you still have to worry about both internal and external hacking attacks. Earlier this year, Comparitech released its cybersecurity rankings which showed that Ukraine made significant progress in this area. In fact, Ukraine came in at number 38 on the list, which is three times better than last year and ahead of other popular outsourcing destinations like China, the Philippines, and Romania. Ukrainian companies put a lot of emphasis on information security which is one of the biggest reasons both the BPO and IT outsourcing sectors have grown significantly in the last couple of years. 

4. Assess the Capability to Meet Deadlines 

One of the biggest reasons you decide to outsource some of your BPO and data annotation work is to help you become more efficient and meet deadlines. This means the service provider needs to be able to source and recruit qualified candidates quickly and there needs to be processed in a place that streamlines onboarding to help new team members hit the ground running. When you are meeting with the service provider, be sure to specify the needed timeframes and ask them how they plan to structure each phase of the project to meet those deadlines. An experienced service provider will always have a plane ready to present to you that was proven to be effective when actualizing previous projects. 

5. Assess the Quality of the Work the Perform 

Obviously, the quality of services provided is very important, but you also need to assess the service provider’s ability to provide top-quality work at the first time of asking. If you have to constantly redo certain tasks, this will accumulate into significant wasted resources and cause your project to be delayed. This is why you should ask the service provider about the QA processes they have in place. For example, a lot of data annotation tools offer the possibility of automating the QA process, which is very important since data annotation is very tedious and time-consuming work and it is very easy to make a mistake if an employee loses concentration. Ask the service provider about this and other QA processes they have in place so your work gets done on time, with the needed quality allowing you to trust this service provider with more important tasks. 

Mindy Support Offers Comprehensive BPO and Data Annotation Services

In this time of crisis, Mindy Support has continued to fulfill the commitments we made to our clients and team members. Such great teamwork has allowed us to keep growing during this difficult time and take on new challenges. If you are looking for data annotation or BPO support, contact Mindy Support today to see how we can help you. We are one of the largest BPO providers in Eastern Europe and can handle even the largest, most complex projects. 

Posted by Il’ya Dudkin