Nearshore is an operational word, not a geographic one

Search the difference between nearshore and offshore and every answer you find is about software: sprint ceremonies, code review, the cost of a standup held at midnight. The distinction was invented by that industry and it has settled it sensibly. But an estate or lettings agency asking the same question is asking about different work, and the software answer transfers worse than people assume.

Code tolerates time-shifting. A pull request written in one time zone is reviewed in another and nobody suffers but the impatient. Agency administration does not have that property. The work is full of moments that are only useful live: the referencing query that unblocks a move-in if it is answered within the hour, the contractor who must be rebooked before the tenant leaves for work, the solicitor who calls at four on Friday with one question standing between a chain and exchange.

The test that matters

So the operational definition is simple. If the person doing your administration is at their desk for the whole of your business day, able to take and make live calls inside it, and working to the same statutory calendar your obligations run on, the arrangement behaves as nearshore, wherever the desk stands. If they are not — if your afternoon is their night, if the phone is answered by a rota, if a same-day deadline lands in a queue that flushes tomorrow — it behaves as offshore, however it is branded.

• Live telephone work inside UK business hours, both directions.
• Same-day turnaround on the statutory items that carry dates.
• A working week that matches yours, including the awkward ends of it.
• One person, reachable by name, rather than a queue that is technically always open.

By that test, some providers in classically offshore destinations run genuinely nearshore operations, at genuine cost to their staff, who work nights to do it. And some nominally European arrangements fail it, because the person serving you is shared across six clients and live for none of them. The map does not decide; the rota does.

Our own answer to the test is unremarkable to state: Pristina is one hour ahead of London, the working day here is built around the British one, and each administrator serves one firm, on that firm’s telephone system, under that firm’s name. We put it this way round deliberately — the claim is checkable in your first week, and it is the only version of nearshore we think worth paying for.

Ejas Deane is a partner of the firm. He answers enquiries himself.