If you’re comparing outsourcing options, you might be considering onshore vs offshore models. Do you keep everything in-house for complete control, or do you outsource work overseas to reduce costs?
This mindset might have made sense a decade ago, but it no longer holds up today. A compliance decision and a data-entry task carry different risks, and one location can’t serve both well. This explains why more companies are considering rightshoring.
This article answers the question: What is rightshoring? It defines it, compares it with onshoring and offshoring, and provides rightshoring strategies for SMBs.
What is rightshoring?
Rightshoring places each business function in the location suited to its complexity, cost, compliance, and customer needs, on its own terms.
A business that uses rightshoring does not ask whether it should outsource; rather, it asks a different question for every function:
- What does this specific work need?
- Does it require deep product knowledge?
- Does it need same-time-zone availability?
KPMG’s report stated that traditional outsourcing is falling from 55% to 37%, while hybrid and modular delivery models are expected to roughly double, from 14% to 30%. Rightshoring uses a hybrid model, treating location as a variable to optimize for each function, rather than a single decision applied across the entire organization.
Rightshoring vs offshoring, nearshoring, and onshoring
| Onshoring | Offshoring | Nearshoring | Rightshoring | |
| Location | Home country | Distant country | Nearby country, similar time zone | Spans all three, matched by function |
| Cost | Highest | Lowest | Moderate | Set by the mix chosen |
| Time zone overlap | Full | Minimal | High | Set by the mix chosen |
| Language and compliance fit | Strongest | Most variable | Strong | Set by the mix chosen |
| Control | Highest | Lowest | Moderate | Set by the mix chosen |
| Role | A location option | A location option | A location option | Chooses the right model for each function |
To understand what rightshoring is, let us compare it with other models, including offshoring, nearshoring, and onshoring.
Onshoring
Onshoring is when employers keep work in their home country. It provides the most control over workflows, the easiest path to compliance, the smallest time zone difference, and the smallest language barrier. Onshoring is also the most expensive of the four models, which is why very few companies onshore all their work.
Offshoring
When you move work to a distant country, such as a U.S. company hiring a customer service team in the Philippines, you are offshoring this task. Often, employers offshore work to save costs and access expertise unavailable in their country. The tradeoff is a larger time zone gap and more variation in language fluency and compliance.
Nearshoring
Nearshoring sits in between onshore and offshore arrangements. It’s when work moves to a nearby country, usually one with a similar or overlapping time zone (e.g., Canada or Mexico). Nearshoring increases real-time collaboration compared to offshoring, while still reducing costs compared to onshoring.
Rightshoring
When it comes to rightshoring vs offshoring, offshoring can be a tool that a rightshoring company uses and therefore not a competitor. The same is true for rightshoring vs nearshoring, with nearshoring being a location option.
Rightshoring is a decision-making strategy that helps managers determine whether they should nearshore, offshore, or onshore. It is not a fourth location but rather a layer that determines how to combine these models into a single strategy. A good onshore, offshore, nearshore mix is the result of a rightshoring strategy.
Why does the onshore vs offshore debate miss what companies need?
Most companies have mixed workflows, from repetitive tasks to compliance-heavy work, for which a single strategy won’t work well.
A mid-sized business might have compliance-heavy claims decisions, high-touch account management calls, high-volume data entry, and after-hours customer support, all inside the same organization. Each of those functions has different requirements regarding judgment, cost sensitivity, compliance exposure, and customer expectations.
Treating all that work the same way, whether keeping everything onshore or pushing everything offshore, creates a mismatch. When you keep it all onshore, you overpay for the repetitive, lower-judgment work. Take it all offshore, and you introduce risk to the functions that actually require local judgment, tight compliance controls, or strong client rapport.
Companies that ask “What is rightshoring?” are recognizing that a single, one-size-fits-all location strategy no longer matches the complexity of their modern operations.
What is the rightshoring strategy? A four-part framework
The correct rightshoring strategy comes down to evaluating each function against four criteria before deciding where it should go.
1. Complexity and judgment requirements
Work that demands deep product knowledge, high-stakes decisions, or compliance interpretation should stay onshore or nearshore, close to the business. Standardized, rules-based work can move to a location that keeps operating costs low.
In a case study, a wireless management company had its main call center team stretched thin by overtime and hiring gaps. Unity trained a 24/7 offline team to handle repetitive, high-volume tasks, freeing the client’s core reps to focus on complex problems and sales support.
2. Cost sensitivity and labor arbitrage potential
When it comes to high-volume, repeatable tasks, such as back-office processing or transactional support, you can expect greater cost savings with a nearshore or offshore delivery model, provided there’s no meaningful drop in quality.
3. Compliance and data security obligations
Work involving regulated data, including healthcare records or financial account information, carries obligations that follow the data wherever it’s processed. For example, HHS requires a written business associate contract whenever a covered entity shares this data with an outside vendor, regardless of that vendor’s location.
4. Customer-facing expectations
Functions where customers expect fluent, culturally appropriate communication and quick response times should stay closer to the customer base, whether through onshore staff or a nearshore team with strong language skills and overlapping hours.
Here’s a company example: An IT company needed round-the-clock coverage instead of an eight-hour help desk. Unity built a tier 1 team for entry-level tickets, connected by API to the client’s existing team for escalations. The client ended up running call center operations across three countries for full weekly coverage.
Rightshoring as a business model
Rightshoring works best as an ongoing rightshoring business model. Business needs change, and a function that made sense to keep onshore two years ago might now be practical enough to move. On the other hand, a function that was offshored for cost reasons might need to move closer to the customer as service expectations change.
Companies that treat rightshoring as a business model, rather than a single decision, adjust as the business evolves. This flexibility is more of an advantage than any single location choice.
Rightshoring strategy for SMBs
Rightshoring is often discussed as a strategy for large enterprises with global footprints, but a rightshoring strategy for SMBs works the same way, just at a smaller scale. A growing SMB might decide to keep leadership, sales, and key account management tasks onshore while moving customer support, data entry, or scheduling to a nearshore or offshore team.
To illustrate,
- A 40-person e-commerce brand keeps its founder, head of marketing, and two account managers onshore for its biggest retail partners. Those roles require product judgment and client trust.
- Order support, returns processing, and inventory data entry move to a nearshore team in Mexico, where overlapping business hours allow agents to handle same-day customer questions without communication lag.
The result: leadership stays close to strategic accounts, and the routine volume that scales with sales runs at a lower cost without slowing down response times.
The same four-part framework applies regardless of company size. What changes is the number of functions being evaluated, not the logic behind the decisions.
What does rightshore mean for your business?
The answer starts with an honest audit of your own functions. List the major workstreams in your business. For each one, ask how much judgment it requires, how cost-sensitive it is, what compliance obligations are attached to it, and how much your customers care about who is doing the work and where it is done.
This will reveal a natural onshore, offshore, nearshore mix for your business, even before you bring in a delivery partner.
Where Unity Communications fits in
Rightshoring only works as well as the operational strategy behind it. Splitting functions across multiple locations creates coordination challenges: consistent quality standards, unified reporting, compliance alignment across jurisdictions, and a single point of accountability.
This is where Unity Communications comes in. With BPO services and delivery capabilities across the U.S., Mexico, and the Philippines, we don’t push clients toward a single model for everything. Instead, we help clients build the mix that fits their actual functions, matching complexity, cost sensitivity, compliance requirements, and customer expectations to the right location.
