The hourly rate was on the slide, and it was unbeatable. A year later the same task cost more than before — the extra cost had just moved somewhere else.
We ran SAP landscapes, and the company was adding new capacity only at an offshore site in India. The plan sounded clean: hand over the night operations completely, documented down to the last step. On paper that works. In practice several things collided. Language and culture first — the friendly „yes, yes“ that, in doubt, means „did not understand,“ and that you only notice when something stalls at three in the morning. Then the fluctuation: we had no exciting job to offer, the pay sat below the local average, and we had badly underestimated staff retention. In the end we were a training camp with fast turnover — barely was someone up to speed, they were gone again.
The bill nobody writes on the slide
Every departure cost onboarding again, every onboarding tied up our German people for training, documentation and control. That is where the real bill formed. A six-person team cost us around €500,000 in Germany. After the shift — more heads in India, plus the new load for coordination, communication, control and rework here — we were at about €700,000. We had several such teams; it added up fast. The arbitrage on the hourly rate was real. It just got eaten by everything the rate did not include.
What such business cases systematically leave out is always the same: the preparation effort, the ongoing operational effort, and the change inside your own house. Your own people have to be behind it, or the thing dies at the start. Half-hearted destroys more trust than the hourly rate ever saves.
Before you approve a relocation, do not ask for the hourly-rate comparison. Ask for the full cost after eighteen months — with coordination, rework and fluctuation inside it. If the number still holds, we can talk.
