I'm planning to write several articles related to sales performance management outsourcing and offshoring. Let me first define what outsourcing and offshoring means.Outsourcing: This is when you subcontract the design and implementation of your compensation plans.
Offshoring: This is when you subcontract (typically parts of the implementation) to another country. India and China are well known IT offshoring destinations, but there are many others.
One of my first post on the blog was about in-house development versus outsourcing. Most SPM implementations I see follow one of these patterns:
Pattern 1:
An implementation partner is selected - this can be a vendor agnostic implementer, or the product vendor. As part of their submission, they propose the use of an offshore team to reduce the cost of their bid, or to be able to "go-live" more quickly.
Pattern 2:
An implementation partner is also selected. There are no upfront discussions about offshoring any work. The concept of an offshore team is brought up if the project falls behind schedule.
Upcoming Topics
The reality is that most vendors and consulting companies use offshore teams. I will write about the pros and cons of offshoring, the associated risks, the challenges it will add, the importance of communication strategies, and a few personal stories of managing offshore teams.
I will also write about which aspects of the implementation can be "offshored" more easily. The good news is that with an SPM implementation, once the design phase is completed, there are different way to "break-out" work in different components which are not on a critical-path to each other.
Finally I will answer several questions I have received on this topic. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send them to me.
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