Enterprise Application Development Offshore Outsourcing Lessons Learned
Two-year experience of a Malaysian in a software offshore outsourcing project for a Scandinavian pension company.
Language
Issue : Majority of documents and information is not in English
Suggestions = Automatic software translation is a short-term stop-gap measure. For long-term, in-house expertise of one Scandinavian language is a must, e.g. Swedish which is similar with Norwegian.
Business knowledge
Issue : Asians know little of Scandinavian countries
Suggestions = Having a Scandinavian business subject expert in outsourcing team is preferred as it is more cost effective than sending Asian business analyst to client site.
Change management
Issue : Anytime, outsourcing create fear or uneasiness for client employees.
Suggestions = Best time for outsourcing is always when there is abundant of jobs in client country. In lean time only outsource projects which have little internal interests, e.g. no in-house expertise.
