As a business strategy, outsourcing manufacturing, admin, or production has been popular for decades. Sending anything from payroll processing and human resources, customer support or creative post-production, to a foreign companies’ offshore team (as opposed to your in-house team) is a tried and tested business practice.
Once used for labor costs and saving business expenses, there are now endless examples of offshoring and outsourcing being utilized for improvements to overall output.
At We Are Amnet, we have a detailed understanding of outsourcing services and the benefits they bring to business operations and products. Let’s run through some of our SmartshoringⓇ and outsourcing examples to see how an offshore team can benefit your business.
5 Examples of Offshoring
An outsourcing company can take pressure off your in-house team, as well as boosting their output through the use of offshore talent. Successful offshoring requires partnering with trusted third-party vendors who can align with your processes, company culture, and become a true extension of your team. Here are some examples of companies who chose to outsource with We Are Amnet, and how these offshoring services enabled them to become success stories.
Software Development: Pearson
Education giant Pearson required a full web and app development team. Software development was integral to creating a state of the art Student Application Portal, as well as Application Form Grading software.
Pearson began outsourcing tasks, and sought experts from a global talent pool. These included software development, UX consultancy, compliance and penetration testing, hosting and maintenance (with 24/7 technical support), user training, and project and management consulting services.
Still being able to reduce costs and allow their in-house team to focus on core business operations, a central CMS was created by the offshored development team to link six university partners with cloud based computer systems. Plus, a more effective application grading system was implemented through Salesforce – to ensure everyone in the network receives the right information easily.
Thanks to outsourcing this work, Pearson had access to tech industry expertise and labor from other countries they would otherwise have only obtained through hiring employees. As a result, the outsourcing project was able to reduce costs and improve efficiency by 45%, while ensuring all the processes and the software developed remained in their hands.
Scaling FMCG Creative Production: Nordstrom Rack
Department store chain Nordstrom Rack aimed to open over 20 new retail stores throughout the US in 2023. To pull this off, Nordstrom Rack required innovative solutions and turned to offshore hiring.
Nordstrom Rack’s business processes had always called for in-house teams to create marketing and advertising materials. This sudden boost in volume meant the amazing in-house team need some help. They turned to an offshoring company to complete work and maintain a competitive advantage. Among this high volume and quick turnaround work were both digital and physical assets.
Paid media, ads in magazines, adaptation work for email and social, as well as both digital and print ads, were all assets that Nordstrom Rack were able to produce without massively disrupting their business process – outsourcing had significantly boosted output in time for store openings. A total of 763 assets were created between February and March 2023, and an additional 1500+ were commissioned for over 25 stores for June-August 2023 delivery. An impressive outsourcing example, offshore workers had successfully delivered intensely streamlined and upscaled content production services.
Scaling Medical Creative Production: Inizio Medical
Healthcare and medical communications business Inizio Medical deliver global marketing, advisory, and engagement services in the medical industry. Needing digital and creative assets, and publications, their in-house team sought offshoring companies to fill the gap, save costs, and enable them to focus on core business functions.
With medically accurate and specific assets – including scientific graphs, illustrations, and presentation decks – there was pressure to deliver more content whilst enabling cost savings. With a hybrid model of fixed term FTEs to handle the regular volume and a transactional model to cover periods of peaks and troughs in the workload. Following brand guidelines and regulatory laws, Inizio Medical utilized Smartshoring to extend their team and access an offshore talent pool.
From training the offshore team on brand guidelines, the company took advantage of our Quality Design Program and ISO 9000 certification to scale their creative production and save money. A successful offshoring example, within 6 months Inizio Medical had extended their use of offshoring into the international business across the UK and US – working to produce the niche assets and materials they needed for core business processes.
Global Creative Production: Boston Scientific
Boston Scientific improves the health of patients around the world by creating and implementing innovative medical solutions across the globe. The internal marketing operations team was tasked with working with a new offshoring partner to deliver creative production services in various global campaigns.
We worked closely with Boston Scientific to run pilot projects to build confidence within the stakeholders. In these initial pilot projects, We Are Amnet provided video post production services, presentations and digital art services.
With the success of these pilots, we’ve continued to help the in-house team produce higher quality content in a shorter time frame. We now work across 13 countries with Boston Scientific, offering five different services including: video, interactive PDFs, digital, social and presentations.
Mass Production: Norwegian Cruise Line
When a company works in six regions and requires over 2,000 assets per month, offshoring is essential. The in-house team needs to have a partner to depend on, if they don’t, deliverable deadlines can be missed and can cost the company thousands if not millions!
Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) partnered with us to deliver static and animated HTML5, digital banners, social media posts and animated GIFs that their in-house team didn’t have time to produce. In just two weeks, our offshoring team delivered 600 assets to be used across 6 regions in over 20 languages.
Since our successful initial project together, We Are Amnet and NCL have formed an integral partnership with our offshoring team working with their in-house team to deliver 2,500 assets per month for over 150 projects. Whenever the in-house team needs assistance, our creative production team is ready to swing into action.
Examples of Offshoring: Lower Costs and Focus on Business Operations
Offshoring, outsourcing, and Smartshoring offer significant benefits to organizations – by lowering costs, scaling production, and allowing businesses to focus on core competencies. By outsourcing to external vendors, companies like yours can reduce expenses whilst increasing the expertise and labor being poured onto your projects.
Outsourced services aren’t limited to customer support or call center services, human resources or accounting operations – you don’t have to be an IT company or tech business to reap the rewards of external talent. You can drive growth, boost output, and save on costs in a fast changing marketing landscape.
For more offshoring examples, explore our case studies.
Examples of outsourcing and offshoring don’t end there. With offshoring destinations across the world, from Costa Rica to Mumbai, Smartshoring is essential if your brand or agency is seeking to stay competitive and accelerate growth.
To experience similar benefits and get access to a global network of expertise – while saving money and being able to focus on the core creative work and strategy – get in touch today.
