Onshore, Offshore and Bots

Scripture Proverbs 21:15: “The plans of the diligent certainly lead to profit but anyone who is reckless certainly becomes poor.” 

This week we’re talking about your operations and how to execute the value your business provides. For several reasons here in 2022 (tight job market, hyper-competitive industries, digital transformation, etc) most companies are already working towards offshoring and/or some level of automation. So wherever you are on your journey, we’re here to help you think through some of the key issues on the topic as it pertains to leading your company and executing your strategy. 

In terms of our scripture this week, this reminds us of the importance of thoughtful planning – in other words, you don’t offshore or implement automation just because you read this article, your competitors are doing it or it sounds like a good idea. You need to carefully develop your strategy, ways you will differentiate and consider how you will establish a competitive edge before offshoring or automating. 

Once you are confident in your strategy, consider your people, processes and technology required to deliver value. As most business leaders are aware, people are usually what allow you to differentiate but not everyone provides value to the same degree. Begin by considering the people and the value they provide in the context of your strategy and business value by doing some value mapping with your customer as the focal point of the effort. 

Next, indicate on your current state value maps, the role which people play, the processes they use to deliver the value and the technology which supports the processes. Start mapping considerations of how you might break apart or piece together different components of the role played by the person or how each step in the process might be executed differently. 

This will allow you to consider the opportunities for offshoring and automation. If you have not started yet, consider applying these approaches to your back office and/or administrative processes which are farthest from the customer. This will allow you and your organization to get used to these new solutions with much less risk to your customer.  Then, start moving the support from offshore resources and/or automation closer and closer to customer journeys and value streams as you become familiar with the kind of ways they might help your business. 

We hope this summary helps inspire some creative ways to deliver value to your customers and potentially opens doors to new revenue and growth which you’ve been searching for but not been able to find yet. 

What are some ways The Consultant and The Coach help their clients with offshoring and automation? 

The Consultant

• Work with a leadership team to develop or renew their strategy
• Research and develop market requirements, product market fit, and go-to-market strategy recommendations for new products/services or even verifying current ones have not shifted significantly during the pandemic
• Assess and recommend opportunities to improve productivity of your team by moving specific, simple processes, tasks or functions to offshore or automated resources

The Coach

• Develop with a CEO their offshoring strategy as Erik has done this with his business and now helps other access offshore talent
• Coach the executive team on their leadership and how to manage change required of teams who will be very nervous about passing off parts of their work to offshore team members and/or automation