You might have heard of new outsourcing models that take away the necessity of operating overseas and pose to be the bane of the traditional act of contracting a call center in the Philippines or other foreign locations.

Two of these outsourcing models are known as nearshoring and onshoring, which promise more seamless operations by taking advantage of the outsourcing destination’s proximity to the client’s source country. True, they have advantages over a typical offshoring deal, but they may only be suitable for certain types of businesses, services, and areas.

Offshoring vs. nearshoring

Nearshoring works best if your company s main concern is to closely monitor and access the services you outsource. In this outsourcing model, you primarily save on travel costs because the site is just a border or a two-hour flight away from you. But do you really need to be constantly with your service vendor doing site visits?

One of the main reasons why businesses outsource is to focus on their core competencies. So if you are already outsourcing but still need to supervise an outsourced team on top of managing your in-house ones, then the venture might be burdening you instead of alleviating your business problems.

When you offshore, you have a higher assurance that the tasks you send out are done according to your standards without the need of close, constant personal supervision.

Offshoring vs. onshoring

While onshoring also lets you save on travel costs, businesses using this approach are usually after the lingual and cultural advantages of partnering with local firms. Sure, you get to relay orders with ease because of zero language and time zone differences between you and the service provider, but you may sacrifice service quality and cost efficiency to obtain this affinity.

Offshoring, on the other hand, is done to eliminate these exact disadvantages that can come with an onshoring contract. Offshoring capitals boast of having the weapons your locality doesn t have, or excelling in areas where your company lacks expertise at. These advantages can be competent workforces, lower wages, or affordable operation costs. If language is a big concern for you, you can offshore to a multilingual call center in the Philippines or other outsourcing centers that deliver voice services in the language that you and your customers speak.

Conclusion

Offshoring is still an advisable outsourcing approach because this model prioritizes service quality and cost efficiency over other business aspects. Indeed, new outsourcing models may work for certain businesses, but they mostly give limited benefits.