4 Problems That The World Is Outsourcing To India

Spencer Freeman is president of Freeman and Son Fire Restoration in LA, California.

Oliver Cantt is the CEO of Exxoss, a Belgian IT infrastructure company.

Kevin Norton, a leading Health and Exercise Specialist is the CIO of Adelaide Fitness Solutions, a new age Fitness and Lifestyle Club co-owned and operated by former Adelaide Crows Player and Sports Scientist Brett Burton.

Malcolm Paice is the COO of the Keystone Group, a recruitment firm based in London.

Now you might be wondering why I jotted down the names of these four gentlemen, who by all accounts, exist on four corners of the globe. Well, for starters, all of them lead, what can be defined as, small and medium businesses. And secondly, all of them have had to hire virtual assistants in India. And they are not alone. This is a global trend now amongst developed economies. We look into the four of the biggest reasons why the remote personal assistant has become so ubiquitous amongst small and medium businesses.

1. Pricing: Take the example of Dr. Norton here. As someone who has had been in product development for the better part of a decade, Dr. Norton already has an established team in Australia. However, while trying to develop a health and fitness based software product, he chose to outsource, thanks to the almost ridiculous price difference between countries like Australia/US/UK and India, which has many clients saying that they are paying practically nothing! Here is a chart to help you understand the pricing difference and hence possible benefits.

STAT	India	United States	United Kingdom	Australia	European Union (Belgium)
Labor force, total	484.34 million Ranked 2nd.	158.69 million Ranked 4th	32.38 millionRanked 19th	12.01 millionRanked 43th	241.08 millionRanked 3rd.
Salaries and benefits (Hourly minimum wage)	$0.61	$7.25 12 times more than India	$7.81 13 times more than India	$10.63 17 times more than India	$11.73 19 times more than India

As you can see, I have given stats of the very countries/regions from where our four case studies come. What’s minimum wage in Australia, ensure three well paid professionals in India. And while most medium and small businesses can probably only afford minimum wages, it’s hardly a hook for the best of the local talent to come work for them. In pure business terms, not outsourcing looks like an extremely foolish decision. Hence, like Dr Norton, more and more entrepreneurs are seeking to hire virtual assistants.

2. Lack of Adequate Local Talent: Yes! Surprising, right? But it’s increasingly becoming a major issue in these countries for small and medium businesses. Despite having the best education systems in the world, these first world countries are falling short when it comes to a pure numbers game. India adds literally the entire population of some these countries to its work force every year. That has ensured an abundant of talent, and extremely qualified and experienced talent at that. That’s exactly what Oliver Cantt the CEO of Exxoss found. Tired of trying to find the right sort of talent in the EU at the given prices, he decided to engage the services of virtual assistant services. India, being the leader in this field, was a natural choice.

3. Focussing on the Core: If you have limited resources, you would like to channel those resources to your core business. That’s exactly what Malcolm Paice, the COO of the Keystone Group did. Had he looked to hire locally, his overheads would have shot through the roof, putting his entire business structure at risk. And he wouldn’t have been able to expand and focus on his core business. When you hire a remote personal assistant for your “non-core” activities, it helps you stay focused, stress free and secure in the knowledge that an expert is still handling that part of your business.

4. Flexibility: Spencer Freeman of Freeman and Son Fire Restoration helps families recover from the devastating after effects of fire damage. By his own admission, his entire workforce is mostly on the field. Looking to hire someone to look after administration and IT, Spencer decided to enlist the services of a company offering virtual assistant services in India. However, while price did play a part, according to Spencer, flexibility played a huge part in the decision as well. Thanks to the time difference, between US and India, his business suddenly became a 24/7 workplace, which made the processes remarkably quick. On top of that, he is also extremely happy at the scaling flexibility that outsourcing brought to his business, something which Malcolm Paice of Keystone group also benefitted from. Whereas tough labour laws in the US and other places make it difficult to scale businesses and employee counts up and down, when you hire virtual assistants, they do not come under the purview of your local laws and scaling up or down is easy. So much so that its almost like plug and play!

Tough labor laws, rising overheads and employee costs, dearth of talent- remote personal assistants are becoming an answer to pretty much all the issues plaguing small and medium businesses. And unless something major happens, the trend will continue in the foreseeable future.