Closing our monitoring centre and hiring an offshore company

Our company is going through a bit of a downturn and looking to cut costs where we can. One area we are considering is closing our cctv monitoring room which employs 3 people around the clock, and then hiring a team abroad to take over. They are offering the same service at half the price. Whilst it makes economic sense we are a bit divided on pushing forward.

Have any members had any experience with outsourcing their monotoring? Any pitfalls/advantages?

Any advice or recommendations would be highly appreciated.

I have never done this before but a few obvious problems come to mind.

First- one of the reasons this country is in the mess it is due in no small part to outsourcing. A simple question is regardless of the business you are in- what would the effect be if your customers ( whether individuals or businesses) had their livelihood outsourced?

How well would your business do if your customers income was either directly or indirectly shipped overseas where they could no longer afford to use your business?

Granted you are only talking three guys but this is why the country is in trouble because this scenario has played out millions of times over the last few decades. Eventually you could get to a point where all the income that used to stay in this country and used to buy other American businesses products and services will be in China and India so who are American businesses going to sell to?

If Americans no longer have the money because it is now going overseas then who is going to be left to do business with an American company?

Also, one problem with Message Boards is you can read "what" a person says but not "how" they said it. My comment was in no way meant to be snippy or condescending. I am in business as well and things aren't real great for us either. But we are now feeling the direct consequences of outsourcing.

Many of our customers are no longer able to to do business with us because their jobs or their entire company was moved overseas. As we watch our income continue to drop as a direct result of outsourcing what will be the result when we have no customers left because the money that used to be in their pockets is now in the pockets of Indians and Chinese?

The only option left would be to "go out of business" or move our business overseas since that is where all the money went. Unfortunately in our case- that option isn't practical.

On a more practical note:

Right now you have people monitoring a closed circuit system which is reliable to the point of being virtually unbreakable as long as the system has power. No outages or camera drop outs and in the unlikely event it did occur you have people on site to " go look for themselves" if necessary.

Your remote monitoring will take place through the internet and be transmitted to the other side of the world.

Have you ever had your internet connection slow down to a point that pages take forever to load?

How about the connection going out entirely?

Camera systems require a generous amount of bandwidth in order to make monitoring real time events practical. And the more cameras you have and the more detail you need to see the higher the bandwidth has to be.

If your internet connection slows down or drops out completely then real time monitoring becomes impossible. Most systems do have hard drive backup but if something is missed entirely due to a poor connection and enough time transpires then what you are looking for may have been overwritten with more current trivial events by the time you go looking for it.

So you are making your camera system vulnerable to the whims and idiosyncrasies of an internet connection. If what you are monitoring is not that critical where if it goes out for awhile its "no big deal" you may get away with it.

But if you need to see what's going on every second and without interruption it is unlikely an internet connection will be able to provide that.

Especially half a world away.

Our company is going through a bit of a downturn and looking to cut costs where we can. One area we are considering is closing our cctv monitoring room which employs 3 people around the clock, and then hiring a team abroad to take over. They are offering the same service at half the price. Whilst it makes economic sense we are a bit divided on pushing forward.

 

Have any members had any experience with outsourcing their monotoring? Any pitfalls/advantages?

 

Any advice or recommendations would be highly appreciated.

If only 3 staff and your costs are high can mean a few things .... You have a very small customer base

Outsourcing to a 3rd party in another country is not going to help ..... First the laws about monitoring in your own country Vs laws in another

Last thing your company needs is your customers footage ending up on YouTube

It sounds like you are best turning you local competitors into a partner .... Close down your costs and licence your customers out

From a marketing standpoint, I think your company has a lot more to lose than it has to gain in the long term. I doubt very much that your existing customers or future customers are going to like the idea of outsourcing.

Having my video feed being monitored by someone unregulated by my own country would also make me a little more than nervous to stay with my current provider.

AT&T has really amped up their outsourcing game lately and their own customers have not been taking well to it.

Again, from a long term perspective, I think your company is headed in the direction of putting itself out of business. It going to be perceived as greed over customer care.

I know it's a tough pill to swallow, but I look at it this way. If your company is having financial issues, sometimes cutting back on this sort of stuff may help save more jobs in the long run, especially if it keeps them from closing their doors.

Sending the monitoring off to state that has lower cost of labor may save or going to India will and they speak English in India. I've worked with companies that had staff in India for many years. So I understand the downsides, but the reality is customers never know and some of the largest companies do it. China does it for half the price of India, but English is not their primary language like it is in India.

I have no empathy for people because of outsourcing because those very same people make decisions in their personal life as to where to buy a product or from where it's made and for the most part do so without regard to who's job it affects. How many of you buy say a book or a hard drive at Amazon because it's $10 cheaper than buying it locally from someone you pays taxes and supports your local community and then wonder why bookstores and computer stores are going out of business? Different world than the one our grandparents grew up in.

Many thanks for the replies. I should have perhaps been a bit clearer on the nature of our business - we are a refrigeration company and have no customers coming through the doors. Nobody would be any the wiser that we have outsourced. Whilst I understand peoples misgiving's about outsourcing it's an unavoidable part of the modern global economy.

Our operation isn't exactly city-sized so I don't see bandwidth being a problem.

Nobody would be any the wiser that we have outsourced.

Nobody would be any the wiser that we have outsourced.

That's a cold attitude!

I agree, thats why I hate accountants they see the balance sheet but not the devistation to the lives of those who have given years of dedicated service watching the company's interest.

They aren't people they are an expense on the balance sheet.

I am glad to know that the company are reluctant to make this change even though they know it will save them a lot of money. That at least shows some compassion. Sometime for the greater good such decisions have to be made harsh at it may seem. I hope you can work out a way to at least reduce the job losses. perhaps making the night shift outsourced only?

This must be a very heart rendering decision for the company.

While the merits and detractors to overseas can be debated until we're blue in the face, that's not the real issue here--it's cost.

So how can you make the current employees jobs 'cheaper' and still keep them here?

Well, if you're going to outsource monitoring, why do these employees even need to come into work? Let them monitor from home in their PJs using their own Internet connection. It's not much different than the quality drop from outsourcing. But it does cost you less, and the employees less (no commute time/fuel/expense, no more daycare, etc.), and they might be willing to take a paycut for this reduction in their personal expenses.

In this economy, efficiency is the name of the game on all levels--getting the same job done with the same quality at a cheaper cost. And there's a lot of efficiency to be gained in most companies, even on the simplest things. Efficiency=cost savings, which fixes the money problem for a lot of companies.

That would be too much trouble for the accountants, they do NOT understand that sort of logic.

That would be too much trouble for the accountants, they do NOT understand that sort of logic.

Right now I'm actually working in the capacity of an accountant, so these type of ideas appeal to us very much. There's a cost in transitioning anything to a different system/outsourcing/etc. And this cost is usually up-front. If you can avoid up-front cost and pay a little more going forward while still reducing the expense, it makes more sense. After all, business still has to be running through transitions, and the messier, the more expensive.