Is this a familiar story at your agency? Things are ticking along nicely, you’ve built a good team who buy into your corporate culture, produce good work and keep a varied client base coming back. Things get busy, but your team is committed and put in the hours to hit deadlines.
Then a big win, or a large-scale, multichannel project comes in that you simply don’t have the capacity to take on alongside your existing workload. Suddenly you find yourself urgently searching for expensive freelancers who don’t know your clients, even paying third parties to produce work you could do yourselves if you had a larger team.
If you’re not offshoring, it can be difficult and expensive to scale up and down quickly to meet sudden fluctuations in workload. That makes it harder to compete, particularly with the larger groups, some of which have worldwide studios and talent to call on. Offshoring has proved its effectiveness and value, and it’s a trend that isn’t going anywhere. So how do you go about getting the offshoring model to work for your agency?
Big brands, and agencies, are offshoring already
Not every agency has the investment capital, or even the desire, to build their own global network of studios and talent. But that doesn’t stop them using the offshoring model successfully through collaborations with strategic partners who already have the talent and infrastructure in place.
Similarly, globally recognised brands are successfully using talent worldwide for the production of marketing services, and almost half the respondents to an Amnet/TKM survey revealed they’ve been offshoring creative production for five years already. Among the clients of Smartshoring®, for example, are instantly recognisable and world-leading names in beauty, social media, beverages and online learning.
So how do I get it right?
The first, and most obvious tip, is to ensure you know how the offshoring model you’re considering works. Smartshoring®, for example, blends Chennai-based and in-country teams with the right talent for the project wherever it’s found worldwide, in an Agency Partner Model, with specific rates.
Secondly, know why you’re doing it. Run the numbers and don’t do it merely because your competitors are. Offshoring creative production should be done because it’s the right model for your organisation and it works, not just because ‘everybody else is doing it’.
Most importantly, choose an experienced, high-quality and trustworthy partner for the collaboration. As an independent agency with over 20 years’ experience and expertise across financial, pharma, health, FMCG, retail and other sectors, We Are Amnet can respond to any brief with realistic and cost-effective solutions.
Make sure your offshore team and your in-house team are working from a common base of understanding. Successful offshoring arrangements are based on collaborative partnerships where everybody working on the project is singing from the same song sheet, so to speak. You can’t just push a brief out to a new offshore partner and expect them to understand the nuances of working for a client that’s new to them in the same way your own team does.
Done right, offshoring results in cost savings, shorter turnaround times and rapid scaling capabilities. Talk to us about Smartshoring® if you want to boost your agency’s profits, scale your capacity and accelerate growth.
