Offshoring for small enterprises - a waste of time? - Part II

Let me share in this blog post the key highlights on the survey about the (non-) sense of offshoring for small enterprises. The large majority of you are under the conviction that offshoring for small enterprises can be the next killer app, if we are able to crack the following 3 items:

• Give a much cheaper service with at least the same quality than how it is currently provided
• Get the services sold with a direct sales staff, which functionally knows what they are talking about, and
• Overcome the issue, that the total value of savings potential might not be high enough to make the services attractive.

Astonishingly we had 80 people, who contributed to the survey results. Most of the contributors have a professional background in management consultancy or work for a outsourcing service provider and come from a German speaking environment.

Hence 90% of smart people with Germanic roots are of the opinion, that offshoring for small enterprises is a smart idea. This is a clear result to continue what I have started (see at the bottom of this blog post the real reason why I will continue).

• You identified the key success criteria as high service quality, price of services at least 30% cheaper than onshore offerings, and the design of service packages with different useful service levels.

• From a go-to-market perspective most of you advised, that we have to sell our services via a direct sales force of experienced functional practicioners and hook up with value added resellers. Interesting enough no other sales and marketing channels did really convince for business-process-as-a-service.

• Concerns were expressed predominantly in the area of making the hassle of offshoring attractive to small companies, as the total value of savings might not be worth the additional headache. Furthermore, there is a concern that the service delivery might be too complex and that too many customers might be needed to break - even.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to fill out the survey and provided your expertise. In one of the next blog posts I might actually describe how we designed our services along the survey results.

And yes I have a good excuse for not posting a blog update. I have been celebrating the closure of my first customer, but now duty calls back to work, as we will start operations in January.