How UK Companies Position Their Offshore Delivery Centers as Thought Leadership Assets

The offshore delivery centers that contribute to the external credibility of their parent organizations have one thing in common: they regard their offshore work as source material for organizational stances within the marketplace. It’s not the same as issuing a press release announcing the establishment of a new center or mentioning employee figures in the annual report.

Three practices define how UK companies that have done this well approach their offshore delivery center strategy. The first is that they allocate research and analytical tasks rather than implementation tasks to ODC teams. The second is that they establish a publication stream for moving content out of the ODC and publishing it externally in the form of articles, consultations, or even presentations at professional industry associations. The third is that they recognize their offshore staff members in these publications.

• Set up a structured publishing pipeline
• Content goes through editing and review
• Published as white papers, regulatory docs, or presentations
• Follow a regular publishing schedule

• Name offshore staff as contributors or co-authors
• Improves retention
• Shows market that offshore teams do high-value work

• Prepare offshore data for external use
• Includes cost, talent, and efficiency insights
• Share at conferences and professional forums

Global delivery model strategy, in essence, involves decision-making regarding what work needs to be done at what location and how the delivery sites will be managed. For the majority of companies based in the UK, such a strategy will be defined inside the company and approved by the management of operations or procurement.

A global delivery model strategy is, at its core, a set of decisions about which work gets done where and how delivery locations are governed. For most UK firms, this strategy is articulated internally and reviewed by operations or procurement leadership. It seldom appears as a point of organizational differentiation in the marketplace.

The global capability centers, especially the ones established by UK financial and professional service providers in India, have been the most dynamic with respect to this realignment. Whereas the output ownership has always rested with the vendor under outsourcing deals, global capability centers hold on to the intellectual property, process, and discovery within their organizational structure. As such, they have been able to position their output externally more easily than outsourcing deals have allowed.

Organizations with headquarters in the UK like Barclays, Standard Chartered, and Aon have released sector insights that have been produced at least partially by the global capability center of these firms located in India. For instance, the global capability center of Standard Chartered based in Chennai has more than 16,000 employees and has helped release positions by the company concerning trade finance, sustainable lending principles, and risks associated with emerging markets.

According to a 2023 NASSCOM talent study covering 240 global capability centers in India, organizations where offshore teams contribute to externally published research report 3.2 times higher five-year retention among senior offshore staff compared to those where offshore teams work exclusively on internal delivery.

The distinction between outsourcing and captive delivery is directly relevant to thought leadership because it determines who owns the work. In a managed outsourcing setup, unless there is an agreement stipulating otherwise, all intellectual property rights will vest with the vendor. Conversely, any work carried out in an ODC or GOC will vest with the parent company. As such, any intellectual property produced will automatically belong to the parent company.

UK companies that used outsourcing as a method for offshore delivery in the past are reconsidering this classification when developing an offshore delivery center strategy. The trend of moving from outsourced models to captive models and BOTs where ownership is transferred to the company parent is partially related to this issue, as an organization needs to use its own products when creating an external position.

The most common entry point for UK organizations repositioning their offshore delivery center strategy around thought leadership is the annual benchmark. There are quite a few UK-headquartered organizations who have recently started putting out their annual statistics related to their offshore delivery centers. This includes metrics such as cost per function, talent numbers, productivity benchmarks, and location comparison. The benefits of doing this are dual in nature. First, the organization gets to position itself as being mature enough to conduct and share these metrics, and second, there is a regular publishing cycle created.

The second opportunity is regulatory participation. UK financial service companies with offshore delivery centers in India and/or Poland will be uniquely suited to provide input into the FCA and PRA consultations regarding third-party risks, operational resilience, and cross-border data transfer based on direct experience in their own ODCs. Responding to the consultations from an organization that has direct offshore operations experience, as opposed to simply offering comments to policymakers from a firm that does not have such experience, has far greater influence with the regulators and within the industry.

In the UK market, the use of offshore delivery centers as a way of reducing costs is giving way to an operational and marketing strategy issue. The companies that understand this change early on and establish the procedures necessary to make the ODC’s output useful externally are going to benefit from a cumulative advantage in the way they are seen by their customers, regulatory bodies, and potential employees.

The global capability centers, especially the ones established by UK financial and professional service providers in India, have been the most dynamic with respect to this realignment. Whereas the output ownership has always rested with the vendor under outsourcing deals, global capability centers hold on to the intellectual property, process, and discovery within their organizational structure. As such, they have been able to position their output externally more easily than outsourcing deals have allowed.

Organizations with headquarters in the UK like Barclays, Standard Chartered, and Aon have released sector insights that have been produced at least partially by the global capability center of these firms located in India. For instance, the global capability center of Standard Chartered based in Chennai has more than 16,000 employees and has helped release positions by the company concerning trade finance, sustainable lending principles, and risks associated with emerging markets.

According to a 2023 NASSCOM talent study covering 240 global capability centers in India, organizations where offshore teams contribute to externally published research report 3.2 times higher five-year retention among senior offshore staff compared to those where offshore teams work exclusively on internal delivery.