The guide to outsourcing -Entrepreneurs perspective
Be it a product or service, there is always some urgent and important work that you will be unable to do. in a product, it could be an important functionality that you will have to build in a product that you will not have people for. In a service, it could be an important customer asking for some work to be done that you do not want to say no to. You would not want to lose the customer.
So, at any given point in time, you will have to be ready to look at adding skills. That is good for the company. However, what happens if you would be unable to find work for these people beyond this small piece of work that you will have to do. There is always a feeling that we are losing grip and losing money when we outsource. Doing this increases our stress and also our cost. However, outsourcing is a norm in any type of company’s world.
You will have to get a grip on why you need to outsource. This will give you an idea on what sort of financial outcome will be there for you. It does not make sense when you outsource and have no financial gains. However, you will have to outsource for a slight loss as well when there is a big gain expected out of a customer who will go to a competitor if you would say no now.
Now the question that comes in your mind is – what should I outsource? There are core tasks, supplementary tasks and ancillary tasks. The core tasks are the ones for which you started your company. Core tasks are the ones where you excel. These should take the most of your time where you spend implementing what you are good at.
There will be multiple tasks that will take up lot of your time but will lead to a less shade of returns. There will also be a bunch of tasks that you will not be good at or you are not able to find a team that can accomplish those well. These are the tasks that you will have to find an outsourcing partner for. You will have to get these tasks done by people who are better at the game than you are. You will also ensure that your existing team does not dabble with it and make mistakes.
So, let us assume that you are a technician, keeping the technical portion of the organization is good for you. This will keep you in control of the engineering. You can look at outsourcing Sales/ Marketing/ Finance. You may end up spending a little more but you will be happy that your money is well spent because you will be in safe hands.
Conclusion
Outsourcing is not bad when you know what to outsource. This actually helps you in optimizing your time, resources and increase your operational efficiencies.