Offshore outsourcing

Just a couple of ideas regarding obstacles to offshore outsourcing eLearning projects. Not comprehensive by any stretch, merely a starting point…

Cultural differences: These differences may range from subtle to obvious. Some cultures shy away from any confrontation which means that your experts may not challenge you when you make a suggestion that is obviously incorrect or at the very least non-optimal. Cultural differences can also become a major issue if you are working with a team from a not native English speaking country. Even in cases where the project managers are English-speaking this may not be the case for the majority of the back office techies. This may impact the quality of your final product as spelling and grammatical errors may easily be missed.

Intellectual property protection: Some of the offshore suppliers are based in countries where the right to intellectual property is not very well enforced or understood. You could very well end up with a situation where your training is sold to another competitor.

Time difference: Are you able to work in the time zone where your vendor is based? For most eLearning project rapid feedback in real time is an added advantage that speeds up development time.

Transfer of content: How large is the files that you will be working with? Is it possible to transfer content to the web during the development phase or will CD’s be sent to and from the vendor. What is the cost/time involved with that?