No doubt, the evaluation of outsourcing and offshoring locations brings you in touch with India. Mumbai, Chennai, or Bangalore are emerging cities offering services for any kind of business processes. Low labour costs, strong technical expertise, and good English skills are the pulling factors making India an attractive place. However, dealing with the Indian subcontinent can be a challenging task especially for people from a western culture. Here are the 3 most challenging issues when doing projects with Indian contractors:
Feedback
In India weaknesses and failures are not admitted in public; it might result in losing face. So before someone admits a failure he tries to cloud it with vague statements. Therefore the client can’t expect an early warning if a milestone is not achieved. Western cultures treat a deadline as given, so 5th of September means 5th of September and not 6th, 7th or 15th. From Indian perspective time is stretchable; they see a few days delay still as delivery in time. Together with the Indian "optimistic" style of planning this brings projects into trouble.
Specifications
Projects start with user requirements usually written down in a specification document. If the specification is written on abstract level, people don't know exactly what to do. Without demanding further information they start to work according their own interpretation. If it's written too detailed, people follow each instruction without reconsidering if things make sense or not. The first presentation of an interim deliverable (and I hope you have interim deliverables in your project) ends up with an unpleasant surprise for the client.
Contracts and agreements
In western cultures contracts are final after signed by both parties. An agreed fixed price is a fixed price. In India a fixed price is often treated as guideline, a point of reference. It is considered normal to renegotiate or to charge extra cost during the contract period of validity. The major issue is that during contract negotiation, the Indian party fully agrees to the fixed terms without mentioning the possibility of extra charges. On the other hand, the western counterpart does not even think on upcoming extra charges after signing; they take the approval of the Indian counterpart as fixed agreement. And as soon the Indian party starts the first attempt to renegotiate the price, the clash is inevitable.
Feedback, specifications, and contracts; 3 Indian challenges. In the next “Challenge India” articles I will advise how to deal with these challenges and make projects with Indian contractors a success story.
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