Page 27 - Nearshoring to Romania

Your expectations will likely be different from those anticipated by the Romanian staff. At the same
time, you will direct and manage in a way that is different to what people in Romania are used to.
If the nearshoring partner is of a foreign origin that is not your own, a second cultural bridge is
introduced. Within the nearshoring company everyone will have accommodated to the existing cultural
boundary. This holds true both at the management and employee level. Working with such a company
would mean having to work with “foreigners” (i.e. not Romanian) on the management level. At the
same time the Romanian employees of the partner would have to work with a foreign partner that is of
another origin than their management and most of their customers. In other words, on every level a
second cultural gap will be introduced.
Selecting a purely Romanian partner would probably introduce fewer risks than selecting a partner that
is from another (non-Romanian) country than your own. The only extra challenge in that case would be
to work with Romanian staff both on the management and operational level.
4.2.1.2 Willingness to travel
As stressed elsewhere in this chapter, it is inevitable that, at regular intervals, people travel to the other
location in order to discuss matters face-to-face. Ease of travel is therefore a factor in the decision
process. Are key-people from the nearshoring partner willing to travel to your local branch? And if so,
under which conditions and for how long? Planning ahead will reduce costs for plane tickets and
possibly hotels. Usually there will be a daily allowance involved for people coming to the local branch
and it will help to know these costs.
4.2.1.3 Location
An obvious criterion related to travel is the location of your partner. Assuming you will need to fly to
Romania it will make a great difference if there are direct flights or if a transfer is necessary. From most
countries there are direct flights to Bucharest and one of the other bigger cities, such as Cluj or
Timisoara. Romanian roads are rather busy, so take this into consideration when thinking of travel by
car, either from your home country or within Romania. Train travel is possible but infrequent and
generally much slower than travel by car.
4.2.2 Post selection criteria
The only way to find out if a partner is a good match is by doing something of a “field test”. In
production, this would mean to have the potential partner produce samples of the goods to be examined
by you. In software or services, the best way to do this is by assigning a real world task to the partner and
evaluating the results.
For you as a client, the extra effort is well invested considering the risks of working with the wrong
partner. You do have to consider, however, the investments the potential partner has to make. The tasks
should not be so elaborate that the partner will shy away from taking it on out of fear for not getting a
return on investment.
For the field test it is very important to work with the partner as would be done in the actual
collaboration. Make sure the key people on your side communicate with the people in Romania, not just
someone from HR or another person that will no longer be around once the real work starts. Also, keep
deadlines and quality standards in place as you would in a real project.
4.3 IT nearshoring
IT nearshoring makes up a significant part of business that is outsourced to Romania. Many of the issues
described in this chapter are based on experience in IT outsourcing.
In the following paragraphs we will discuss a few points that are specific to IT nearshoring to a partner in
Romania.

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Nearshoring to Romania, NRCC 2013