Gear Up for Offshore Support
by Bill Rose, SSPA Founder and Executive Director

At our latest SSPA Conference @ San Diego, we created committees to create industry standards, and best practices and recommendations for improving your support operations. Those committees are continuing their work with plans to deliver findings at the SSPA Conference @ Savannah, Oct. 3-6.

One of our committees is focused on offshore outsourcing and is working hard to complete its mission to define best practices for managing and optimizing outsourcing functions and relationships. While that effort is ongoing, there is another issue we should explore with regards to offshore resources – setting up an offshore support organization of your own.

In talking with some members on the concept of offshore opportunities, the discussion often shifts to what it takes to set up an extended company support operation, particularly in India. There are unique challenges in setting up offshore operations, some the same as evaluating a third-party outsourced support provider, some very different. India is interesting to many companies because those companies have already set up product development engineers and application developers there. It makes sense for some companies to leverage that investment and add support operations.

When it comes to the offshore challenges, issues around people are typically a challenge whether it’s language or cultural issues, finding the right people (a problem everywhere), training and certification, local customs, and more. Other challenges include technology and infrastructure issues, and the actual total cost of ownership. These issues must be addressed to consistently provide the high-levels of support customers expect – and demand. Companies must have the infrastructure and processes in place to keep offshore offices up-to-date and informed. They must also have the technology and processes to maintain a timely exchange of knowledge. The quality of support must not waver. There’s also the challenge of managing that operation from thousands of miles away.

I’m sure these issues just scratch the surface of potential problems when companies move operations offshore. If you’ve set up an offshore support organization, or have considered what it takes to do so, I’d like to know what other issues exist. What am I missing? I think it’s an important issue and I want to put together a discussion group on the subject. This group could lead to an SSPA committee or even SSPA events in other countries that would explore the issues and challenges to creating a support group in another country. If you’re interested in participating, send me a message, bill.rose@thesspa.com.

Sincerely,


Bill Rose
SSPA Founder/Executive Director