The Benefits of Nearshore to Develop a Global Digital Talent Pool

What skills are required by companies to stay relevant and ahead of the competition in 2022? And how can businesses reskill, transform, find, and develop talent across business operations?

A Mercer 2021 Global Talent Trends study recently highlighted the race to reskill as global organizations frantically change their operations and transform their workforces to prepare for the new world economy.

Business transformation plans for 2021 have been focused on reskilling and upskilling. Workforce reskilling is now defined as being the no. 1 investment priority for HR in most countries. As firms look to develop their existing talent, there is an argument that employees don't always have the necessary time or will to build their skill sets. As talent is reskilled and upskilled there is also a risk some tasks get left unfinished; therefore, it is important to align resources to perform certain skills at a lower cost. Consequently, wise companies are looking at outsourcing to rapidly increase their talent pool and become more agile as a result. Organizations that can rapidly adopt reskilling at scale and execute activities aligned to the right skillset will surge ahead of their competitors.

Leveraging the comparative advantage of low-cost geography with an abundance of digital skills has been a tried and tested business practice for decades. The “follow the sun” nearshore approach has been hugely valuable for companies, such as Netapp, in allowing them to react quickly and adapt in a rapidly evolving landscape.

While offshoring has been favorable up until now, the pandemic has changed our relationship with world travel to the point at which nearshoring is often a better alternative for businesses. While nearshoring might not always be the cheapest option, the benefits of having business partners in the same time zone contribute to an efficient total cost of engagement alternative.

If you follow an agile approach to business, then production times will be a top priority for your model. Offshoring can create significant lag times which slow down your turnover rate and cause problems with quality control. “This is where Nearshore becomes an important part of what we do, because the feedback loop is also a lot more interactive when the changes are made close to the stakeholders,” says Mike Hamilton, VP of IT at Databricks.

Conversely, by leveraging nearshore digital talent, clients can be assured of a faster turnaround time and, most importantly, a reduced time to market. If you want to react to industry changes, of which there have been many during the pandemic, then you may want to select nearshore partners who can respond quickly. Today's fast paced and real-time business environment requires nearshore team members to collaborate in unison for effective project execution.

This is made more accessible with fewer language communication problems or cultural barriers for your team to overcome. If you’re an American business seeking a nearshore outsourced partner in Latin America, for example, then you could expect almost an entire working day of overlap with your provider. This also enables nearshore teams to be more productive than teams operating from offshore. If you need to hop on a plane to visit your nearshore team, flights are quick and inexpensive in comparison to traveling to Asia.