Tag Archives: Captive Center

Tips On Deciding To Offshore Or Outsource Operations

Businesses are made up of both benefits and risks, and offshoring outsource operations is not an exception. Caution is needed in acquiring outsourced services, and there is even a much greater risk in delving into offshore captive centers for your company. Before diving straight into action in getting offshored services, you might want to spend more time thinking on it again.

Choosing Between Setting Up an Offshore Captive Center and Outsourcing Services

Remember that there is a difference between setting up a captive center and acquiring outsourcing services. Having your own offshore captive center would require you to spend lots of time and money to build and set it up. This is also a strategy that is meant to be for long-term operations. If what you require, however, are services that will not be taking a long time to complete, such as creating a program or software for your company, then it is greatly recommended that you just get the services of an outsourcing personnel. There are pros and cons to both of these strategies. Be aware of them and think clearly which one will best serve your business.

Make Sure You Have Disaster-Recovery and Backup Plans

It’s always better to be safe than sorry. That’s why whenever you venture into something new in business, it’s always recommended to have a backup plan. Of course, there will still be risks in business. But if there is a chance that you can minimize mistakes and avoid any future disasters, then do so. Fortuitous and unstoppable events like natural disasters are also not unheard of to affect businesses when they happen. Storms, flooding, earthquakes and other natural calamities should be prepared for. This is especially true when your offshore captive center will be set up in the Asia-Pacific region where typhoons and natural disasters have been known to occur.

Tips On Setting Up and Managing Your Offshore Captive Center

So you and your company decided to put up an offshore captive center in another country. The research that led to this proposal (that led to its approval) would have told you that you will have to exert more effort and put in more time in order to properly manage you captive center. Here are a couple of tips that can help:

Be Patient In Setting Up Your Offshore Captive Center

With less costs and big savings as a purpose for companies to set up their own captive centers, it sometimes flies out of their minds that setting up a captive still needs sufficient resources (including financial resources) and time to be finally completed. One thing that every businessman should bear in mind always is that if you do not want to waste any more time and any more money on expanding your business, you better do it right. And in order to do it right, you shouldn’t hurry the processes in building your offshore captive center.

Participate Actively In the Negotiations

Legal counsel in the negotiations for your offshoring venture is important. But so is your participation as the owner and leader of the negotiations. As the leader in the offshoring project, it should be you who should lead the negotiations, and the lawyers and the advisory team should stand by as support. If you want your offshoring project to proceed as smoothly and as speedily as possible, it’s better to participate in the negotiations and the processes as much as possible.

SEO of Offshore Captive Centers, Part 1: S For Strategize

Business models of offshore captive centers have their own SEO when venturing into this line of business. This process is practically the basis of companies when they set up their own offshore centers on foreign countries like India and the Philippines (two of the leading Asian countries when it comes to outsourcing and offshore staffing). SEO means “Strategize, Establish, and Operate.” In this article, we will discuss the first phase of SEO, which is to strategize when starting your offshore captive center.

In making your strategy for putting up your company’s offshore business, you first have to consider if this plan is the best move for your company. There are companies that have not turned to offshore businesses because they thought that it would not be a feasible move on their part. Make it a point to go over the pros and cons of putting up an offshore staff before you venture out or your own offshore captive center. When you do make the decision, then the first step you have to make is to plan out and strategize.

Part of the strategy in setting up your company’s offshore captive center is selecting the right country and city for the operations. India is one of the top countries for offshore businesses, but other Asian countries, most especially the Philippines, is also gaining a reputation in this industry. In choosing a location, it would be wise to study the country’s economic growth (especially pertaining to the telecommunications industry) and the resources available to the company (especially the manpower and competence of the offshore staff).

A Closer Look at the SEO of Offshore Captive Centers

You may have heard of SEO, and what it generally means to online businesses. For offshore captive centers, however, SEO does not generally mean search engine optimization and online business promotion. For them, SEO refers to the three high level phases in establishing the business of a captive center. Putting it more clearly, SEO is elaborated as “Strategize, Establish, and Operate.” This is practically the basis that companies use to build and grow their offshore captive center.

S for Strategize

You can relate this process to making any ordinary business plan. The priority here is whether or not an offshore staffing will be beneficial to the parent company and the formulation of the business strategy when it is proved that an offshore captive center would prove profitable for the business. In this phase of strategizing, the phrase “location, location, location” still rings significantly true. A significant part of your strategy will be affected by the country and city that you select as the place for your captive center. You have to consider the country’s economic status and its stance regarding foreign investors. You also have to consider the country’s resources (manpower, equipment, etc.) that you can use for your business.

The Trends of Captive Center Outsourcing

Companies utilizing Captive Center Outsourcing has grown exponentially.

A survey made by Infosys on companies having outsourced captive centers states that an increasing number of Fortune 500 companies have started using captive centers as part of their business strategy in recent years. Many of these companies have even started utilizing captive centers as far back as more than 10 years ago when captive center outsourcing wasn’t that well known.

These companies come from varied industries ranging from IT, Telecommunications, Retail, Financial services and Software as some of the examples. Companies have exercised almost absolute control on these centers. This may have been because at that time, the technology of countries where captive centers were established weren’t at par with the parent companies from the US and Europe.