Reasons to Outsource

Organizations and business outsource for many different reasons from, cost savings, cost restructuring, improving quality, knowledge, capacity management, time zone and customer pressure. All of these are great benefits associated with outsourcing. Bruce Skaistis of ITToday talks about secrets to outsourcing success. He discusses you should monitor the progress of the outsourced process and be prepared to “bring the function back in-house”, he makes a valid point by highlighting that even though you may not perform have to perform the task, you should be prepared that if things were to go wrong that you are able to pick things up and incorporate them back into the day to day running. Take a look at this refreshing point of view.

How to Decide What to Outsource?

It can be very difficult to decide what you should outsource and Frank Ross of AllBusiness says that you should make a note of all the tasks you perform in a month and decide if they contribute to revenue. I agree with him. You may do the filing, payroll, marketing and website management, all tasks which at face value seem like they help your bottom line. But choosing to outsource these functions which may not be your area of expertise and therefore consume great amounts of time would help you to focus on areas where you want to grow your business. Outsourcing can also help you to reduce stress levels and in the long-term reduce your costs.

Online Outsourcing

Many of you will be familiar with the terms ‘Outsourcing’ and ‘Offshoring’, both of which refer to taking a business process and contracting a third party service provider to manage this non-core part of your business and also reduce costs. When ‘Offshoring’ the service provider is located in another country.

The next evolution of this practice that I have become involved with is ‘Online Outsourcing’. The main destination is currently India; however with rising costs it is soon to be eclipsed by China which produces a huge number of qualified, keen and innovative IT and engineering graduates every year.

The main market for online outsourcing are Small and Medium Enterprises or Individual Entrepreneurs. But ther are some fortune 500 companies that are benefiting from the associated comparative cost advantage