How ex-AdventOne’s Jon Ossip plans to revive offshoring

Offshore technology hubs routinely draw the ire of the Australian IT industry and consumers alike, but their usefulness is becoming ever more apparent. 

Over the last year, chief executive officers have become caught in a tug-of-war between investment in digital transformation and operational cost-cutting amid economic headwinds. 

It is this crossfire that inspired former AdventOne CEO Jon Ossip to launch his new venture Optix Digital, a technology consultancy that aims to bridge the gap between offshore skill hubs and innovative transformation. 

Teaming up with customer experience and digital transformation specialist Gabriele Hermansson, Ossip now aims to rebuild the maligned reputation of offshore tech hubs, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“Senior executives are asking their CIOs to continue their transformation,” Ossip said. “In the same breath, they’re asking their CFOs to find cuts because budgets are constrained. When Gaby and I got together and considered this, we saw an opportunity not just for offshoring, but how this can be augmented with artificial intelligence. 

“What we wanted to bring was contextualised, scenario-specific AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning capabilities into the equation for several reasons. One was to increase scale without significant cost increases. AI also surfaces patterns and intelligence that humans are not able to see as quickly as machines.   

Hermansson and Ossip will function as Optix Digital co-directors to offer Australian customers a “scalable offshore facility” of technology skills alongside onshore consulting expertise.  

Specifically, the organisation will leverage an “enthusiastic cohort with excellent IT skills” and relevant certification in Vietnam. 

Spanning 500 people, the facility is the product of Hermansson’s 20-year career building outsourcing centres and CX teams for a number of Australian brands.  

“Gaby has come from 15-plus years of refining and proving the operating model of offshoring successful,” Ossip explained. “Lots of people do offshoring well, but many do it poorly. Offshoring got a really bad reputation during COVID-19, particularly because providers had to send people home to work but weren’t geared up properly for it.” 

According to Hermansson, Optix Digital’s expertise will span a “broad range of capabilities”, including software and cloud engineering, architecture, automation, artificial intelligence and more. 

“What we have are very strong relationships with various expertise and that allows us a level of scalability that’s often difficult to achieve,” she explained. “We can always scale up or scale down. I see that as our value proposition. We can double capacity in a month if needed.” 

“Teams are specialised in a certain area and nothing else. What our model allows is for us to tap into this expertise when they are needed.” 

Increasing talent headcount is difficult in Australia, as Ossip points out. The country currenly only produces 22,000 IT graduates a year, forcing businesses to bring talent into Australia from overseas, which incurs additional costs.  

“What we bring is a highly-skilled onshore consulting capability to build the enterprise architecture; the business analysis and the delivery oversight,” Ossip added. “This is coupled with the heavy lifting of the development carried out offshore – but with our clients always consulting with a highly-skilled expert in Australia.” 

Naturally, the idea of outsourcing talent comes with reservations for many businesses due to past poor management and perceived poorer customer experiences. 

Indeed, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many offshore centres were affected in markets such as India and the Philippines when workers were forced to work from home without the appropriate set-up or equipment. 

“Offshoring doesn’t have the best name out there,” Hermansson said. “But I believe it’s not offshoring itself that’s the issue, it’s how you run the operation. You may have the best skills out there, but they will not be effective if you don’t know how to manage them. 

“If you as an organisation want to scale but are unsure about hiring internal resources, you don’t need to worry. You just tell us what you want to achieve, and we will do the rest.” 

Reassuring potential customers with security concerns, Ossip added: “We take physical security very seriously, from who can enter a data hall to biometric access and a policy of ‘nothing comes in, nothing goes out’. 

“Electronic and cyber security has been invested in heavily. Most of the time, we will not be taking Australian data offshore.”