By Ben Trowbridge
CEO and Managing Partner, Alsbridge North America
See Bio

In order to effectively reduce costs, many companies are sending non-core functions offshore by either developing in-house Shared Service Centers or Outsourcing to a third party service provider. There are a variety of factors to consider when deciding whether to offshore functions; but there are just as many issues to take into account once you’ve made the decision.

It is imperative that the transition of work to the offshore location be accomplished in a cost effective and seamless fashion. Successfully doing so requires detailed planning, management and execution. Alsbridge has developed a detailed Migration Methodology with a tailored approach to minimize the impact on the organization, maintain service quality, and ensure the success of the transition and migration.

Managing a successful offshore migration involves four phases:

1. Team Formulation
2. Identifying Migration Roles and Activities
3. Project Launch
4. Steady State and Release

Using this approach will minimize the impact of the transition while maximizing the ultimate return including cost savings, increased capabilities and process quality.

Phase 1: Team Formulation

The first phase of the Migration Methodology is for the organization to establish and formulate teams with dedicated and effective resources. It is critical that these resources be knowledgeable and fully committed to the migration. While Migration Plans should be tailor-made for each organization, generally speaking the teams should include:

1. Current Business Owners - These are the current state subject matter experts of each service being migrated. These Business Owners are responsible for initiating the migration stream of work from the current state to the future offshore state, documenting the current processes and approving tactical migration plans.
   
   
2. New Site Build-Out Team - These resources represent critical segments of the organization and are responsible for the set up and build-out of the new center, facilitating the change and receiving and communicating processes and responsibilities to the new center. This team should be made up of representatives from five departments:
   • Human Resources
   • Information Technology
   • Communications
   • Legal & Tax
   • Facilities Management
     
     
3. The Work Migration Team - This team is responsible for facilitating the migration from the Business Owners to the New Site Build-Out Team. The team is responsible for managing the migration, performing quality assurance and risk management procedures and for establishing work-shadowing teams. The Work Migration Team should include resources from each of the major business process segments being migrated.

Phase 2: Identify Migration Roles and Activities

The teams that are formulated in Phase 1 will perform four types of activities, and in each activity they will need to fill three main Migration roles. These three main roles are defined as follows:

• Architecture & Coordination - The Business Owners will document the current “As-Is” process, data flows and division of work responsibilities. They will perform a detailed desk-level analysis and document all relevant tasks, technologies, workflows and functions. These Business Owners, along with the Work Migration Team, will construct the operating procedures and training documents used to execute the process in the new environment, and assess the interactions and dependencies of each of the services areas being transferred.
  
  
• Implementation & Acceptance - The New Site Build-Out Team will be responsible for implementing the recruitment, staffing and initial training for resources in the new center. They will also be responsible, along with the Work Migration Team, for implementing and stabilizing the business process activities being transferred and for optimizing the activities already transferred.
  
  
• Define & Release - The New Site Build-Out Team will be responsible for defining and coordinating the scope of all contractual elements of the agreement, including service level agreements and key performance indicators. Additionally, this team will develop quality assurance testing, work shadowing requirements, sign-off procedures, restructuring and redundancy requirements, as well as project status reporting and monitoring and the ultimate release to full processing, steady state, at the new center.
  
  

The four types of activities to be performed by the Migration Teams include:

1. Scope & Process – For each main role, the Migration Teams must confirm the scope of the project and assess the impact on the processes being transitioned.
   
   
2. People Matters - For each main role, the Migration Teams must ensure that Change Management efforts are in effect and that all human resource related activities are covered.
   
   
3. Organization & Service Management – For each main role, the Migration Teams must ensure that the organizational environment, including service definitions, quality assurance and all tax and legal aspects of the transition are addressed.
   
   
4. Technologies & Facilities 1.– For each main role, the Migration Teams must initially identify the offshore facilities to be used and then ensure the technical readiness of these facilities.
   
   

Phase 3: Project Launch

During this phase, a schedule for each process being transitioned is developed. A phased or waved approach is recommended if the migration affects numerous processes and employees. The transition of production work is determined by this schedule or timeline, and employs a closely managed team approach through the delivery phase. The transfer is initially monitored through quality assurance programs and is closely validated by both the current Business Owners and the New Site Build-Out Team. All parallel testing and work-shadowing is performed during this phase. This continues until the organization has achieved a comfort level regarding how the offshore work is being managed for all scheduled processes.

Phase 4: Steady State and Release

Once each process has reached steady state, the parallel testing and work-shadowing are discontinued and the new center initiates sole production of the processes. Regular management and reporting channels linking the new center and the organization’s project personnel are maintained. A regular review schedule is developed to enable the monitoring of any established service levels and to review and implement a continuous improvement quality philosophy.

The Migration Methodology that Alsbridge has developed is a proven approach that can be customized to suit individual situations and focus on a seamless transition, continuous performance improvements, and permanent lower processing costs.

About the Author

Ben is a proven leader with over 20 years of diversified global experience as Managing Partner, CEO and Senior Executive. In acknowledgment of his achievements Ben has been nominated for various Innovations in Outsourcing awards and is a recognized leader in all areas of IT and BPO sourcing. Prior to forming Alsbridge, Ben served as Managing Partner for Ernst & Young’s Outsourcing Services Business and Chief Operating Officer for their Global Outsourcing Business. He has created four dynamic Outsourcing organizations and led and supervised sourcing transactions ranging from $150 million to $2.2 billion.