Working with offshore companies has always had an appeal to me. The US dollar, even at the low point, can buy so much more in India, it seems like a no-brainer to work with these companies. But those of you who have know that there is a real challenge to this.
First you have the language barrier. Don’t be fooled by the fact they say they speak English. Call up a Dell customer service line and see the level of English we’re talking about. It’s not their fault. I mean they have a lot more knowledge of our langauge then we do theirs, but it’s just not fluent enough English to communicate properly.
Second you have the time barrier. Again, don’t be fooled by the idea that they can just work your hours. Even when they say they will, that never quite seems to be the case. Again, not their fault. I’m sure no one reading this wants to drag their ass into work at 3am.
Then there is an issue that I feel is difficult to mention without sounding very offensive, but here it is. Don’t expect an offshore company to be as into their work as a US company. Now it’s wrong to speak in such broad context about the work ethic of other countries. We have plenty of horrible companies in the US, and I’m sure there are some exceptional companies in India and other countries who do work from the US. But I have to say that in my years of working with at least a dozen of these companies, I have never found a solid company to outsource to in India or Ukraine. The fact is I have just not seen the level of competency I would expect in an US company.
I was hoping to find something different in Brickwork India. They were mentioned in both The World is Flat, and The 4-Hour Work Week. Supposedly major companies use their services, and some people have written some wonderful things about them. But my experience with them has been nothing short of laughable. At lest most of the offshore companies I have dealt with are anxious to get going. Evidently Brickwork India is so flush with business, they don’t respond to email more than once per week (They must have read Tim Ferriss’s book!).
I tried to try their services out with a personal assistant, and all I got was a complete runaround. After 3 weeks of emails (mostly on my end), an uncomfortable Skype all, and begging for a response from them, I’m still at a loss for what the next step is in hiring them.
My initial email was from someone named Vivek Kulkarni. His email was short and professional. He referred me to someone named Satwik Joglekar. This is where things started to slow down. Email to Satwik went unanswered. The only time I could get a reply is when I copied other people at Brickworks India.
It’s a shame that I couldn’t hook this up with them. I had such renewed optimism for the outsource model after reading 4-Hour Work Week. I was thinking I could use them for a number of tasks. The bad part about this is now I question all outsourced models again. For example Corefino. I would really love to give those guys a try. But companies like Brickworks India, who supposedly are among the best in India let me down, how could I even think about handing over something as vital as accounting to an offshore company.
The fact is, you get what you pay for. The company we use at USWeb for outsourced development is a US based group of Ruby on Rails developers, ELC. They are not cheap, but damn are they good at what they do.
If anyone out there has some feedback or advice on this, I would love to hear from you. Until then I guess I’ll just keep looking for the Made in USA logo and leave offshore to Wal-Mart and Kathy Lee.
Technorati Tags: brickwork India, offshore development, outsourcing, India, 4-hour work week, tim ferriss, timothy ferriss, satwik joglekar, vivek kulkarni, world is flat
Ed–thanks for sharing your experiences and the kudos to the team we have here at ELC. We appreciate the feedback and mention!
Ed,
I have used offshore providers for small jobs but not for projects. I think the issue is that the work is not as good as you would do for yourself. I hate to say it, but it looks like you get what you pay for.
I’m now trying to find good domestic help for development projects. I hope to have more success with a 16 y/o US student that is easy to communicate with.
Ed,
Thanks for sharing your experience. It is an eye opener. It looks all glossy reading about companies like Brickworks in books/websites. But the reality strikes when you have to deal with them.
I had a frustrating 3 weeks dealing with Brickworks (person named Rajesh Pai) just for getting a RFP/RFQ for a tiny work we wanted to Pilot.
I have come to the conclusion that we are better of paying more for a work thats important to us by near-shoring.
No, i do not really agree with you with alot of points on this post, for starters if companies in India (or abroad for that matter) didnt have the same level of commitment as US companies then i do not think that jobs would be outsourced as much as they are being outsourced.
Secondly, I think that the issue with not understanding Indian English is not the accent, rather its the lack of any accent
No offence, but the truth is both British and American have their own accents but Americans have grown up listening to both the types of english so undertanding aint the problem 
The same could be said on the Indian side where comprehending the language of British/ American customers is tough but as they deal with hundreds of customers per day they get used to it sooner or later !
Leon,
Thanks for your comment, but I have to respectfully disagree with you. Let me share with you an example of the point I’m about the make.
Today I called Gieco to get my car insurance renewed. I call their toll free number and of course go through a phone tree that no doubt saves them time, but is painfully slow to me. They could have just sent along an extension to dial to put me into the right queue, but chose to be lazy and therefore have poor customer service. I did renew through them this time because they are a lower rate than other companies. But because of the way they treat their customer service I feel no loyalty to stay with them, so when I find someone as much as $1 lower, I’ll switch.
My point is that just because some big companies do something doesn’t make it a good idea. My friend Jim always used Dell computers, until he had a problem and called them. After a couple hours with someone he could barley understand, it was easy to get him to switch to a Mac.
I can’t say this is a bad idea for everyone. But I will say that I have not personally seen the work ethic from Indian companies that I require from key employees. This is just my personal experience.
As for who has the accent, my feeling on that is simple; the customer is the one without the accent. The fact that some people haven’t excepted that yet is exactly the difference between us.
Reads to me Ed like you’re reading these books but not joining the NR.
Of course BrickWorks only do the work up to the standard needed. And answering e-=mails once a week is the point.
More than 2 thirds of the world speak English, badly perhaps, but the advantage you have is you understand them, even if that takes some effort.
Books and systems like The four hour work week do work when you go for it.
I remember seeing a video of an Australian entrepreneur once who said that part of becomming succesful was accepting that others would only do your work 80% as well as you could, but you can’t do everything.
My experience of outsourcing to off shore companies was initially poor. The firms involved couldn’t speak English properly, the spelling was awful. They were hours off our work day timing.
They were ridiculously cheap for what my Pound can buy here in the UK
but that showed in what they laughingly called their coustomer relationships and were so nationalistic you’d think the only country in the world was theirs.
For that reason I moved all of my virtual assistant work from the USA to India and Eastern Europe. Now everything is excellent and I am old fashioned work practices free.
Smiles
JonC
Jon,
I did in fact move forward with the NR lifestyle, and a personal assistant. I just didn’t use an Indian firm. Checkout my follow up post here:
http://www.oneblogtoomany.com/2007/07/24/why-outsourcing-to-india-is-a-bad-idea/
Hey all,
We’re used brickworks recently to do a bunch of transcriptions (60 hrs worth) and they were great - quick turn around, good accuracy and easy uploading.
Just thought I’d pass that on.
Ed:
Your experience matches mine EXACTLY.
I am writing this email 50 minutes AFTER a scheduled call with Brickwork that never arrived. I have scheduled several calls with them - none of which ever arrived.
I spoke to them about layout of a book. No quotes were given. They asked for some sample pages which they were going to lay out and they never responded.
I could go on about the number of times I emailed Vivek and others practically begging for things to get done. And I’ve tried SEVERAL times over the last 5 months to do business with them.
Perhaps they are too big, perhaps they are too busy. Bottom line is I wouldn’t deal with them and certainly would suggest that others avoid them too.
Ed:
I worked with Brickwork for about 16 months, till the beginning of this year, and would like to share my thoughts on your blog. While quite a few of the clients have had a pretty good relationship, a lot, lot many more potential customers there share similar experiences as you. Delayed response to a client query (sometimes as much as 2 months) was, in most of the cases, a result of a flood of such queries every time Brickwork was featured in these books, newspapers and magazines. Most of the days it averaged 40-50 emails and peak was around 200 mails a day. Added to that, customer relationship is generally a weak point for Indian firms.
I’ve had a nice experience working with American and British customers and have found that, almost always, the first month is the tough period with the employees here not sure what to do, and client not sure that he made a good decision. Relationships that moved into the second month generally flourished for atleast 6 months or more. Brickwork (and many of the other outsourcing firms in India) has different sets of employees with different educational qualifications and industry experience, that cater to different categories of client industries. In general, work that was more challenging or “high-end” that involved finacial analysis, or strategic studies was the one where clients were most satisfied. While they maintained that the professionalism of US employees was better than ours, it always came at a much higher cost than what they were charged from us. I think Brickwork and other such 150 employee strong outsourcing firms work best for small to mid-sized boutique consultancy firms in the US/UK/Australia which need smart people but generally find it tough to attract local talent because of their size or pay constraints.
All said and done, at a ground level, this market is still in its infancy, irrespective of what Thomas Friedman says, and it’s still couple of years away from achieving a satisfactory performance level. Hope you use some outsourcing firm’s services in the future and hope you won’t be dissapointed the next time
I’m at the point with BFU where I will need to outsource some work, or hire a part time employee for special tasks.
Your post does give another view than what I just got in The Four Hour Workweek. It is hard to give specific instructions when you can’t communicate. I may still have to try a small project to judge for myself; but my expectations will now be open rather than hopeful.
Man… my saga went on.
3 outsource companies. 3 failures.
http://www.uselessfreeadvice.com/2007/11/14/why-bother-outsourcing-to-india/
I’m just starting to learn about outsourcing to India. I recently assigned some research work to a company in Gujrat and the results were not bad and the hourly rate very modest. However, what took them 6 hours I could have done myself in 2 - so to a some extent I think you get what you pay for.