An EO Melbourne Virtual Masterclass Series
In its continued mission to provide meaningful learning events to its members, EO Melbourne recently held a Virtual Masterclass on the topic: “Everything You Need To Know About Offshoring.”
Our fast-changing world has enabled various businesses — large, medium and small –- to tap into a global talent pool of highly-skilled overseas-based workers. The virtual masterclass is very timely as more and more companies are looking into this option to expand their ventures and grow their businesses.
The panel speakers during this learning event were EO Members Nicholas Clift, Co-Founder of Otto IT, and David Fastuca, Co-Founder of Locomote, and were joined by Dean Godfrey, COO of BlueRock, one of the Strategic Alliance Partners of EO Melbourne. Moderating the discussion was Adam Morse, a former EO Melbourne Accelerator from 2014 to 2015, who is the founder of BlueRock Private Wealth and a member of the BlueRock leadership team.
The panellists shared their experiences on some of the benefits of offshoring, as well as the risks and challenges of outsourcing. The benefits are plentiful — reducing your wage bill, finding talent in time zones who can work while you sleep, and hiring roles that you may not be able to afford here in Australia.
However, while cost is one of the benefits that business owners look into originally, now, the discussion is no longer about saving money but getting the resources to do the work. More recently, businesses are looking into offshoring as a means of finding people who can do the work and having more resources to do the work.
The benefits, once you get it right, are having a lot of the more repetitive tasks in your organisation be done via an outsource team, therefore, the execution gives you the capacity to do more of those tasks. It also allows you to attract more or at higher levels of talent locally because what that means is when people come into your business, they’re actually doing higher levels of work or more complex work.
Offshoring also provides businesses with the opportunity to get in more experts who are well-rounded and hire someone who is a weapon in the space they work in, with other team members learning from them. “Outsourcing is like forming an army of specialists in different areas,” one of the panellists said. “It’s getting the right people with the right skills and the right culture that can get the job done.”
While the benefits are many, offshoring also comes with challenges, which include data security issues, confidentiality, compliance, loyalty, exchange rates, the balance of quality of work and cost, etc.
The speakers also shared their key learnings from their experiences with offshoring and outsourcing work to overseas-based team members. Among them are looking into different types of services you can tap into and structures that can work best for your business, making overseas members part of the team through online huddles and socials, starting things small and building them up, and dedicating a resource from your own team to nurture and manage the team overseas.
“Just do it and give it a shot” and “go to events like this one” were some of the additional tips that the panellists shared with the participants.
If you are interested to grow your business and develop as an entrepreneur, be part of EO Melbourne and learn from the various events and benefits being offered, where you get to continue your entrepreneurial journey with other like-minded business owners.
To join, visit https://www.eomelbourne.org/join or contact administrator@eomelbourne.org.