On December 10, Outsource Magazine in cooperation with IBA Group conducted a webinar entitled Nearshoring IT Services: How To Make Nearshoring Work For You.

The panelists at the webinar were Jamie Liddell, editor at Outsource Magazine; Mark Kobayashi–Hillary, British writer, blogger, and analyst based in Sao Paolo, Brazil; and Alena Levteeva, IBA UK Director. Al Tepper, Publisher of Outsource, worked in the control room to orchestrate the technical side of the webinar.

The webinar included a number of polls that kept the listeners interactive and enabled the organizers to understand the audience. The first poll revealed that most of the audience are already engaged in outsourcing or planning to do that.

The second poll showed that half of the webinar listeners use a mixture of onshore and offshore operating models in their location strategy.

The next poll showed what sort of activities the listeners intend to outsource.

The last poll reflected the audience’s concerns about nearshoring. Half of those polled are worried about political, environmental, and other risks in an offshore location.

Alena spoke of the advantages of Eastern Europe as a neashoring destinations, including cultural similarity with and geographic proximity to customers in Western Europe, cost savings, and access to the talent pool. She highlighted a partnership approach to client relationships embedded in the IBA Group’s culture.

Mark gave a bigger picture of nearshoring. In his view, nearshoring is when “you get to your supplier and back in one day”. Nearshoring emerged as a strategy in the last decade. Companies use nearshoring to find the needed skills, to use the experience of similar projects by outsourcing providers, and to cut costs. According to Mark, nearshoring in Europe is an important trend and it is becoming far more attractive than offshoring.