Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Advantages Of Outsourcing
4 Tips To Help You Outsource Successfully
Aug 21st
As your business grows, the complexity of the tasks involved increases quickly. There are some core business activities, which require greater focus compared to some other non-core business activities that although important are better dealt with by a professional in that area so you can free up time to concentrate on customers.
Reasons to Outsource, Image Courtesy Of EJM.com
As a business, if you are running your own website, there are a few of these activities which can be outsourced. Outsourcing gives you to the freedom to concentrate on being in business not working on all aspects of your business however there are issues that you need to consider before outsourcing your work. This post looks at some of the key points you need to ensure you take care of if your outsourcing exercise is to be successful.
Specify your keywords before outsourcing content
The content of your internet business website must be aligned with your business ethos and at the same time should incorporate Search Engine Optimisation. If you are outsourcing your content development, then you should be very explicit in explaining your business objective and be very exact in specifying the keywords related to your business.
You can make use of various online tools like ‘Google keyword tools’ to find the popular keywords related to your business category. A third party may not be as knowledgeable about your business as you are, so it is better that you give them the keywords which needs to be use in the content. It might take you some time to research this thoroughly but the end results achieved are very effective if the content then becomes more honed to your business.
Get involved in your business website design
The creative part of the website is its overall design. Although a third party web designer may be an expert in this work, he does not know your business so you must specify your requirements fully and in detail on paper for them to follow, this gets ride of the ‘he said, she said’ syndrome.
You should always decide on how you website looks and if it is in keeping with your customers’ viewpoint, if the web designer whats to give you something that your clients will not like i..e a design or flashy swirly etc. Regardless of what the web designer thinks go with your gut you know your customers he does not if they will not like it do not let them put it in.
Any images, videos or links you put on the website must be put in such a way that they represent your true business value. If you have sales and marketing people get them involved in this task as well.
Communication is the key
All the points above are important but will not work unless you ensure you use ‘effective communication’ between the outsourcer and yourself. There must be two-way communication on a regular basis so that both parties understand fully each other’s requirements and expectations.
Communication is also necessary for continuous improvement as per the changing market scenario. All reports must be sought from the outsourcer and should be comprehensive so that you have a paper trail (e-mail trail) to establish quantity and quality of work and also if you decide to go to another outsourcer you can ensure they are not repeating previously covered work.
Any improvements sought for on the outsourced job must be communicated to themin writing as well as verbally for clarity purposes and again for accountability. This should be given in a timely manner so the outsourcer can have plenty of time to incorporate them.
Gauge the Return On Investment beforehand
The objective of outsourcing is to save your time and keep cost whilst doing so to a minimum while extracting the maximum benefit for your company. If you recruit full time staff for tasks then it would not be an economical option for a small business. So, it is imperative for you to decide how much cost you are saving by outsourcing and what are your returns.
You should bear in mind that the profits expected from outsourcing must be higher than the expenses associated with it. At the same time, the quality of your content must not be sacrificed on cost. The return on investment should be measured in terms of the number of visitors to your site, sales and lead generation which should be monitored closely. If you are not able to do this then a good internet business coach or internet consultant will be able to help you to judge the performance of your outsourced work.
Outsourcing SEO tasks helps you to achieve economic efficiency, brings in expertise of the experienced third party players and above all saves your precious time. All you need to do is a bit of homework and some amount of timely monitoring.
Hiring A Freelancer
Jun 12th
Image of Freelancer.com
Running a business is a difficult task as you need to monitor numerous tasks and formulate a strategy to optimise the quality as well as the cost of your business operations. In traditional business all operations are looked after in-house. However, present day businesses deal with many complex operations which can make it hard to look after all of them simlutaneously in an effective manner.
This brings us to the concept of ‘outsourcing’ to a freelancer, which is the process of involving an external party to handle a specifc task for your business. It is basically a contract given to the third party to handle some or possible all the different elements of your business. Outsourcing/freelancing is a recent phenomenon and has many advantages in it.
One of the main objectives of outsourcing to a freelancer is to save on costs. When you hire someone to do a specific task who is already skilled in that area, it can potentially save the administrative and training costs on your part as well as allowing you more time to concentrate on what you do best. Apart from the aforementioned benefits you should also find labour available at a lower cost.
You may not want to hire sometimesfull time as you have no need i.e. you may have a small requirement for a particular project wherein hiring full time employees and getting them trained proves more costly than outsourcing the job to a freelancer. If this is where you are at the first thing to do is clearly identify that task and its specifics so that you can write a clear, concise and informative job post.
No business is expected to have full expertise and specialisation in each and every business operation. The idea of hiring a freelancer is to gain that specialised skill temporarily in order to complete your job. You should accept no less than the industry standard, from your freelancer unless you want to. This can be achieved through interviewing them, asking for proof of qualifications and any industry traing or portfolios, the good freelancers will not mind these questions the bad ones well seem to disappear.
The better freelancers will welcome these questions as they probably perform similar operations for multiple clients, hence it is easier for them to prove the standard of the work output. One of the great things about freelancing is that the freelancer is on a contract that must be completed satisfactorily before they are paid which makes them legally held accountable for the quality of work, clearly more of an advantage than having someone fulltime.
Outsourcing gives you multiple options to choose the best freelancer suitable for your requirements. Once you choose the right organisation or a person to perform your job, you can then concentrate on your core business activities. It also provides you the flexibility in your business strategies. If you want to expand, you can hire third parties on an ad-hoc basis to meet sudden challenges or if later on the size of your business decreases, you can easily stop employent of your freelancer.
Hiring a freelancer allows the inter-mixing of resources including human capital among two or more organisations and hence overall knowledge base of a business expands. Thus, a business can flourish even if it is dependent on hiring freelancers who are not a part of it.
Freelancing has shown very good results in the past and is beneficial for both main business owner and also for the freelancer who might otherwise be unemployed . All you need to do is to identify the job to be performed and then choose from the vast array of sites online to help you find a freelacer i.e. freelancer.com, guru.com, limeexchange.com etc to get the right freelacder for your job.
Benefits Of Oursourcing
Nov 3rd
Outsourcing has several advantages that can give your business a competitive lead over others. For large businesses it is a very good idea to consider outsourcing their accounting work since it has been known that the cost of maintaining an accounting department is very costly.
In times of economic ambiguity, outsourcing approach for your business can help you to successfully reduce costs while industrializing your potential for the long haul.
Outsourcing can help you address your liquidity issues, improving your growth in the market, and cash flow. This helps your business come into view from the recent recession into a stronger competitive situation. The advantages of outsourcing are shown below:
Reducing Cost
According to statistics, businesses that outsource their services have positive impact on their bottom-line performance. This is because the operational cost has been brought down drastically as compared to employing the local staff to do the same job. Getting access to high-quality services at a cost-effective price is the biggest benefit that you can get while outsourcing.
Getting New Projects done quickly
Outsourcing can help your business to start a new project in a very short time span. If this was done in-house, it may take weeks and months to find the right team, training, and giving them support. Besides this can also help save on distribution centers, rent, and any capital investments, since the initial process can be difficult to start with.
Helping the core business
You will discover in outsourcing that will help your managers set their priorities more clearly with more time and with less effort, since it shifts the focus from tangential activities toward work that serves the customer. Businesses are looking for a service provider with wide competence, magnitude and past performance for success that they can trust to help them navigate the dramatic changes they need to make.
When you outsource all the non-core functions in your business you will be free to give attention to core business and your team can be put to better use.
Outsourcing is more viable for small business owners to opt for local service providers as opposed to foreign outsourcing company and not only that it is cheaper to do so, there is no need to deal with long distance business relations. If you have any questions or if you want to hear from us, please contact us by visiting our website, www.theinternetbusinesscoach.co.uk and one of our business coach will get in touch with you.
