There has been recent attention in the media given to offshore outsourcing to VA’s in India and similar countries. Most recently was a story on the “Today” show on Channel 9 in Australia. The theme seems to be that it is a cheap option for business owners to save them money.

Most of these advocates pushing the “cheap” option don’t realise or just ignore the fact that we have a thriving Virtual Assistance industry in Australia, an industry filled with experienced, skilled, educated and professional VA’s. Going for the ‘cheap’ option in India may just prove to be a false economy - often English is not the first language and it can be tricky for someone to pick up the nuances of Australian English if they are not from here. I have heard first hand of businesses outsourcing their transcription to someone in India, only to have it returned in such bad shape, they then have to spend hours going over it themselves to make sense of it, or pay someone in Australia to tidy it up or re-transcribe it. Where is the cost saving in that? Or time saving for that matter?
I am sure that there are professionals in India just like there are in any other country (in fact I have dealt with a couple myself who were IT specialists and very, very good at what they do) but the advocates of this cheap option seem to be pushing the unskilled, non-professional workers as “VA”s which is misleading and gives our professional industry a tarnished image.

I firmly believe you get what you pay for - if you pay peanuts, you quite often get monkeys.

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