If you have considered outsourcing or offshoring recently, you may have thought about the key success factors to ‘make it work’. In the past years, I have gained substantial experience in how to (and how not to) manage an offshore cooperation. Trying to summarize this knowledge in a simple format brought me to ‘the 5 P’s of offshoring’.

1. People

It all starts with the people in your offshore team. No matter how well you define your requirements, how solid the process of your supplier look: you need to have the right person doing the right things in your projects. In order to build a strong dedicated team that will produce results on the long term for you, it is crucial to have an influence on the selection of your team members. Ideally, you co-develop a recruitment process together with your supplier, where you can hold interviews, tests or any other screening method. (more…)