Quite simply Outsourcing is having any task completed for you by a person / company / entity that is not on your payroll.
Emma Jones, the eminent founder of Enterprise Nation, the home business network, said:
"My advice to any small business is 'focus on what you do best and outsource the rest' and it's becoming increasingly straightforward to do this. Outsourcing helps you stay nimble and keeps overheads low."
"The benefits of outsourcing are threefold: you only pay for services as you need them; you get access to expertise that may not otherwise be available to you; and it frees up your time to focus on the things you do well, while offloading the tasks you perform badly."
What is Acceptable to Outsource?
Different people have differing feelings and views as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to outsource.
Some outsourced solutions are very accepted like for example "IT Support" has been accepted for many years but other outsourced services such as maybe "Overseas Voice Call Centres" are not accepted by the majority of people.
Whatever your view is, one thing is for sure, that the scale of outsourcing is not understood by the majority of people.
There are many examples of this but one interesting one is : Did you know that the person that you talk to at the "Fast Food Drive-Thru" is not always the physical person at the kiosk where you pick up your order from! Some chains have outsourced this process, as if you consider, all that the person is doing is taking your order and keying the details in to the Supplier's Order System. This could be and is done from anywhere on the planet...
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All large companies outsource : Manufacture, IT, Voice, Back Office, Data Input, Pay Roll, Accounting, Sales Calls, Shipping, Procurement, Drop Shipping – everything!
Whatever tasks that you decide to outsource please use the general guidelines below :
- Outsource Non-Core Repetitive Tasks
- Outsource Tasks that are well defined
- Outsource Tasks that are Time Consuming
- Delegate Repetitive Questions
Lastly below is another interesting outsourcing model that I recently cam across :
Small Accountants Business
I have a friend who is a chartered accountant, he is very successful yet only works one day a week.
He has a full time PA who works for him, she received each customer's accounts and sends them electronically to their Offshore Back Office Team who then processes the end of year accounts very quickly and two days later they arrive back with her finished.
They are processed by fully qualified accountants in the Far East and because of the number of staff available they can cope with hikes in business volume very easily.
Note: Accountants in the UK very often have a receptionist or a very junior, unqualified, low paid person do the repetitive book keeping input on accounts for small and medium sized businesses. This negates the need for £120 per hour accountants processing repetitive mundane accounts and you the client receiving a massive invoice.
Benefit: The books are prepared by a more qualified person in a quicker time.
The PA then liaises with the client to make the appointment for the one day of the week when the business head is available and then updates his diary on line and e-mails him the finished set of accounts along with any notes that he may need. Meetings are scheduled every one and a half hours from 8.30am, half hour for additional reading the the figures and notes before a one hour meeting with the client.
A Great Business!
Regards
Mark Tomlinson
