To meet these challenges and realise their ambitious growth goals, Christopher and Charles decided to structure their teams differently so that all managers were given the opportunity to be supported by extra capacity in Romania.
Their starting point for their offshoring journey was a pilot of 4 data analysts, a role that had become increasingly expensive and difficult to retain in London. “We saw a 30% increase in productivity within the first 4 weeks,” says Charles. “The work ethic, education and experience of the Romanian team was superb.”
“We had discovered Iasi, Romania’s second-largest city, a well-established offshore location with a deep, liquid talent pool already serving many of the world’s largest corporations such as Amazon, IBM, Deloitte and Siemens.” With 12 universities (6 technical), it was an ideal location to source highly educated, multi-lingual talent with an outstanding work ethic.
Once one senior manager had demonstrated the benefits from employing Romanian talent, other managers began to think differently, adding offshore staff to their own scaling plans. Now the Romanian team was proven we grew at a rate of 10 to 16 staff per year.
At no point did this decrease the size of the UK team. In fact, it was the opposite, the significant cost savings allowed them to invest in more strategic roles in the UK. “Our offshoring model became like a perfect jet engine. Once it got going, and the more fuel you put in, the faster it went.”
This article is part two of a six-part series. Next we will look at the benefits of offshoring vs outsourcing when setting up a technology team.
In case you missed the previous posts, here they are:
How a CEO delivered £21m of value and an exit to Accenture by building offshore teams – Part 1 of 6
Building a World-Class Technology Team: The Offshoring vs Outsourcing Dilemma - Part 3 of 6