How Evora Global Saved 12 FTE With Multi-Hub Offshore Teams in Romania and India

Evora Global's offshore model runs on two teams doing different jobs in different places. We built Evora a data and operations team in Iași, Romania, and a software development team in Bengaluru, India. The Iași team took on work equivalent to 12 full-time employees across several of Evora's essential programmes and cut weeks from the effort of getting data to clients.

Evora provides sustainability consultancy and ESG software to the real estate sector, advising owners and fund managers on ESG performance and energy-efficient buildings. This is the story of how the engagement was shaped, why the work was split across two hubs, and what we would tell another consultancy facing the same pressure. You can also read the full Evora Global case study or watch Evora's team describe it.

The problem: a business growing faster than its structure

Evora Global had grown quickly, and the infrastructure of the business had not kept pace. Founder Chris Bennett described it like this:

"The business became like a leaning tower of Pisa. Instead of going straight up, it began to lean and the more we grew, the more we leaned."

Chris Bennett, Founder, Evora Global

The lean showed up in four places. Senior managers were being drawn down into the day-to-day running of the company. Consultants were spending too much of their capacity on operational, non-client-facing work, especially around data. The funds and capacity to deliver an expanding software development roadmap were limited. And competition for ESG talent in the UK was fierce, which left significant shortages of people to hire.

ESG work for real estate is data-heavy by nature. Owners and fund managers collect energy, emissions and building performance data for benchmarks such as the GRESB Real Estate Assessment, and the largest companies in the EU report under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive against the European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Every one of those obligations produces work that someone has to gather, check and serve up. When that someone is a senior consultant, the business pays consultant rates for data handling and the client waits longer for the advice.

How we approached it: consulting first, then a pilot

Evora's founder and management team came to us having heard how our founders built EnergyQuote JHA, an energy consulting business, with teams in Romania and India before selling it to Accenture. They wanted to know whether the same model would work for them.

We did not start with a headcount. We started with a consulting exercise across the whole of Evora's business, looking specifically at the pressure points in data management, project coordination and software development, and at what an offshore build would need to look like to scale those teams while reducing the risks that come with expansion. The plan we put to Evora ran in three steps.

Starting with a pilot matters more than it looks. It lets a client test the working relationship on real work before committing to scale, and it gives the offshore team time to learn the client's standards on a contained scope. Evora's COO, Robin Morris-Weston, described our Iași location as "full of very strong system-thinking capability", and pointed to the time zone and the working culture there as further reasons it fitted.

Who does what, and where

The two hubs do different jobs, on different working days, for reasons that follow from the work itself.

Read the Bengaluru row carefully, because the direction of the time difference is easy to get backwards. India is 4.5 hours ahead of the UK in British Summer Time and 5.5 hours ahead in winter, so a Bengaluru team has already worked several hours by the time a London office opens, and its standard day ends around the UK lunchtime. Work handed over at the end of the UK day is picked up before the UK starts the next morning. The live overlap falls in the UK morning. In our experience that suits development work planned ahead against a roadmap. It would not suit a team that UK colleagues need to reach at four in the afternoon, unless shifted hours are agreed.

Why two hubs rather than one

A single hub is simpler to manage, and for one function on one shift pattern it is usually the right answer. Evora's pressure points sat in two different functions, data and operations on one side and software development on the other, and we judged each against the hubs separately.

For the data and operational work, Evora's COO pointed to three things about Iași: very strong system-thinking capability, the time zone and the working culture. The time zone matters for data work in general. In our experience, questions about a dataset, corrections to a client's inputs and gaps in the readings come up during the UK working day, and a team that has already gone home slows every one of those loops. Romania is two hours ahead of the UK all year, so a standard 9 to 6 day in Iași runs from 7am to 4pm UK time and sits alongside most of a UK consultant's day.

For the software development side, we identified Bengaluru as the fit. Bengaluru is the largest engineering pool we recruit from and the one that goes furthest up the seniority curve, with senior developers, data engineers and system architects in volume. India is 4.5 hours ahead of the UK in British Summer Time and 5.5 hours ahead in winter, so a 9 to 6 day there runs from 4.30am to 1.30pm UK time in summer and 3.30am to 12.30pm in winter. In our experience that earlier day works well for development planned ahead against a roadmap, which rarely needs UK colleagues on hand all afternoon.

This is the same principle we apply in our advice on the best offshore location for a technology or MSP team and the best offshore location for a finance and accounting team: the working day decides how a team operates, the hardest role decides where you can staff it, and cost is the tiebreaker. In Evora's case we assessed data and operations and software development separately, and identified a different hub as the fit for each.

Two hubs only work if both are run as part of your business. Under the Embedded Offshore Team Model each team works in the client's systems, to the client's priorities, reporting into the client's managers, while we handle the employment, the workspace and the in-country support in each location. That is how Evora's data and development teams sit inside the same operating model, rather than as two outside suppliers to be coordinated.

What changed for Evora

The drain on Evora's consultants eased quickly once the Iași team was in place. Using the capability built there, Evora began to cut weeks from the effort of getting data to its clients, and the Romanian team took on the work of 12 full-time employees across several of its essential programmes.

The effect reached the bottom line directly. Evora's COO described it in his own words:

"Offshoring had a direct impact on our bottom line. Because of the capability we built in Romania around data services, it has enabled us to manage data so much more efficiently that meant we had a much lower unit cost for acquiring data, analysing it and serving it up."

Robin Morris-Weston, COO, Evora Global

Three changes followed from that.

Consultants back on client work. With the data handling moved to Iași, Evora's higher-value consultants could focus again on the advisory work clients pay them for.

Development capacity the roadmap needed. The Bengaluru team gave Evora capacity for its software development roadmap, which it had lacked the funds and people to deliver in the UK.

Growth without the lean. Evora continued to expand while delivering to its clients consistently and to a high standard. Our role throughout was strategic growth advisory to the whole business, running the offshoring process end to end, and acting as HR partner to hire and bring on board every new member of the offshore teams.

"I would say to other businesses who are thinking of offshoring start that conversation quickly as you will be amazed at the range and depth of capability you will be able to tap into to help your business scale effectively and faster."

Chris Bennett, Founder, Evora Global

Client data, hiring time and cost across the two hubs

Any consultancy weighing the same move will ask three practical questions. Here is how they play out for Iași and Bengaluru.

Hiring time. In both Iași and Bengaluru, hiring typically takes four to six weeks from starting the search to the candidate accepting the offer. We see the UK equivalent take six to twelve weeks or longer, which matters in a sector where the specialist talent is as contested as it is in ESG.

Cost. In our experience, labour cost savings typically run at 40 to 50% against Western European rates in Iași, and in Bengaluru salaries often run 40 to 70% below the UK, especially for mid-to-senior roles. The two ranges are measured on different bases, so they do not rank the hubs against each other. For Evora, the gains its leadership describes are a lower unit cost of data and consultant time released for higher-value work.

What we would tell another consultancy

Evora's experience matches what we see across professional services and consulting firms more widely. Four points carry across.

Start from the pressure points, not the org chart. The question is where senior time is going on work that does not need senior people. At Evora the answer was data. At Opinium Research, where we built a data processing team in Cape Town, it was the same, and the result was consultant time handed back to clients.

Pilot, then scale. A small first team on a contained scope proves the working relationship before you commit to more. Evora began with a pilot data team in Romania and expanded from there.

Match each function to a hub. Put work that needs live contact with your UK team where the working day overlaps, and work that runs on a plan where the talent pool is deepest. For energy and utilities firms, our guide to offshore data and analytics teams in energy and utilities goes further into the data side.

Start the conversation early. Chris Bennett's advice to other businesses was to start quickly. The consulting and planning stage is where the value of an offshore team is decided, and it is worth doing before the lean sets in.

Frequently asked questions

How did Evora Global's offshore team take on the work of 12 full-time employees?
We built Evora Global a data and operations team in Iași, Romania, which took on work equivalent to 12 full-time employees across several of Evora's essential programmes. The 12 FTE measures workload absorbed offshore, not a reduction in Evora's UK headcount. Moving that data work offshore took weeks off the effort of getting data to clients, lowered the unit cost of acquiring and analysing data, and freed Evora's consultants to focus on client advisory work.

Why did Evora Global use offshore teams in both Romania and India?
We matched each function to a hub. Data and operational work went to Iași, where Evora's COO pointed to strong system-thinking capability, the time zone and the working culture; Romania is two hours ahead of the UK all year, so a local 9 to 6 day runs from 7am to 4pm UK time. Software development went to Bengaluru, the largest engineering pool we recruit from.

Should a consultancy use one offshore hub or two?
For a single function on a single shift pattern, one hub is simpler and usually right. Two hubs make sense when functions have different needs, for example data work that needs live contact with UK consultants and development work that needs a deep engineering pool. Both teams should work inside your own systems and management, so they run as one operating model.

How long does it take to hire for an offshore data or software team?
In Iași and Bengaluru, hiring for a role typically takes four to six weeks from starting the search to the candidate accepting the offer. We see the UK equivalent take six to twelve weeks or longer. Notice periods and onboarding follow acceptance, so plan the start date around them. Starting with a small pilot team, as Evora did, lets the first hires begin on real work while the wider team is planned.

Can a UK consultancy give an offshore team access to client data?
Yes, with the transfer documented properly under UK GDPR. Romania is covered by UK adequacy regulations, so no International Data Transfer Agreement or transfer risk assessment is needed, although every other UK GDPR duty still applies. India needs an appropriate safeguard such as the International Data Transfer Agreement plus a transfer risk assessment. Take advice on your own data before anyone starts.

How much can an offshore data or development team save?
In our experience, labour cost savings typically run at 40 to 50% against Western European rates in Iași, and in Bengaluru salaries often run 40 to 70% below the UK, especially for mid-to-senior roles. For consultancies the larger gain is often consultant time: Evora's Iași team took on the work of 12 full-time employees.

Sources: ICO, International transfers: a guide; European Commission, Corporate sustainability reporting; EFRAG, Sustainability reporting; GRESB.