Soft Skills

Offshoring management experts

Professionals who are skilled in offshoring management are in great demand, observes Mohan Babu.

Project managers, especially in the IT and business process management verticals, are aware of the need to enable offshore outsourcing—offshoring. The trend is gaining importance as business leaders and executives are getting into offshoring. The drive to acquire offshoring skills continues from the top-down and bottom-up. At the top of the pyramid, organisations are increasingly looking for managers skilled at handling offshoring initiatives and projects, while at the individual level, project managers are looking towards acquiring skills that can help market themselves in a changing landscape. Here is an example of an online advertisement from an organisation looking for offshoring project managers.

Outsourcing project managers wanted

Skills: Project management, programme management, consulting, modelling, system analysis, lifecycle development and security.

Job description: Work as a leader with the IT strategic sourcing team to provide clients with consulting services relating to organisational transformation. Manage functions such as providing strategies, solutions and support based on IT project management experience and knowledge of IT outsource modelling. Oversee the proposal process, and provide assessments on acquisitions as it relates to company strategic plans. Maintain responsibility for providing functional, technical and business expertise needed to solve complex and strategic client problems. Develop intellectual capital and new service offerings, and support the growth and management of the business. Serve as a recognised leader in the team, and act as a role model for the firm’s core values. Develop staff and executive people programmes across the team, and maintain client relationships. Manage business systems, including rate management, assignment and contract management.

This advertisement indicates the profiles of offshoring managers that organisations are looking for, and the roles and people required to manage work onsite and offshore, and from the ‘buy side’ and ‘sell side.’

Some important roles and responsibilities that may evolve during the execution and delivery of offshored projects are onsite roles and offshore roles.

The onsite roles typically include resident project managers, onsite co-ordinators, and engagement managers, responsible for onsite-offshore co-ordination. Offshore roles include those required for delivery and life-cycle management, including people focussed on application development.

The buy and sell side extends the traditional contractor and vendor relationship.

Onsite roles

Onsite coordination: Service companies that execute offshore projects generally designate one or more onsite-coordinators to manage client-facing activities. These individuals act as a liaison between the client’s management and technologists, and the offshore team.

The client or onsite department may also designate co-ordinators or supervisors from among its line-management to take ownership of specific projects or delivery initiatives.

Onsite account management: Onsite account managers take the responsibility of managing multiple projects for the client, acting as a single point of contact for all escalations of project issues. They also manage the billing, financial and other contractual issues. At the client’s end, the account management may include billing and other administrative activities.

Offshore roles

Offshore delivery management: Delivery managers are responsible for co-ordinating with onsite account managers to ensure that project teams deliver the required outputs adhering to organisational standards and client requirements. Delivery management acquires greater

significance in case of large accounts or at clients where the vendor is executing multiple projects; offshore project managers may also take on delivery management roles in some cases.

Programme and project management: Offshore project managers take the bottom-line responsibility of ensuring successful execution of projects. The term ‘programme management’—though sometimes interchangeably used with project management—is generally used to denote the existence of larger projects managed by multiple managers.

To address the demand for training and enablement of offshoring managers, an increasing number of ‘Level 101’ training and courses have emerged (refer table). These attempt to strengthen the existing training programmes and focus on business management, programme and project management, along with an emphasis on the softer side, including cross-cultural communication and nuances of managing across time and space boundaries.

Global managers who draw inputs from various sources, including general project management references, books and literature are increasingly looking towards such ‘Level 101’ trainings to supplement their knowledge. As offshore outsourcing of technology projects increase in size and complexity, training programmes are expected to gain prominence.

The author is a Senior Manager with an IT major and the author of ‘Offshoring IT Services : A Framework for Managing Outsourced Projects’.

E-mail: mohan@garamchai.com