Outsourcing is a vital skill in day-to-day business management. After all, no company on earth can conduct every single task or manufacture every single tool they need to remain productive, the heart of B2B planning is in not understanding its convenience, but its absolute necessity.
Yet like any other practice, there are better and worse ways to go about it. As we see with many public infrastructure projects such as in the United Kingdom, where endless investment is poured into “consultants” providing questionable returns, outsourcing can quickly become a money pit if you’re not careful about your approach.
In this post, then, we’ll discuss how to correctly outsource tasks more effectively going forward:
Give Specific, Smart Project Briefs
Being vague is like throwing money into a black hole, because painting a clear picture of the end result you're after will ensure the service knows how to use you as a customer. They should also onboard you through a vital KYC (know your customer) process, if not, then choose another. If you’re unsure about the exact deliverable you want, discuss the problem you're trying to solve. Don't be afraid to ask questions or clarify things. It's better to spend a bit more time upfront than to end up with something that's way off the mark and demanding revisions.
Understand The Full Scope Of Services Available
The landscape of available services is constantly evolving, and so using a service for half of its potential isn’t going to assist you as you might like. For example, ask about emerging technologies that could streamline processes, or comprehensive services that combine multiple outsourced tasks into one software package. Even if the conclusion is to maintain current practices, the exploration ensures no significant opportunities have been overlooked or that you’ve been paying the same amount for a same service when a more competitive option could have yielded even better results.
Measure Results Against Cost
The excitement of outsourcing can sometimes overshadow the need for cost-benefit analysis, especially if you’re being promised the world by a service desperate to onboard you as a client. It’s also important to understand which options to go for, such as learning the benefits of working with an IMO over a parallel option. Return on investment is crucial and it’s up to those services to demonstrate how they’ll provide that to you as a client, not how you’ll need to ask for it for the entire process to be valid. Setting benchmarks or goals can help measure success, even for creative or long-term projects and it also allows you to measure how the outsourced aid has impacted. For example, how many man-hours did you save internally? How many mistakes did you avoid? Did the outsourcing pay for itself because you didn’t have to train staff on one particular measure? It will help you determine if outsourcing is a practice you want to keep for years, or if it’s worth internally structuring such capabilities going forward.
With this advice, you’ll be certain to outsource tasks more effectively. As with anything in the business space, paying another brand to do something for you is a skill in itself. Not all businesses think this way, so there’s a growth advantage for you to benefit from.
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