03

May 2018

Offshoring is Bloody hard

Offshoring is Bloody hard

By: Odyssey Outsourcing
Tags: Autralian Compliance, Fixed offshore model, offshore worker

We spoke to an accounting firm and they were talking to us about their experience in the Philippines.

They were talking to the Odyssey as they were having a person going on maternity leave and wanted something initially temporary in place, but it might grow to be full time.

They’d hear about the Odyssey at a conference last year from someone who was using our service, and they googled and found us.

It was interesting, as they’d hired a worker out of the Philippines, and seemed reasonably happy with that person, so we were curious as to why they were talking to us.

As they said it was working well, but it was “bloody hard” to train them, and it took a couple of years to get where they were. It’s working well now, but the practitioner mentioned she “has a good one” and feels lucky with that staff member.

Part of the “success” was that they documented every part of the process, made lots of videos, fixed the process every time it went wrong, and streamlined the work. This enormous amount of effort was required to make it work.

However, even after two years, she was only able to send the bookkeeping, some BAS’s and cashflows, and hadn’t even moved into more complicated compliance work yet.

The practitioner now didn’t feel like she was going to be as lucky again with trying another offshore worker, and she just didn’t have the time or inclination to go through the 2 year training process.

At the same time, she was also worried about what would happen if her offshore worker decided to leave permanently, or temporarily on maternity. The documentation would go some way towards  alleviating the pain, but she wasn’t ready to go through it again.

The practitioner also mentioned that with the salary creep happening offshore, the initial excitement of offshoring was lessening as the market matured and became competitive.

Maybe some of the lustre is coming off the offshore workers, as the market matures and becomes highly competitive.

So hence the discussion with Odyssey, about our “ready to go” resources offerings.

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