What makes outsourcing successful

If your small business is homebased, you may not want employees coming to your house. You can solve many of these problems by outsourcing work to freelancers or other small companies.

But web content and social media can be powerful ways to attract business. Outsourcing writing and posting to a freelancer or marketing agency in your community can get the job done professionally and on a regular basis. Like anything else you do in business, outsourcing takes some planning and research. Here are the three most important things you can do to make outsourcing work for your business:.

Keep an activity log showing the things you do. Look for things you do on a repetitive basis that could be done just as well by other people. Put the information in writing being as detailed as you can be about the tasks to be done and your expectations.. Then provide that document to the company you hire to do the work. When you attend local business meetings and industry events, keep your eye out for individuals or companies who might be able to do some of your work. However, when the company itself is based in that region, the paradigm shifts.

Alibaba understood that while they could keep their manufacturing and resource costs low locally, the skills they needed to grow were not available at scale in their region. With this in mind, Alibaba started looking for partners and outsourcers early in their development across a host of different projects and found many of the skills they needed in the US. By outsourcing web development to the US, the site flourished and grew at an astronomical pace. Reasons for outsourcing: accessing the pool of talents and skills, improving quality, greater focus on core business.

The main point to pick up on here is that you need to have an understanding of your requirements. By knowing what skills were lacking in their region, Alibaba was quickly able to find resources elsewhere able to accomplish the tasks they needed to get done. WhatsApp is a well-known name when it comes to communication. However, WhatsApp did not start out as the company you see today.

When thinking about companies that outsource, WhatsApp is a good example of outsourcing as it has been doing it from the very beginning. As early as , WhatsApp was a small organization with only 30 full-time employees and five part-timers. Based out of Mountain View California, they understood that if they wanted to grow, they needed to keep costs down. For WhatsApp, Russia was the answer, and they sourced development resources from Russia for a small fraction of what they would have had to pay in the US.

The WhatsApp team understood that geography should not be a boundary. To that end, they identified what they needed to grow and then looked globally for where they could gain access to those skills cost-effectively. For project managers and others interested in a tool to keep tasks on target, Basecamp is well known. Basecamp started out small, and while they are prevalent in the project management field, they maintained a small footprint of inhouse resources. Basecamp actually understood that trying to do everything by themselves was not the right strategy for the organization.

They saw that while their tool was being used by others to manage projects and work, they were having problems internally with workflow and client support. To resolve this situation, Basecamp decided to outsource some essential functions so that their internal teams were able to focus. With Basecamp, improving the app was a task that needed to get done, but Basecamp understood that others could also perform that task.

In this outsourcing example, by using remote developers, Basecamp was able to continue driving improvements into the product, which helped it grow.

Simultaneously, the internal staff was able to focus on internal processes and organization, which ensured the company thrived. The critical point to understand with Basecamp is that companies need to know where their problems are. In Basecamps case, it was not with development or skills, but rather their own internal business operations and time. By outsourcing work to others, Basecamp was better able to focus on running their own organization.

Skype was a precursor and leader in the online video field. With software clients that work across smartphones and PCs almost everyone has used or knows what Skype is. Skype, like WhatsApp, realized that product development was not the key to its success. Instead, Skype needed to find the right talent and skills at a cost point that made sense so they could continue to develop the software while keeping costs low.

Again, it comes back to treating your offshore members as part of the team. Even though they are not sat in the office right next to you, they're still a very real part of your company. Fortunately, these days, technology makes this a lot easier than it used to be.

This will solidify the relationship and give them an excellent understanding of your business. Visiting your offshore team and facilities is a must. Fly over and take a few days to work with your team on the ground. Get to know your staff properly and allow them to get to know you. Face-to-face conversations help make your business, its goals and its customers a clear reality to your offshore team members rather than remote concepts.

Here are the 7 steps to successful outsourcing that will help you in planning and managing your outsourcing services efficiently. Do not outsource tasks and processes that are key to your organization. Instead, you should contract out other activities that do not require constant vigilance and can be best carried out by others. Another factor that can help you in making a better decision in this regard is an evaluation of the current infrastructure.

Do a careful assessment of the present business performance, cost savings, internal and external capabilities, service performance, etc. If the loopholes found can be addressed by upgrading the current infrastructure effectively and efficiently, then you may not be in urgent need of outsourcing.

But if the problems cannot be solved in-house, outsource them to agencies that specialize in the concerned areas. Outsourcing is not a short-term project. On average most outsourcing contracts are applicable for three to five years. If the association remains healthy for all parties involved, the contract period can also be extended. But before extending the term of outsourcing contracts, you must evaluate whether you are getting the expected results or not. You must regularly measure the performance of your offshore operations, find gaps, and establish ways to fill them.

Continuous training and education of employees are important. You must also upgrade current technologies and processes and always remain open to innovations. Talk to us Many professionals can work remotely because digital technology is becoming increasingly intertwined in the workplace. Although remote work. Talk to us Many companies in Accounting Industry on the rise find that they spend more time managing their finances than scaling.

Devang Parikh May 20, Talk to us. What is Outsourcing? Define the objectives of outsourcing:. Before going for a successful outsourcing, ask yourself why do you need to outsource? What do you seek to achieve through outsourcing your activities? As mentioned before, outsourcing include a variety of reasons. Some of them are:. Reduce costs Leverage global skills Get access to innovations and technologies Concentrate internal resources in other activities Mitigate risks Expand in other areas Increase the quality of product or service.

Expressing the goals of outsourcing clearly helps all the parties involved in framing the contract. It also avoids misunderstandings and conflicts at a later stage. The biggest advantage of defining the objectives is that everybody sets the same expectations with the deal. This results in better decision-making and smoother communication. Since the decision for outsourcing can have a huge impact on a company, it is advisable to discuss the entire idea with your managerial team.