Offshoring Localization and On-shoring the Communication

You're offshoring your localization or development work to China and saving lots of money. Upper management is delighted. Your localization dollars are going further than ever. The offshore partner's project managers are professional and responsive. It's everything you'd hoped it would be.

Almost.

There's a little something that feels strange on your conference calls and status meetings. The work is getting done - mostly - and the schedules met - mostly - but there are gaps here and there in the relationship. It feels as though, when there are misunderstandings, they seem to get resolved, but not in quite the way you expect. Sometimes their approach to solving a problem seems off the mark to you, even if it works out in the long run.

In short, you feel as though the communication could somehow be better. You can't quite describe what's amiss, but it nags at you.

Believe it or not, your partners in China may have the same impression.

This week I met with one of the U.S. representatives of a large Chinese offshore development company that offers, among other services, localization. Besides finding new customers, he's tasked with acting as the on-shore presence for existing customers.

"There are subtle ways in which our managers and developers don't quite connect with some clients," he told me, "and it's not just because of the language barrier. I look at it as two layers of cultural difference: first, there's the east-west difference, then there's the cultural shift the client undergoes when product structure changes to the offshore model. In other words, it's strange enough that an outsider is now responsible for large portions of your product or service, and even stranger because that outsider is somebody with a completely different kind of life and world-view from yours."

This is a novel role. He's not the project manager, moving files back and forth and matching jobs to translators. Nor is he the account manager, working out contract details and managing payment schedules. He's the communication manager, or the relationship manager, helping to fill in the almost undefinable gaps that sometimes prevent clients from really clicking with their offshore partner. In fact, the company hired him to place his localization expertise and customer skills on this side of the Pacific, within a couple of time zones of its key clients.

"So I spend a lot of my time just listening, "he continued. "I'm on conference calls, I'm visiting client sites, and I'm getting face-time with our clients and our staff, picking up on the subtle things that we can deal with now, so that they don't blow up later on."

Whether they choose to believe it or not, most people who are offshoring work to China (and India and Romania and Lebanon and...) know that those countries will get it right sooner or later. In fact, it will take fewer years for them to get it right than it did for us to get it right.

A client-side relationship manager will play an important role in getting it right, and the position will become mainstream before long. The opportunity for both vendor and client is ripe, and the benefits are long-lasting.

If you learned something from this post, have a look this related one: "Making Sense of Outsourcing"