There are lots of reasons to use technology in outsourcing these days. You may want to improve communication between your in-house and offshore teams, monitor activities of outsourced personnel, or organize customer data in ways that are both easily accessible and secure.

Team communication is an important part of any outsourcing strategy. Without it, efficiency breaks down and projects become more costly.

Offshore and in-house teams need to stay in close communication and feel as if they are one unit working for one company. In the past, I have worked with companies whose employees disliked interfacing with an offshore presence due to communication breakdowns. Offshore employees were not completing tasks at the same rate or the same quality that in-house were able to and it caused problems. This lead to a resentment of offshore work and general feeling of dread from employees whenever something was sent to their overseas counterparts.

We were able to correct this by creating small teams offshore led by an in-house supervisor. Soon enough, work was being scrutinized more closely leading to a drop in error rates and better documentation of completed tasks. It was very important to have a “feel” of working in the same office. To achieve this we used Skype, a free VOIP and IM software. If you have a webcam, you can use the video conferencing features as well. Our supervisors were in real time communication with the personnel actually doing the tasks so questions and corrections were easy to do. No more waiting for tasks to be done incorrectly and then have to fix things later. Also, there was less resistance from in-house staff to use outsourcing as error rates dropped.

Sometimes IM or voice communication is not enough. You need to actually show someone how to do it. For this we used GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting allows you to share your desktop with a remote viewer or viewers, take control of their computer if necessary, interfaces directly with a Skype add-on and provides free conference call bridges as well.

Monitoring agents’ computers remotely is a necessary evil in the outsourcing world. You may feel like “Big Brother”, but you will thank yourself in the case of a security breach or other issue. It can also help improve efficiency as employees are less likely to wander through the internet. Reporting features can pick up when a particular agent is lagging on one step of a task.

There are numerous solutions to remotely monitoring computers. Things to keep in mind are ease of use, centralized reporting, and screen capture or recording. Two systems we at TryBPO.com like are SSPro and Activity Monitor. SSPro tends to be a little bit easier to use but is not as transparent on the client end. Activity Monitor is a full featured system with great reporting and recording functionality. It can be a little more difficult to setup, especially remotely.

There are many options when it comes to technology in outsouring and we encourage you to explore on your own and let us know what you’ve found. Make sure your technology plans are clear and have clear goals. Technology can significantly improve your offshoring efficiency and give you the peace of mine to know that the job is being done right.