Quality
The founder of Offshore Labor, physicist Mark Prado, first used offshore programmers in the late 1980s to solve quality problems with elusive local consultants and employees. Based in the Washington, D.C., area, Mr. Prado had many contacts overseas, and when demand for programmers exceeded supply of quality-minded locals, he started going into the worldwide professional services market.
Quality starts with hiring the right people in the first place.
We do not hire people based only on paper credentials. Attitude and taking pride in their work are personality traits that are prerequisites, as is talent. You cannot take mediocre staff and train quality into them. Personalities don't change. If you want things done right, you need the right people, starting with the CEO leadership and in every level down to the "nuts and bolts" workers -- a corporate culture with real integrity.
Cost vs. quality, offshore vs. onshore
Price is usually proportional to quality, but there are two scales for price: onshore and offshore.
First of all, offshore prices will be considerably more economical for a given level of quality. Offshore prices can be fully offshore (i.e., all labor offshore) or partly offshore (e.g., website artwork and programming offshore, content writing by the host company). For example, in many countries a university graduate in computer science starts work fulltime at $300 per month and moves up to $500-$600 after years of experience, for local companies. (We pay more, retaining talented and quality-minded individuals.)
Secondly, contrary to popular belief, offshore can mean greater quality. Most customers will find that quality will improve once they go beyond their own local folks and start tapping into the best talent on the vast worldwide market. (We have world-class artists and programmers, teamed with native English professional writers. Our researchers, analysts and conceptual designers are Western led.)
Third, offshore workers are usually more reliable, not less, compared to many "local" consultants in North America and Europe, because Westerners tend to become unavailable due to other local work or move around more, whereas offshore workers usually don't work for companies in their own locality at all but are geared for the international market. Offshore workers usually have fewer local options and distractions. They tend to have less arrogance and more appreciation for work, especially for Western companies.
Even in cases when an offshore worker gets carried away with a full-time offshore project, it is less costly to bring a new offshore worker up to speed with a client at a later time than it would cost for a consultant local to you to come up to speed. The offshore talent pool is vastly greater than the local supply market, and it will be a very long time -- decades? -- before the supply of offshore workers tightens up.
In general, by going with an offshore outsourcing company like ours, you can leave it to us to manage your projects with both cost efficiency and effectiveness.
No, we're not a sweatshop!
Unlike many other offshore operations, CQ is not a sweatshop operation. Offshore workers are known for their diligence in serving overseas clients when faced with the options of offshore work paid in US dollars vs. local work and long hours at menial rates in an inflationary currency. Nevertheless, we do not push our offshore workers to their minimum wage and maximum workweek limits, even if they want to work more because:
 | fatigue and burnout cause quality and value to suffer, especially in creativity |
| overworked people make mistakes when tired |
| tired people take shortcuts and avoid more work to do the right thing |
On the other hand:
| a pleasant working environment is conducive to pride and artistic creativity |
| well-paid staff (by their standards) are loyal |
| limited working hours keeps energy levels strong |
Quantity of hours is no substitute for quality.
This business is profitable enough, and it would become a problem for everyone if we tried to squeeze more profit out of it, in addition to bad karma. That's not the way to live life.
Our non-Western people are of relatively high status and wages in their own country by their local standards, and are exceptional achievers.
While standard ISO procedures and "total quality management" (TQM) guidelines can sometimes be useful, quality really comes down to individuals, not just trying to squeeze quality out of an ordinary organization.
Frankly, many offshore companies often just have a bunch of MBAs and generic project managers who hire cheaper-wage people based on paper credentials compared to market demand, with little executive understanding of the technical fields involved, whereby one computer guy looks like another to these founders and managers. We are not just brokers of services and paper credentials -- "warm bodies". Instead, CQ has highly accomplished and experienced specialists in the same fields as the applicants they examine, hire and manage. The field of computers is as vast as the medical and legal fields, and quality comes from specialists hiring specialists and developing micro-community teams.
The Importance of a Central Office
Many offshore companies are really just brokers. They collect paper credentials from local labor applicants (and rarely check them to see if they're true), display to potential customers in the U.S. the best samples of work from a few of their applicants (who are often unavailable for the work), and then just subcontract to whatever other applicants are willing to do the job at a low bid, then just taking a sizeable cut.
We have all our work done in our office, and do not subcontract work outside. Our priorities are proven by the fact that the CEO of our company is located in the Bangkok office managing operations, not in the U.S. marketing. The reason is to get complete quality work out on time, and within budget. Many people have tried ... and failed miserably ... to outsource to strangers, sight unseen. Here's why a westerner running an offshore office is important:
- Oversee projects as they develop, not review big chunks of work already done, to prevent wasteful revisions and make sure a project is guided well from the start.
- Have an experienced western businessman train and mentor local staff, and constantly oversee the projects.
- Of course, have a central office where people show up for 8 hours of good work per day, without distractions. (If you want disasters, then subcontract to moonlighters "sight unseen" to work from wherever they are.)
- Get past language barriers -- shortcomings and misunderstandings -- by teamwork and constant improvement of English in communications, whereby all email is handled by a western expat and fully communicated to staff with double-checking. Few people will admit "No, I don't understand" because that' sbad for business. "Yes, I understand" must be true and monitored.
- Don't let techies show off skills not relevant to your business, to impress their peers. You need business graphical design, appropriate features, and overall site design -- business sense.
- Create a "corporate culture" conducive to quality, community consciousness and reliability, whereby good staff are retained and assimilated.
Countless times, we've heard people in North America complain that Offshore Labor doesn't work because excessive amounts of their valuable time is spent in revisions, clarifying communications and basic things. You won't have that problem with us.
One of the reasons we are in Thailand, the only country in the region never colonized by a western power, is because Thais are loyal to their community and do not job hop if they are in a good place. It's part of their secure, nurturing culture. Thais are also artistically creative (the word Thai means "free"). The country is rich in food, low in crime, and saturated with university graduates. Our company is like a family. We will always be here for each other, and you can find us here in the future, indeed the same individuals you work with before.
Retaining quality workers
We retain talent by developing mutually respectful relationships in our professional disciplines, paying well by local standards, and developing a community in and around our company.
Class goes beyond basic economics.
In contrast, how many times have you experienced absolutely appauling quality of service in the U.S., Europe or Australasia? Relative wealth does not assure a high class of service.
Some people have quipped "The quality of service of our XYZ department is so bad that it can't get any worse by Offshore Labor. Surely, you have people hungrier than ours to be motivated to provide better service."
Quality does not come from mere financial motivation, nor from something intrinsic to Western culture. Many weaknesses have emerged in Western culture, especially in the latter decades among a larger percentage of the population.
Poor quality generally comes from some or all of the following factors:
| Careless personality, poor work ethic, bad attitude |
| "Disconnectedness", feel disposable, owners and management don't really care about anything except profits, so why should they really care about anything besides salary? Why do thankless extra work? |
| Lack of time and focus -- overworked staff, too few doing too much |
| Low skill, lack of experience |
| Bad management, doesn't quality-assure staff performance |
| Complacency, can get away with the "minimum required" for job ... or less |
Bad quality actually starts at the top, with the CEO, who is ultimately responsible for the corporate culture. If the CEO only wants to increase the bottom line but doesn't take pride in the work of their company, then they will in turn hire the wrong kind of managers, who will in turn hire employees based on limited criteria such as paper credentials and salary expectations. Many think that the best way to improve profitability is to cut costs, often in brutish ways. No matter how much the CEO starts talking quality (motivated only by increasing the bottom line), improved quality won't happen. You can't squeeze blood out of a rock, no matter how hard you demand it.
There are many high quality people around the world who work in companies where they are not fully appreciated, and who are eager to work for a company which will appreciate them. If given the interesting opportunity of working for a Western company, they will seek to improve their life.
You don't need to put up with bad quality in your locality in the world. You have options now, with Internet. Globalization means that you can find the best people in the world.
The world has countless quality people interested in providing Westerners a proud level of quality. Our company's role is finding these people, setting them up to provide services, and bringing you and them together.
Continuity in quality
Offshore Labor is a service of Export Quality Services Co., Ltd. (CQ).
You can count on CQ being here to take care of your company in the future. CQ is a leader in this century of globalization. Unlike the ordinary internet company in the U.S., we are based almost entirely offshore where labor as well as office space are inexpensive. As a services company with low capital and operating costs combined with high cash flow, we have no debt.
Unlike many "dot com" "dot bombs", we are an internet company based on a real product and which isn't saddled with expensive staff and overhead nor Super Bowl advertising strategies. We make money by earning it the old-fashioned way -- with real work -- not by an IPO stock scam, nor by selling advertisements on our websites and other hare-brained schemes by legions of MBAs who wanted to make a fortune on the internet but understood little of how it worked and just gave it a bad name.
The founder of CQ and Offshore Labor, Mark Prado, set up one of the first public access internet service providers (ISPs) in the Washington, D.C., area around 1990, long before the web existed. (Back then it was mainly just e-mail, Usenet, FTP, Telnet and Gopher.)
We don't pay much for marketing. Our marketing effort is mainly the work of offshore people who surf the web looking for specific kinds of customers to have direct communications with on a case-by-case basis. These are eager offshore human resources trying to find projects to work on from oft-worshipped Western business gurus. You will get the best service from our respectful staff.
Background of our leadership
Offshore Labor was founded by Mark Prado, CEO of Export Quality Services Co., Ltd.
Quality has always been a sensitive issue to Mr. Prado, and also his competitive edge. (The other side of the sword, however, is that Mr. Prado was often given more than his fair share of work because of his results.)
Originally a scientist (physicist), Mr. Prado initially used internet and other computer communications to network the best scientific minds in the U.S. and the world for particular projects in the mid-1980s, while living and working in the Washington, D.C., area. Soon thereafter, Mr. Prado embarked on a radical career change by switching to consulting in the communications and computer field itself for a variety of private entities as well as the U.S. government (State and Defense departments). He eventually founded one of the first purely private, public access internet service providers in the greater D.C. metropolitan region (long before the web existed, mainly email, groupmail and other on-line reference sites) long before the internet became trendy. It was during this time that he started experimenting with offshore skilled labor, initially in the Soviet Union (before its breakup) and Europe.
Notably, a mutual friend linked Mr. Prado with Dr. Tom Glenn, former Director of Quality for the National Security Agency, and as an informal partnership operated the first and one of the best ever email mailing lists and discussion groups on Total Quality Management (TQM). (This was unofficial.)
In 10 years of consulting to a variety of entities in the Washington, D.C., region, Mr. Prado pretty much saw it all in both the private and public sectors. (Notably, one of the last projects he consulted to on the government side was an ARPA / DARPA ([Defense] Advanced Projects Research Agency) "defense conversion" project to convert targeted defense industries into private enterprises to live off the world market instead of the government/taxpayer, under a directive by President Clinton. That project hit a minefield of quality and deadwood issues.)
In 1994, Mr. Prado moved to Asia where he traveled around. Starting in 1995, he began consulting to the multinational engineering community to gain intimate experience in operating with offices staffed mostly with Asians mentored by western Managing Directors. Some of these companies exported engineering design services to North America, Australia and other industrialized nations, offering cost savings. The actual quality of work varied from poor to superior, which reflected the personal traits and thus leadership of the Managing Director(s). Many simply hired based on paper credentials and did "slave driving". Others cared, and mentored their most talented and quality-minded applicants. The difference between such companies is like night and day.
In 1997, the Asia economic crash brought massive layoffs, downsizing and salary cuts to most companies in that sector, but Mr. Prado helped some companies survive and even grow rapidly by exporting their services via the internet to North America.
In 1998, Mr. Prado founded Export Quality Services Co., Ltd., to export various kinds of skilled offshore labor.
Offshore Labor is a sector of Export Quality Services Co., Ltd.
Quality in payment method
While e-commerce is well established in the U.S., in many countries it barely exists, if it exists at all, for various reasons (e.g., local banks in bad international standing, usually due to nonperforming loans and political corruption, and weak laws and/or police for prosecution). When you deal with us, you are dealing with a company which has real, secure e-commerce, based 100% in the United States of America, and nobody else has access to your credit card information. Many companies which claim to have secure e-commerce do not. For an explanation of the difference, and how to test a particular site's e-commerce system for true security, click here. If a site ever doesn't pass this test, don't give them your credit card number.
Alternatively, instead of using a credit card, you can just deposit money into our Bank of America account, at any Bank of America branch. We also have other accounts with other banks around the world.
Our staff are highly dependent upon our ability to get money to them in their preferred way (including, of course, offshore savings accounts in U.S. dollars to protect against their own inflationary currencies). We take care of our staff as well as our clients.
In the global economy, there are many ways that we can work with you in providing offshore skilled labor for your enterprise, including as a strategic partner. You can benefit from our expert associates as regards such things as taxes and offshore enterprises.
For further information, contact us by e-mail or click the icon below for live chat or instant messaging.
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www.OffshoreLabor.com is a service of Export Quality Services Co., Ltd.
