Vantage Partners recently published the results of a study they conducted called "Managing Offshoring Relationships: Governance in Global Deals.

Participants were asked questions about their participation in their company's most significant offshoring relationship. Data from over 400 companies across the globe showed:

• Culture was the most significant challenge they faced in their offshoring deals. 90 percent of study respondents agreeing that they had faced atleast some challenges
• Customers saw differences between their organization and the organization of their offshore provider. However the offshore providers didn't see significant differences with their customers. 
  
• Customers believed that they were fine with confronting conflict rather than avoiding it.
• Customers also felt that they prefered to communicate directly rather than indirectly
• Customers felt that they could multi-task rather than focus on one thing at a time
• Participants confirmed that cultural differences directly contributed to the difficulty of forming successful outsourcing relationships and other.
• Participants also confirmed that managing scope, managing performance and generating innovation were all impacted by cultural differences between them and their offshoring partner.

Most respondents felt that effective governance and training could minimize the impact of cultural differences in an offshoring relationship.

Not surprisingly, the study confirmed the importance of managing cultural differences. Companies need to do better at understanding and managing cultural differences to enable the creation of long-term offshore relationships.