Beyond lowest cost: 5 Key factors to consider when choosing a nearshoring partner

When expanding your team with a nearshore partner, it’s easy to focus on the promise of lower costs. While nearshoring does offer cost efficiency because of more affordable labor and commercial real estate in neighboring countries, there are several other considerations to keep in mind when selecting a nearshore partner. Factors like industry expertise, recruitment and training practices, cultural alignment, and more play a critical role in determining the right partnership. In this post, we’ll explore the top qualities and questions to consider when evaluating potential nearshore staffing partners.

Deciding to nearshore: A better solution to efficiently scale and operate

‍

Before selecting the right nearshore partner, it’s crucial to understand what nearshoring can offer your business. Nearshoring involves outsourcing specific processes or services to a partner in a nearby country. Through nearshore staffing or staff augmentation, you can build a team in a neighboring country that acts as an extension of your domestic workforce. These employees can fill a wide range of roles, from sales and operations to back-office administration.

Choosing the right nearshore partner:

‍

Once you’ve decided to partner with a nearshore vendor, it’s essential to select a company with the expertise and commitment to meet your specific needs. It’s so much more than just choosing the lowest-cost option.

‍

Deep industry experience and knowledge

Every industry comes with its own unique challenges and nuances. And with so many nearshoring companies available across various industries, it’s important to ensure the partner you choose has deep experience in hiring and managing teams within your specific industry. Take the time to speak with multiple people within the potential partner company to gain insight into their experience and specialties.

‍

Questions to ask a potential nearshore partner:

‍

·     What experience do you have in our industry?

·     How long have your worked in this industry?

·     How can your company help us navigate the challenges specific to our industry?

‍

Top-tier hiring and talent

Consider how your potential partner approaches hiring. How do they source top talent and align it with your specific needs? Some nearshoring companies rely on a pre-hired talent pool when building your team, while others create customized role profiles and hire new employees specifically for your requirements. Since you won’t be onsite with your team daily, it’s especially important to understand how your nearshore partner attracts and retains high-quality talent.

‍

Questions to ask a potential nearshore partner:

·     What is your approach to talent acquisition?

·     How do you ensure you are finding the best people for the job?

·     What is your process for building job descriptions and filling those roles?

·     What is your attrition rate and how does it compare to industry standards?

·     How do you measure the strength of your employees vs other nearshoring companies?

‍

Best-in class employee training

When partnering with a nearshore team, you need to trust that they have the right training and industry knowledge to perform tasks effectively and represent your brand accurately. As you evaluate potential partners, ensure they offer a comprehensive training program that sets new team members up for success.Training should cover everything from understanding specialized terminology to staying updated on market trends. But they also need to understand your company’s unique operations. A one-size-fits-all training approach isn’t enough. Your nearshore partner should invest time in learning the specific details of your processes and the technology platforms you use so they can provide tailored training for your team.

‍

Questions to ask a potential nearshore partner:

·     What training do you provide new hires?

·     What topics are covered in training?

·     How do you ensure candidate readiness before they start working in their new role?

·     How do you customize training to our business to ensure new hires can act as an extension of our team?

·     Do you provide additional training or employee development opportunities after the initial new hire onboarding?

Superior customer service

When selecting a nearshore partner, consider two key aspects of customer service: the support they provide to you as their customer and the service your new team delivers to your customers. Since you won’t be onsite with your nearshore team, your partner should offer consistent daily support for issue resolution and other needs. Additionally, they should instill confidence that your nearshore team will deliver top-tier customer service as an extension of your brand. Look fora partner with processes in place to evaluate your team’s performance and measure customer satisfaction.

‍

Questions to ask a potential nearshore partner:

·     How do you set and manage customer service expectations?

·     Do you provide a service level agreement (SLA) and what expectations does it outline?

·     What is your average response time for issue resolution?

·     What metrics do you use to measure an employee’s performance?

Positive company culture

Company culture plays an essential role in employee engagement and success. Companies with a strong culture promote healthy work environments, happy and productive employees with high retention rates, and organizational growth. Your nearshoring success will be dependent on your chosen partner’s ability to cultivate a positive culture for your nearshore team. Evaluate potential nearshore vendors’ leadership philosophy, employee benefits, and approach to career development to ensure you choose the right partner.

‍

Questions to ask a potential nearshore partner:

·     How would you describe your company culture?

·     What initiatives do you have in place to promote employee engagement and success?

·     What is your employee retention rate?

·     What does your leadership team do to promote a positive company culture?

·     What does your employee benefits package look like?

Partnering with Rapido for nearshore staffing

At Rapido, we specialize in building nearshore teams in the logistics and supply chain industry. Our leadership team has experience helping to scale and operate some of the largest, most influential logistics companies in the world. That experience means we’ve been in our customers’ shoes. We understand their challenges, their needs, and how their businesses operate. We deliver not only cost efficiency, but superior service with top talent. We’re on a mission to be the leading nearshore service provider in Latin America for logistics and supply chain by leveraging our logistics experience and our ability to invest in the health and well-being of our people, cultivating top talent, and building the best place to work in Mexico.

‍

Get in touch to learn how Rapido can help you build a superior nearshore team.

‍