Author Archives: Hugo Messer

Reshoring: truth or myth?Reshoring: waarheid of mythe?

Are companies moving IT jobs back to their home country? Is offshoring on the reverse? I often hear people say that it’s the case. It often sounds like ‘hard facts’, so I decided to do a small research.

The first thing I found is that there is no research. There is hardly any research about the countries people offshore or nearshore to (at least from the Netherlands I couldn’t find any data). There is also no research about the net effect of jobs moving abroad versus jobs ‘coming back’. Maybe a wake up call to some researchers?

How to Organize Offshore and Nearshore Collaboration?

We recently launched our new eBook about offshoring and nearshoring :
‘How to Organize Offshore and Nearshore Collaboration’

The main questions came up when managing teams that are geographically distributed are:- How do you organize a remote collaboration? What process should you introduce? How do you communicate your requirements? How do you ensure that people are doing what they are supposed to be doing? Nowadays, the technological infrastructure is in place and there are many companies working with globally distributed teams. At the same time, a lot of people look for a proven way to organize remote work. In this eBook, nine practitioners from different parts of the world and from different organizations share best practices based on their experiences.

How to avoid the talent shortage in ecommerce?

The past few years, the ecommerce market is booming all over Europe. And consumers plan to shop online even more. Deutsche Post published a research last week, which shows that by 2025, ecommerce share on overall trade in developed countries, …

Can video conferencing replace physical contact?Kan de video conferentie fysiek contact vervangen?

The past months, I have interviewed some 35 candidates for a marketing and sales role in our company. Because I want to save time, I always do the first screening through Skype. I believe this is a better medium than only phone, since you can see the candidate. So I have a list of questions that I go through in maximum 30 minutes to assure that there is at least a basis.

Remote teams: why you need them and how to work with themRemote teams: waarom u ze nodig heeft en hoe u ermee werkt

Two months back, I visited the lean startup conference in San Francisco. One of the talks that I loved was with Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress. He built wordpress step by step in the past years. Today, he has …