You have gotten over the idea that hiring remote back-office technical staff that are based in another country is somehow un-American, and you have found a provider of professional managed offshore office and staffing solutions, but you are unsure about how to integrate a remote team into your current operations.
This is a legitimate concern and challenge because the answer will require several changes in how you and your local staff currently operate. And, to make it work, you will not only have to commit your own time and energy to the project for several months, but the time and energy of your local staff as well.
But, once you get over that “hump,” so to speak, you will set your business on a Blue Ocean path to enjoy increased profitability, operational capacity and efficiency.
Your professional solution provider can help you plan and get set up in a matter of weeks.
The first step will be to create an organization chart based on workflows if you do not already have one. Most contractors have an Estimating Department, a Project Execution Department, a Services Department, and a General Administration Department, which includes HR and Accounting, but your company may be set up differently.
And, within each Department, there are identifiable workflows for turning inputs into outputs. For example, in the Estimating Department, every company will have a system for turning a Client’s Request for Bid documents into an actual Bid. This system may not be visible per se, as it may be in the head(s) of a one or two key people, but a functioning system does exist. The challenge is to identify and breakdown each step of the process so that work can be delegated efficiently without slowing down the overall process.
In regard to Estimating, we can breakdown the workflow into a number of common steps, such as:
- Informational and clarification meetings with the Client’s representatives, architects and/or engineers
- Calculating quantities of materials required
- Requests for quotations from sub-contractors and vendors
- Developing a project schedule
- Preparing your own shop drawings for certain special applications or solutions
- Calculating the labor required to execute the project
- Entering the numbers on to a spreadsheet and/or BOQ and calculating profitability
- Organizing and compiling all of the tender documents and required submittals
- Negotiating terms and conditions with the Client
Your company may approach Estimating differently and you may have a few more or a few less steps, and all of that can be identified and discussed in detail, but for the purposes of this article, we will work off the above, in regard to what steps and tasks within Estimating can be delegated to a remote team and which steps cannot.
Steps 1 and 8 cannot be delegated, so we can check those off the list.
But parts of Steps 2 – 7 can definitely be delegated, either in whole or in part, and your professional solution provider can collaborate with you to develop the strategies for breaking down these steps so certain tasks can be delegated without causing a major short-term disruption to your business. And, after a few months of training and fine tuning, work with your remote team will flow smoothly and you will wonder how you got by before without them.
In addition, work with your remote team will turn your local staff into process managers and their job will be more focused on planning, assigning work and checking work, rather than grinding out tedious tasks. This may be a big change for some of your local staff and they may resist this change at first as they will have to give up some of their mundane tasks and take on managing and coordinating processes, and thus become a more valuable knowledge worker to your organization.
It is recommended however that you assign one person to function as the liaison between your local team and your remote team, rather than allowing anyone in your organization to assign tasks to various people on your remote team to ensure that everything remains organized, and all tasks are properly assigned with deadlines.
Speak with your professional solutions provider for more insights and information about identifying, managing, and delegating workflows to your remote team.
