Outsourcing isn’t just for big businesses. Nowadays, small to medium sized businesses are taking advantage of the benefits from outsourcing. Jobs that were originally covered in-house staff are now being contracted to third-party companies. Jobs like project management, graphic design, applications developments, web development and other business functions are often outsourced to hotspots like the Philippines.
Why outsource?
While there are many reasons why companies outsource services, one prominent reason is cost. Outsourcing provides a myriad of financial benefits to companies, especially start-ups and small businesses. Outsourcing can cut overhead cost by half if not more. In return small to medium sized companies get the same knowledge and skill set for less and at much lower overhead cost. Without a doubt outsourcing can prove to be very advantageous for start-ups and small businesses looking to grow their business and cut costs.
How to outsource?
We’ve compiled a few key steps every company must look into before deciding to outsource their services.
Can the job be outsourced?
As I mentioned previously, not every job can be outsourced and there are huge cultural differences even today.
You have to weight the pros and cons of each. Here are a few questions to ask:
- What’s to be gained if I outsource the job?
- What are the risks?
- How will I deal with cultural differences?
- What if they don’t understand English?
- What if they don’t understand my project?
- What are my short-term and long-term plans?
- How do I partners with a third-party that I can trust.
One of the biggest trends to come out in recent years are freelance sites. These are sites that allows you to posts jobs and freelancers can bid on them. Often the lowest bid wins the job, but the lowest bid probably does not come with any quality. Freelancers have little or no risk and many of these sites such as freelancer.com attracts scammers.
It’s crucial to find a reputable “outsourcer” that you can rely on to manage your project properly.
Affinity Tech is an outsourcing company based in the Philippines. It is founded and managed locally by Australian and American nationals, and has a team of qualified designers, LAMP developers, and content writers. Contact us for a quote.
Check our Elance.com buyer profile page here. It will give you some ideas on the type of services you can outsource. We’ve been buying services from Elance since 2004 and till we setup our own development and design teams, and now we are offering these services to you.
