FREQUENTLY ASKED
General
Will offshoring affect the quality of my work?
No, offshoring will not reduce quality when you work with the right partner. Offshore studios have matured significantly, investing in skilled talent, advanced workflows, and technology-driven processes. According to the 2025 Global Benchmark Report for Content Production, the top two criteria for selecting an offshore partner are expertise (83%) and turnaround times (72%). This proves that clients are prioritizing quality and speed.
What services are most suited for offshoring?
Services most suited for offshoring are those that fall into the “tier 3” category of content production.
These services include:
- Adaptation
- Transcreation
- Localization
- Resizing
- Reformatting
- Re-versioning
- Retouching
The 2025 global benchmark report specifically highlights that digital banner production and social content localization are the two services most frequently identified as best suited for an offshore model.
Is it “normal” for businesses in the creative industry to offshore their work?
Yes, it is normal for businesses in the creative industry to offshore their work, and it’s becoming a long-term strategic model.
The 2025 global benchmark report shows that offshoring is not a new trend for many companies. 30% of companies have been working with an offshore partner for more than five years, and another 28% have been doing so for two to four years. This demonstrates that offshoring is no longer just a trial strategy but a proven, long-term operating model for agencies and brands looking for scalability, cost efficiency, and speed to market.
I am a small business, can I still benefit?
Absolutely. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from an offshore production model to increase profitability and efficiency, and to gain access to flexible and scalable resources.
The 2025 Global Benchmark Report for Content Production shows that the most common savings from an offshore model are between 40% and 60%, which can be a significant advantage for a small business. These savings are often achieved on high-volume, repetitive tasks like digital banner production and social content localization, which allows your in-house team to focus on strategic work, even if it’s a small team.
This approach provides a flexible and scalable solution, allowing you to quickly ramp up or down resources without the long-term commitment of a full-time hire. This gives you the competitive advantage of a larger business by providing access to a broad range of skills and a faster speed to market, all while staying within your budget.
I want to be competitive, can offshoring help me?
Yes, it is highly likely that your competitors are already offshoring some of their work. The use of offshore creative production is now considered a proven operating model rather than a trial strategy.
The 2025 global benchmark report offers a strong evidence of its widespread use:
- Offshoring is a long-term strategy. 30% of companies have been using an offshore partner for more than five years, while 28% have done so for two to four years.
- It offers a competitive edge. Offshore production provides both cost savings and flexible resource models to keep up with the insatiable demand for content.
- one in three companies (33%) are saving between 40% and 60% through offshore production.
It frees up your in-house team. By offloading repetitive, low-value work (like digital banners and social content localization), your in-house team can focus on creative strategy and high-value work. This can help you to avoid being “priced out of the market” by allowing your team to work more efficiently and focus on driving innovation.
What does offshoring mean for the future of my company?
By embracing an offshore production model, your company can gain a significant competitive edge and accelerate growth. The 2025 global benchmark report highlights two key benefits:
- Cost Efficiency and Value Creation: With typical cost savings of 40-60%, you can capture value for lower-cost production while freeing up resources for new creative opportunities. This allows your in-house team to focus on strategic initiatives like creative ideation and planning.
- Scalability and Speed: Offshoring provides access to flexible and scalable resources, enabling you to get your content to market faster and at a greater scale than you could with a traditional in-house model alone.
What is Smartshoring?
Smartshoring® is an evolved form of offshoring, with a hybrid model of in-country client services and offshore creative production hubs. You get access to a wide range of specialists who immerse themselves in your brand and feel like an extension of your existing team.
Where traditional offshoring focuses mainly on cost savings and speed, Smartshoring® gives you this but is designed to give marketing, production, and creative operations teams certainty, control, and headspace they need to focus on strategy and big-picture impact.
With Smartshoring® you gain:
- Offshore scale, onshore confidence – access to more capacity, speed, and consistency without losing visibility or quality.
- Smart Technology – always-on innovation through our tech lab and Joule, our proprietary MarTech platform, with seamless integration into your systems.
- Smart Culture – a local account manager, expert offshore teams, and dedicated Brand Guardians who work as an extension of your team.
- Smart Communication – a global “follow the sun” model providing 24/7 support, shorter lead times, and rapid response to urgent needs.
- Smart Measurement – real-time visibility into every stage of production with transparent performance reporting through our Certainty Index.
In short, Smartshoring® future-proofs your creative production, giving you the scale, speed, and cost efficiency of offshore with the quality, communication, and trust of a local partner.
I need to scale my campaigns, how can you help?
We Are Amnet helps you scale your campaigns by providing a flexible and powerful Smartshoring model. This is a hybrid approach that combines our global production studios with a local, in-country client services team.
Our team of 1,200+ highly skilled experts works as a seamless extension of your team, giving you access to the resources you need, whenever you need them. This model allows you to:
- Produce content faster and at greater scale by leveraging our global presence across multiple time zones, including overnight work.
- Gain significant cost savings, which can then be reinvested into your business or used for more strategic initiatives.
- Offload high-volume tasks like digital banner production, social media localization, and video versioning to free up your team to focus on strategic creative work.
By partnering with We Are Amnet, you can benefit from both local partnership and global scalability, ensuring your content is delivered efficiently and to the highest brand standards.
Resource & Technology
My team is highly experienced in their fields, what level of experience and capabilities can you expect when offshoring?
You can expect a level of experience and capabilities that rivals and often exceeds that of an in-house team. Our Smartshoring model is built on a foundation of highly skilled and specialized talent, ensuring you get access to the best expertise for your specific needs.
With over 1,200+ highly skilled employees, our team is a global network of specialists. We are fully trained in the latest production, creative, and campaign technologies and can handle a wide range of complex tasks, from hand-coded HTML5 banners and Drupal content management to high-end video post-production using a state-of-the-art Autodesk Flame edit suite.
This level of expertise ensures you get:
- Access to Specialized Skills: The 2025 Global Benchmark Report confirms that “expertise” is the top criteria for selecting an offshore partner. Our team is trained in niche technologies and complex workflows that may not be available in a traditional in-house setup.
- Quality and Efficiency: Our advanced technology and streamlined workflows allow us to deliver high-quality work with shorter turnaround times.
- Scalability: With our deep bench of talent, we can scale up to meet even the most demanding campaign needs, ensuring you always have the right resources at your disposal.
Does it mean I should scale down my team?
You do not have to scale down your team. Instead, you should think of an offshore partner as an extension of your existing team, whether that is an agency or an in-house studio.
By strategically using an offshore partner, you can empower your current team to focus on their core specialisms, such as creative strategy, new business development, and high-value projects. This is a key insight from the 2025 Global Benchmark Report, which highlights that the most successful in-house teams are those that offload mechanical, repetitive tasks like artwork, retouching, and versioning to scalable, flexible, and cost-efficient offshore teams.
This model is about optimizing your workflow and ensuring your highly skilled team is working on projects that drive the most value.
I only need access to flexible resource for holiday cover or during peak times, can I still offshore my projects?
Yes, absolutely. An offshore provider can be used for flexible resource needs, whether it’s for holiday cover, peak seasons, or a one-off project.
Think of your offshore partner as a flexible extension of your team. This approach allows you to:
- Scale on Demand: Instead of hiring a full-time employee for a short-term need, you can quickly bring in skilled resources to handle the increased workload during busy periods without the long-term commitment.
- Maintain Consistency: By using the same offshore provider for your flexible needs, they become familiar with your brand’s guidelines and your team’s workflows. This ensures that the work delivered, whether for a week or a month, is seamless and consistent with your brand standards.
- Cover all the Bases: This model ensures that even when your core team is taking leave, key projects and tasks don’t fall behind. It provides a reliable safety net that keeps your business running smoothly, no matter the circumstances.
What technology should I expect from my offshore partner?
When you partner with a leading offshore provider, you should expect a robust technology stack that complements and enhances your existing systems, rather than simply replacing them. A modern offshore partner understands the importance of technology that drives efficiency, collaboration, and scalability.
Here’s what you should expect:
- Seamless Integration: Your offshore partner should be flexible enough to plug into your current technology systems. This includes project management software, digital asset management (DAM) platforms, and approval workflows. The goal is to create a unified ecosystem, not a disjointed one.
- Automation and AI: Look for a partner who is a pioneer in using AI and automation to streamline processes. This goes beyond basic tasks; it includes creative automation, personalized content at scale, and automated compliance and brand governance. The 2025 Global Benchmark Report notes that “automation adoption will become omnipresent” and that a “shift in the AI story” will lead to more practical applications.
- Advanced Collaboration Tools: The right technology ensures seamless communication across different time zones. This includes cloud-based platforms for real-time collaboration, a crucial element for a “follow the sun” creative workflow that allows for continuous, 24/7 production.
- Data-Driven Insights: A top-tier offshore partner should use technology to provide insights and analytics. This allows you to make data-backed decisions for continuous optimization, so you can iterate and scale your campaigns more effectively.
In short, the technology an offshore partner provides should be a fundamental part of your operating model, not just a standalone tool. It should empower both your in-house team and the offshore team to work more efficiently, driving better business outcomes.
I currently use freelancers during busy periods, is there any benefit to Smartshoring with We Are Amnet?
While freelancers are useful for temporary support, Smartshoring with We Are Amnet provides a more strategic and scalable solution for managing flexible resource needs. The key benefits are consistency, scale, and strategic partnership, which a freelancer-only model cannot provide.
By partnering with We Are Amnet, you are assigned a dedicated account manager who will gain a full understanding of your business needs and campaigns, as well as an offshore team that will become intimately familiar with your brand and ways of working. This ensures you avoid the risk of having to brief in crucial information on every single project, which is common with a freelance model.
Furthermore, we provide:
- Certainty in Consistency: If you use multiple freelancers for different disciplines, the quality and consistency of the work could be at risk. We Are Amnet’s model ensures a consistent, high-quality output every time, backed by our Certainty Index that provides a measurable level of confidence in our delivery.
- Access to Scale: A single freelancer has limitations on what they can produce and how quickly they can do it. We Are Amnet offers a comprehensive suite of different services and provides access to over 1,200 highly skilled staff, allowing you to produce more content, faster, and at a scale that a single freelancer would not be able to match.
Ultimately, a partnership with We Are Amnet is a long-term strategic asset that provides scalable resources and expertise, offering a level of certainty and a suite of services that goes far beyond what a freelancer can provide.
Costs
Can offshoring really reduce my costs significantly?
The simple answer is yes. The 2025 Global Benchmark Report for Content Production confirms that significant cost savings are a key benefit of an offshore model. It’s now widely accepted in the industry that 40-60% cost savings are typical for services like digital banner production and social content localization.
This is made possible through a variety of flexible commercial models that cater to different business needs, from transactional pricing for managing peaks and troughs in demand to fixed employee pricing for more predictable volumes of work. By optimizing your resource model, you can significantly reduce production costs while ensuring a high-quality output.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Is offshoring ethical?
Yes, when done correctly, offshoring is an ethical and socially responsible business practice. The goal of creative production offshoring is not to avoid taxes or exploit foreign workers, but to connect with the right talent for the right projects, no matter where they are located.
By choosing a model like Smartshoring, you are partnering with an organization that is committed to ethical and fair labor practices. This model is built on the principle of providing a fully flexible and legally compliant network that benefits everyone involved. The focus is on finding highly skilled individuals who can contribute to global projects while working in a secure and professional environment.
When you partner with a provider like We Are Amnet, you can be sure you’re working with a company that truly cares about its people. We have been certified as a ‘Great Place to Work’ for five consecutive years, which provides independent assurance that our practices meet high standards for fairness, respect, and a positive work environment. This ensures that your partnership not only drives efficiency and cost savings but also contributes to a global network built on integrity and mutual respect.
Management & Global Campaigns
I already have an offshore partner but in a different location, is it easy to move work from one vendor to another?
Yes. Due to the expertise and size/scale of We Are Amnet, we are often asked to pick up overflow work from existing vendors, who may not necessarily have the team available to fulfil a particular brief.
Here’s how we make it easy:
- Deep and Broad Expertise: Unlike many vendors who specialize in a single area, We Are Amnet offers a full suite of services. Whether you need deep expertise in advertising (digital, social, video, motion), packaging (artwork, retouching, CGI), or web/app development, we have the right specialists to handle your project. This means you don’t have to seek out multiple vendors for different disciplines.
- Scale and Immediate Capacity: With over 1,200 highly skilled staff, we have the size and scale to take on large-volume projects or urgent overflow work when your existing vendor may not have the team available. Our network of global production hubs ensures that we can quickly ramp up resources to meet any deadline.
- Seamless Integration: We understand that switching vendors can be a concern. Our teams are highly skilled at plugging into existing client systems and workflows to ensure a smooth transition. This allows us to become a natural extension of your team and brand, ensuring consistency and quality from day one.
How will I be able to manage a team in another country?
Managing a team in another country is now easier and more seamless than ever, thanks to modern technology and the evolution of the Smartshoring model. You should think of it not as managing a distant team, but rather as collaborating with a local partner who handles the day-to-day for you.
Here’s what makes managing a global team simple:
- Dedicated In-Country Account Management: A key benefit of our Smartshoring model is that you get a dedicated account manager in your country. This person acts as your primary point of contact, understands your needs, and manages the project communication with the offshore production team. This removes the logistical burden of managing a team across different time zones and cultural nuances.
- Advanced Digital Communication: Modern project management tools, video conferencing, and instant messaging have made remote collaboration highly efficient. Managing an offshore team is as easy as connecting with your colleagues in your home office, with all projects tracked and shared in real-time.
- “Follow the Sun” Workflows: With a team spread across the globe, you can take advantage of a “follow the sun” model. This means that as you finish your workday, your offshore team is just beginning theirs, allowing for continuous, 24/7 production and a faster speed to market. This workflow is a powerful tool for accelerating your campaigns and meeting tight deadlines.
In essence, you are not just getting a team; you are getting a fully managed solution that provides seamless communication and a high-level of service, ensuring that your projects are delivered on time and to your exact specifications.
How will I handle the cultural and language differences?
Managing cultural and language differences is a valid concern when working with an offshore team, but the Smartshoring model is specifically designed to address and mitigate these risks.
Here’s how a Smartshoring partnership ensures a seamless and culturally aligned collaboration:
- Local Account Management: The core of the Smartshoring model is having a dedicated account manager in your country and time zone. This person is a native speaker who understands your local market, cultural nuances, and business needs. They act as a bridge between your in-house team and the offshore production hub, ensuring all communication and project requirements are accurately translated and executed.
- Centralized Expertise: Your in-country account manager is a strategic partner who can manage the day-to-day relationship with the offshore team for you. This frees up your time and removes the risk of miscommunication or cultural misunderstandings that can arise from direct, cross-cultural communication.
- Cultural Training and Experience: The offshore production teams in a Smartshoring network are highly experienced in working with international clients. They are trained to understand global brand standards and communication styles, which minimizes the learning curve and ensures a smooth, professional collaboration from the very start.
Will the time difference hamper a project?
The time difference is not a hurdle; in fact, it is a significant benefit when you partner with a Smartshoring provider. While an offshore team can be flexible with its working hours to suit yours, the true value lies in leveraging the time difference to accelerate your projects.
Here’s how you can make the time difference work for you:
- “Follow the Sun” Workflows: Our global network of production hubs allows for a continuous workflow. As your business day ends, your dedicated offshore team begins theirs. This “follow the sun” model means that a project you send at the end of your day can be worked on overnight and be ready for your review and sign-off the very next morning. This is particularly beneficial for urgent projects or tight deadlines, as it can significantly reduce turnaround times.
- Global Deadlines: For campaigns with a global scope, the ability to work across multiple time zones is a necessity, not a luxury. A Smartshoring partner provides the resources and infrastructure to manage these complex projects seamlessly, ensuring all deadlines are met and that your content is delivered to market faster.
- Seamless Communication: Our Smartshoring model ensures that you have a dedicated in-country account manager who will liaise with you during your working hours, so you don’t have to manage a team in another time zone directly. This ensures that communication is clear, efficient, and never a bottleneck.
I do a lot of overseas campaigns, can you help me with transcreation and localisation?
Yes, we can definitely help you with transcreation and localization for your overseas campaigns. Delivering on-brand consistency while ensuring language, compliance, and local variations are fulfilled is one of the key strengths of our creative production services.
Translation and localization can be complex, and a single word or image can change the entire meaning of a campaign. Our Smartshoring model is specifically designed to handle these nuances, providing a unique blend of local insight and global production capabilities.
Getting Started
How do I begin my offshoring journey?
Beginning your offshoring journey is a strategic process, and at its core, it is about building trust in a new partner. The key to a successful relationship and a strong return on investment (ROI) is a thoughtful and thorough approach to finding the right partner.
Here are the essential steps to beginning your offshoring journey:
1. Plan & Lay the Foundations: Before you begin, clearly define your goals. What are you hoping to achieve? Is it cost savings, access to a specific skill set, or the ability to scale up quickly? By understanding your “why,” you can better identify the right partner and the best model for your needs.
2. Select the Right Partner & Model: This is the most crucial step. You need a partner who is capable as well as a good cultural fit. A thorough evaluation should assess their:
- Experience and Capability: Do they have a proven track record? Do they have the expertise in the services you need, from digital and social to video and web development?
- Transition Strategy: What is their plan for onboarding your team and projects?
- Pricing & Operations: How transparent are their commercial models and how efficient are their operational workflows?
- Technology & Sustainability: Do they use modern technology that can seamlessly integrate with your existing systems? Is their approach ethical and sustainable?
3. Define the ROI & What Success Looks Like: Once you’ve selected a partner, you must clearly define what success looks like. This goes beyond just cost savings. What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to measure success? This could be speed to market, content volume, or the ability to free up your in-house team for strategic work.
4. Build the Relationship & Effective Onboarding: A successful partnership is built on communication and trust. The initial onboarding process is critical. You should work together to define rigorous Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and build an effective, collaborative relationship from day one. By fostering a culture of shared values and innovation, your offshore partner will become a natural extension of your team, ensuring continued success.
Can I do a trial before moving to live work?
Yes, we absolutely recommend a trial project before you commit to live work. This is a crucial step to ensure the partnership is the right fit and that you have full confidence in the quality of the work.
By doing a trial project with We Are Amnet, you can:
- Experience the Talent Firsthand: You will get to see the capabilities of our offshore team, assess the quality of their work, and ensure it meets your expectations.
- Assess the Partnership: A trial allows you to evaluate our communication style, project management capabilities, and overall workflow to ensure it aligns with your team’s needs.
- Build Trust: Ultimately, this process is about building trust. A successful trial proves that we can deliver on our promises, giving you the confidence to move forward with a full partnership.
