Many clients find that outsourcing and offshoring business-critical applications leave them with an empty-nest syndrome. It’s like being a parent when a child leaves home for the first time: you feel lost, not ready to let go, and on the verge of losing control. In those situations Ordina meets the needs of the clients with a lot of attention, trust and clarity.
“Outsourcing is all about trust. No matter how many written arrangements and agreements you make, in the end it’s a question of everyone doing what they’re supposed to do,” comments Erik Joustra, a member of the management team for the Application Outsourcing & Projects Business Unit. That’s why Ordina is so keen to employ top-class contract managers. They are the advance party, the people who are in day-to-day contact with clients. “Personality may well be even more important,” says Joustra. “The two contract managers – ours and the client’s – have to get on well with each other. In fact, they should be more or less married to each other: they’ve got to be ready to tell the bitter truth if necessary, and they’ve got to trust each other blindly.” As clients like to retain control over the process, transparency is also incredibly important. “You’ve got to show them what you’re up to. That’s why the client gets a ringside view of what the programmer is doing, even if he’s on the other side of the world. They can use an Internet portal to keep track of all sorts of aspects of a project. They can also call round for a chat with the Indian guys who staff our front office.”
Bridging the culture gap
Ordina has concentrated everything to do with the outsourcing of application design, management and implementation – particularly in relation to the financial market – in a single business unit. The partnership with Cognizant means that Ordina can also tap into a vast pool of knowledge in India.At the same time, Joustra knows from experience that there are differences between Indians and Dutch people, both in their character traits and in the way they work. “This is something that our people here have got to recognise. That’s why we make sure our project descriptions and job briefs are completely clear for everyone to understand. English is a second language, for us and for our Indian staff, which is why we constantly need to double-check that both parties have fully understood each other. It’s also important to realise that decision-making in India is an extremely hierarchic process. If a project manager here in the Netherlands says that we’re going to do things in a particular way, we’ve got to accept that he needs the approval not just of his boss in India, but also of his boss’s boss.” This is why Ordina and Cognizant took the conscious decision to invest in training in cross-cultural awareness. Ordina always sends its contract managers to India for a few months, so that they can spend some time learning about the differences between the cultures. In turn, Indian staff also try and learn the best ways of dealing with their Dutch counterparts. “The people from Cognizant working here in the Netherlands have assimilated Dutch customs and habits so well they’re almost Dutch themselves. They’re interested in finding out why Dutch people present someone with a bunch of flowers on their birthday, whereas flowers have a completely different meaning in Hindu culture.”
Proposition:
Clear agreements are a must
Offshore outsourcing increases the need for clear agreements between the client and the supplier. Clients need to make absolutely clear what they want, and accept that they can no longer change his minds halfway into the project, as they may have been used to do in the past. The point is that the staff working in the factory in India do exactly as they are told.
Two companies, one philosophy
One of the big advantages of the partnership, Joustra reckons, is that Ordina and Cognizant share the same views on how best to handle an outsourcing project. Cognizant has a big factory in India – the back office – to handle the operational side of outsourcing contracts. The front office is located close to the client’s premises, and is staffed by people who are familiar with the client’s business. “We share the same business philosophy. We work, just like Cognizant, with a front office staffed by people who are familiar with the client’s business, and have a back office to take care of the development, management and implementation work. In other words, our back office can be located anywhere – and that meshes in perfectly with the way in which Cognizant works.” Certain parts of the project – aspects that require a great deal of interaction with the client or which have not yet been fully planned – are performed in the Netherlands. The rest of the work is done in India, for which purpose Ordina merges part of Cognizant’s front office with its own front office. “It’s a question of adding a dash of ‘couleur locale’, as it were. Not only do they bring extra knowledge of banking processes with them, they also operate as linking pins between us and the factory in India. An Indian project manager based in the Netherlands oversees the work in India. This is a brilliant way of bridging the culture gap.” Thanks to this business model, Dutch clients can rest assured that their project manager is physically close to them, in Nieuwegein and not somewhere abroad. Joustra: “This is absolutely vital, as it enables us to surmount the main problems affecting offshoring projects, which are differences in work ethics, culture, language and time.”
Next Chapter: Why Rabobank opted for outsourcing
