Small Business Outsourcing - Overcoming Cultural Differences

More than 50% of businesses have reported that cultural differences are the top most problem they face when outsourcing their projects to offshore locations. You cannot effort stop outsourcing for this problem, as today the international business resembles a global village where offices are no longer restricted by geographical boundaries. You must try hard to overcome these tiny problems.

It is possible for companies to work together for mutual benefit and this is the very basis of outsourcing. However Coupled with bad management, cultural differences can be disastrous for an outsourcing project; but not if small businesses take concrete steps to overcome the cultural differences that exist.

Following are the general cultural issues small business may face while working with outsource service providers.

Communication Issues

Communication may be hampered due to cultural differences, for instance people in US and other western countries may say "yes" to confirm a contract while outsource providers from India may say "yes" to acknowledge that they had understood the client's point of view, even if they didn't agree with it. Research studies have shown that inefficient communication result in almost 10% increase in project time. The advances in Internet and other communication make it possible for people across the globe to be in contact for most of their working day. Some BPO providers also work night shifts to ensure that they are working in real time with their clients across the continents. Furthermore if required on site visits may be organized to facilitate better communication and interaction.

Training

In a typical BPO project, small businesses may need to change its internal working process to accommodate the external outsource service provider. It is necessary for both small businesses and the outsource service provider to train their employees to understand the changes in their business processes so that both teams can have a realistic expectation from each other. In most cases the training can be accommodated remotely using latest tools and technologies.

Service Provider communication

It is important to encourage the service provider to speak up freely and voice their opinions. BPO vendors from India for instance have a tendency of agreeing easily to the proposals made by the small businesses and may not give a realistic view of the situation and thus the small businesses may want to take this into consideration and ask for practical and realistic deadlines that can be met under normal circumstances.

Superior-subordinate relationship

Generally service provider’s employees in India follow centralized decision structure; they typically follow the decisions made by their supervisors without raising any questions about the decision. Employees in western countries have more decentralized decision structure where each employee will question the decisions made by their managers. Small businesses should take this issue in to consideration while coordinating the project plan between its own employees and with offshore service provider’s employees.

Data privacy and culture

There is a strong connection between culture and data privacy. In India their history is not concerned with privacy laws and regulations. Problems like Identity theft, stolen credit card numbers are not a major issue. So what small businesses considered invasion of privacy may not even be an issue with the outsource service provider. It is the responsibility of small businesses to consider this to make sure their business data is safe and secure with the outsource provider.

In the current growing global economy, cultural differences are fading out, as people move between continents. However, many cultural differences do exist among people living in different parts of the world. Knowing these differences and appreciating it, will let small businesses to have better relationship with their outsource service providers. This ultimately helps both the small business and the outsource service provider to achieve success in the outsourced projects.